Eighteen American service members are dead. More than 400 are wounded, some with traumatic injuries. The United States has been at war with Iran since February 28, hammering nuclear sites, command centers, drone storage facilities, communications systems, and coastal surveillance along the Strait of Hormuz.
And Israel's finance minister just called it the best possible arrangement for his country.
Bezalel Smotrich, speaking at a settlement conference on Tuesday, laid out the Israeli government's position with a clarity that Washington rarely gets from its allies. "The current situation, where there is a confined campaign between Iran and the United States, is the correct situation and best for us," Smotrich said.
Best for us. Not best for the 18 families who got the knock on the door. Not best for the 400-plus troops recovering from wounds sustained in operations they volunteered for. Best for Israel — specifically because Israel doesn't have to be involved.
"When it comes to the state of Israel, there is no interest in joining the campaign," Smotrich continued. He then added the line that should be stapled to every foreign policy briefing in Washington: "We need to remember that our objective in the campaign, and this is not necessarily shared with the U.S., is to destabilize, weaken Iran."
Not necessarily shared with the U.S. That's the Israeli finance minister acknowledging, on the record, that Israel's war aims and America's war aims are not the same thing. We're doing the bleeding. They're doing the benefiting. And their objectives don't even align with ours.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for his part, issued a warning to Iran that doubled as a reminder of Israeli capability. "Do not count on there being calm if you attack us," Netanyahu said. "The previous response was powerful enough, but any further attempt to harm us will be met with a different response, far more powerful." In other words, Israel can fight — they'd just prefer not to while Americans are doing it for them.
None of this appeared to surprise President Trump. "Would join in two minutes if I ask them to," Trump said of Israel's military. Then he added the more telling line: "We don't need anybody."
For decades, the bipartisan foreign policy establishment in Washington sold every military engagement as a coalition effort, a shared burden among allies united by common purpose. Smotrich just told you what "common purpose" actually looks like from the other side of the table: let the Americans strike, keep our troops home, pursue our own objectives, and call it the best possible scenario.
The problem isn't that Israel is acting in its own interest. The problem is that Washington has spent decades pretending allied interests and American interests are the same thing, and a finance minister at a Tuesday conference just explained, on camera, that they aren't.
