Iran split screen: When US, Israeli interests reach a fork in the road - analysis

Analysis of diverging US and Israeli interests regarding Iran, following the collapse of a Trump administration deal with Iran. The article examines how Iran's miscalculation in pushing for a more humiliating deal led Trump to walk away, shifting to a strategy of economic attrition. With five weeks to the US midterm elections, the piece outlines a looming fork in the road: whether Trump will maintain pressure on Iran or pivot back to a deal, potentially against Israeli interests.

For most of recent decades, US and Israeli interests regarding Iran's nuclear program have strongly converged, with both countries seeking to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon. However, this summer, the Trump administration cut a deal with Iran that Israeli officials defined as a 'bad deal,' reducing US military pressure and pushing nuclear issues to the end of the sequencing. The Iranian ballistic-missile threat was not mentioned. Iran then made a fateful error by pushing for an even more humiliating deal, leading Trump to walk away. He shifted to a strategy of using US military power to harm Iran's economy, achieving a shift in August where harm to the West's economy decreased while harm to Iran's economy escalated. The IRGC, described as a mix of religious fanatics and paranoid actors, has not cracked under pressure. With five weeks to Election Day, the article outlines a fork in the road: whether Trump will maintain pressure to protect Israel and the region, or whether Republican losses in the midterms will compel him back into a bad deal with Iran, against Israeli interests.