Speaking to a senior British officer during World War II, Winston Churchill not only succinctly captured the crucial yet frustrating alliance in which he found himself in the fight against Nazi evil, but also gave us an enduring reminder of the truths of multinational operations: “The only thing worse than fighting with allies is fighting without them.”
Currently, President Donald Trump seems vexed by both of those undertakings: fighting with allies and fighting without them. In the Middle East, he is simultaneously dealing with the divergence in plans between the United States and Israel while also gnashing his teeth over NATO allies’ reticence to sign up for the latest American military effort.
But both circumstances reflect a basic fact: All countries have their own interests. And while interests among allies may overlap to varying degrees, they are almost never uniformly the same. Beyond this basic and constant reality, there are additional circumstances surrounding the Iran war that are critical to understanding partner-nation decisions, including the operation’s unclear end state and persistent friction between the Trump White House and America’s European allies.
Despite high levels of military coordination between the U.S. and Israel, there appear to be some points of disagreement over how the war is being waged. After Israeli strikes on Iran’s South Pars gas fields, for example, Trump criticized the target selection—despite subsequent reporting that America had given the operation the green light prior to its execution. Regardless of the truth of the matter, the president’s statement suggested slight daylight between the U.S. and Israel at the tactical level and prompted renewed discussion on whether the two nations’ long-term goals for the campaign are aligned at the strategic level.
To boil down the current conflict into very basic terms, we are fighting the leaders of the Islamic Republic because they are, historically and demonstrably, the bad guys. That the Iranian regime is our enemy, and a disruptive force in the region, is beyond question. But Iran represents a different danger to each of the partners currently engaged in combat with it. Tehran undermines America’s regional interests, works to harm our security efforts, and threatens American-aligned Middle Eastern countries.
To Israel, however, the threat Iran poses is existential. Not only has Iran expressed a consistent desire to eradicate the state of Israel, it has taken steps to bring it about—from bolstering the power and presence of Hezbollah on Israel’s doorstep to authorizing the Hamas-led attack that killed 1,200 people. Even the shared American and Israeli goal of preventing an Iranian nuclear capability comes with different costs to each country should the effort fail. Iran cannot bring about the end of the United States. Israel has no such assurance.
Taking these differing concerns into account, the ideal end of the conflict might look different to each country. Ending the radical theocracy of the mullahs likely means an end to the Iranian ambition to destroy Israel, which explains why the Israeli military is targeting regime leadership, as well as Basij elements responsible for putting down any revolutionary popular uprisings. The United States, on the other hand, may realize that regime collapse, depending on how it happens and what follows, could create additional dilemmas for regional stability—a lesson hard-learned after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya led to civil war, instability, and the rise of Islamist terrorist groups, conditions that endure today.
If the operation’s underlying goals are unclear, Israel is entitled to conduct operations aimed at bringing about what it thinks they should be.
Despite speculation from the fringier extremes of the political horseshoe, differences in priorities and national interests are not indications that Israel pulled us into a war, is manipulating us, or is working against us. In fact, differences between coalition partners on a war’s priorities, methods, pace, and goals are the norm, not the anomaly. During World War II, disputes between Franklin D. Roosevelt, Churchill, and Joseph Stalin over the conduct of the war in the European theater were constant—with the Soviets and British focused on addressing threats to their respective homelands and the United States balancing resources to fight in the Pacific theater. Sometimes, these national interests are not in conflict but simply reflect a different ranking of priorities. Poppy eradication and counter-narcotics operations in Afghanistan were of greater importance to the United Kingdom than to America, as Afghan heroin found its way onto the European black market.
But while these natural differences occur in coalitions, this current conflict has unique features that exacerbate them. The first is the lack of a clear and agreed-upon end state for the operation. As much as the president’s non-specific language about the goals of the conflict has prompted questions from the American people, it has also invited action by the Israelis. If the operation’s underlying goals are unclear, Israel is entitled to conduct operations aimed at bringing about what it thinks they should be.
Further, Epic Fury, unlike other conflicts in our history, is not strictly organized—in terms of command and control—as a coalitional campaign. During World War II, American, British, and Free French forces were all unified under the command of the supreme allied commander, Dwight Eisenhower. During the war in Afghanistan, the four-star American commander was “dual-hatted,” leading both the U.S. forces and the international coalition. Under this construct, countries maintained the decision-making power to determine the manner and types of missions in which their forces could participate, but delegated the planning, synchronization, and oversight of their operations to the coalition headquarters.
This arrangement created the country-specific rules of engagement and prohibitions that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others have bemoaned and mocked, but it also built a framework in which coalition forces could operate in concert despite differing national priorities and risk assessments. Coalitions are not necessarily designed to force partners into certain actions, but rather to establish priorities and limits around what forces will not do. In other words, national priorities that fall outside the collective goals of the coalition are not conducted by coalition forces.
In Epic Fury, the American and Israeli militaries are conducting parallel operations that are coordinated with, but not subordinated to, each other. The Israeli Air Force is developing its own targets outside of the command of a U.S. Air Force general, while at the same time, both militaries are synchronizing operations with respect to key functions, like air traffic control and the suppression of Iranian air defenses.
On the other side of the equation, the president is growing ever more frustrated with European partners who are not yet willing to commit naval assets to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Part of Trump’s anger seems to stem from a misunderstanding of how alliances in general and NATO in particular work; he seems to think that America’s transatlantic allies are required to come to its aid despite the fact that it isn’t under attack. That’s not to say NATO cannot join in such a conflict, as it did in Libya in 2011, but such operations are voluntary.
The president has not conducted himself in a way that might make partner and allied countries predisposed to assist him in a conflict in which they were not consulted before hostilities began.
What’s more, the president’s current demand for NATO support comes after months of claiming the United States does not need European allies, demeaning their previous contributions to American-led conflicts, suggesting America would not support or defend them if an Article 5 triggering event occurred, and even threatening to invade a fellow NATO ally’s territory. In short, the president has not conducted himself in a way that might make partner and allied countries predisposed to assist him in a conflict in which they were not consulted before hostilities began.
But, while some Europeans may be enjoying a certain degree of schadenfreude at watching a man who belittled their military prowess appeal for their help, pettiness is likely not the driver of their decision-making. Trump is correct in his assertion that Europe is more dependent upon commerce flowing through the strait and therefore more affected by its disruption. It is indeed in Europe’s interest for the blockade to end. However, the president has not articulated how expansive the war will be, what his theory of victory looks like, nor even his plan to combat Iranian operations to disrupt maritime traffic. His latest proclamation that reopening the strait will be “a simple military maneuver” suggests an enduring unseriousness about the risks involved in such an operation. It isn’t difficult to understand why Europeans might sit it out unless and until the United States figures out a more concrete plan for dealing with the Pandora’s box it opened.
It’s worth noting that current American requests of European allies seem to be for niche capabilities, such as minesweepers, not necessarily more of the core fighting functions. Often coalition partners contribute by providing these kinds of small but crucial capabilities, sending unique units in small numbers, such as when a newly democratic Czechoslovakia provided chemical detection units to the Gulf War. This is an example of how allies can be critical and essential partners, even when they are “a little off the front lines.”
At the inception of the war with Iran, the Trump administration seemed to have underthought some of the critical decisions and complications, both with regard to Israel and Europe. From the outside, it appears the White House took it for granted that, because the U.S. and Israel agreed that Iran posed an intolerable threat, this mindset extended consensus on all matters springing forth from that initial understanding. The administration seemed to have believed the war would be resolved quickly, before Iran had a chance to respond with measures that complicate global trade or, if it did, that the United States would be able to deal with the fallout quickly. As such, the president likely did not feel he needed to rally support from or even notify our European allies and could instead maintain his adversarial rhetoric toward them.
The administration needs to define better boundaries and goals for the campaign. The U.S. then needs to present specific, realistic requests to any European or international partners from whom we seek support. And finally, we should probably find a way to craft an appeal that avoids deriding U.S. allies and partners as “cowards” or “ungrateful.”
