This week we once again watched missile fire between Israel and Iran. President Donald Trump pushed both sides to stand down, but then Iran downed a U.S. Army Apache over the Strait of Hormuz and Trump ordered strikes of his own. Negotiations between Washington and Tehran are under severe strain, and everyone wants to know: What does Trump actually want?
The honest answer is that it’s hard to tell—and that’s probably by design. Trump has repeatedly feinted toward peace before launching air strikes, and been loudest about escalation precisely when he was about to pull back. For a leader facing an adversary across a negotiating table, unpredictability is a genuine strategic asset. You don’t want your enemy to know where your lines are, when you’ll fold, or how far you’ll go. In that sense, the ambiguity is the point.
But there are signals worth reading. Vice President J.D. Vance and others around Trump are uncomfortable with the conflict—looking for ways to create distance from it, and in some cases, to assign blame for it to Israel. A New York Times story about alleged Israeli espionage on America, sourced to unnamed Pentagon officials, fits that pattern. A meaningful faction in Washington regards the war as a political liability and wants to find an exit.
