From Containment to Prevention: The Trump-Netanyahu Alignment to Defeat Iran’s Jihad 

• U.S.–Israel strategic shift: The joint U.S.–Israel strikes on Iran represent a major strategic shift from containing Iran to actively preventing and dismantling the Islamic Republic’s military, nuclear, and terror infrastructure.
• Trump–Netanyahu partnership: The partnership between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu created an unprecedented level of strategic alignment and operational cooperation between the United States and Israel.
• Correction of past U.S. policy failures: The strikes reverse decades of misguided U.S. policies toward Iran—from Carter’s misreading of the 1979 revolution to Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA), which empowered the regime.
• Ideological nature of the Iranian regime: Iran’s actions are driven by radical religious ideology and messianic beliefs, not conventional geopolitical interests, which explains its support for proxy groups like Hizbullah, Hamas, and the Houthis.
• Potential regional and internal consequences: The operation could encourage Iranian public opposition to the regime and shift Middle Eastern geopolitics, with some Arab states potentially aligning more closely with the U.S. and Israel against Iran.

The joint U.S.-Israel military strikes on Iran mark more than a tactical military operation. President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have established a new strategic realignment that has superseded any past American administration since the State of Israel’s founding in 1948.

Both Trump and Netanyahu have recognized and countered the radical messianic underpinnings of the Iranian regime’s jihad against the West and Israel. This shared mission to neuter and dismantle the Islamic Republic’s terror regime upgrades the collaboration between the United States and Israel which had formerly limited its efforts to deterring and containing the regime’s nuclear and ballistic missile threats. The joint June 2025 U.S.-Israel attack marked a sharp pivot away from containment to prevention.

This new approach is no small achievement. Since 1979, and particularly since the early 1980s, when the Iranian regime under the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini established its main Hizbullah proxy, U.S.-Israel cooperation had failed to target the source of the Iranian regime’s regional and global terror network. Rather, Israel had acted alone against regime proxies – Hizbullah to the north, Iran’s Syrian state proxy to the northeast, and Hamas to Israel’s south. Israel’s counterterror operations against each of these Iranian proxies had even created tension between Washington and Jerusalem, as Israel had come to be seen as the more powerful “heavy” by attacking the weaker jihadi enemies piecemeal. This fragmented approach to fighting Iran’s terror proxies masked the larger strategic necessity of decapitating the head of the Iranian terror octopus under the command of the ayatollahs and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

This has been the fundamental change in Trump’s approach. Trump operationalized longstanding bipartisan rhetorical declarations. Numerous U.S. political leaders from both parties, including Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, as well as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, had all declared aggressive stances against Iran, ranging from threats of military action and obliteration to “keeping all options on the table” to counter its nuclear ambitions and support for terrorism.

On February 28, 2026, America finally made good on decades of declarations. The United States has publicly recognized the equal partnership that Israel has brought to the table in disabling and dismantling the regime’s ballistic, nuclear, and governmental dominance. U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth declared, “Insane regimes like Iran, obsessed with prophetic Islamist illusions, cannot possess nuclear weapons,” and doubled down on the U.S. commitment to protect America and its allies. Hegseth thanked Israel for being “a model ally” proving its equal partnership in defending itself and leading American efforts to defend vital Western interests in the violent and volatile Middle East.

Accounting for Past Errors, Reclaiming American Power

Trump’s approach represents a 180-degree correction of American policy failures on Iran, beginning with those of former President Jimmy Carter. Carter, in a catastrophic strategic misunderstanding and lack of judgment, placed his confidence in the exiled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, whom his administration naively assessed as a potential moderate, paving the path for the Islamic Revolution.

In early 1979, the Carter administration said it hoped that the Islamic Revolution would be guided by “religious principles that aligned with human rights.” Carter suggested that Khomeini’s spiritual influence could act as a “stabilizing force for morality.” This hopeful outlook was perhaps most famously captured by UN Ambassador Andrew Young, who predicted that Khomeini would eventually be recognized as “some kind of saint” once the transition of power stabilized.

These aspirational illusions projecting American values onto the Islamic Republic were shattered in the kidnapping and capture of 52 U.S. Embassy employees, who were kept hostage for 444 days, and were only freed on the day President Ronald Reagan took office on January 20, 1981. Before Carter’s misreading, Iran was a vital counterweight to Arab radicalism. After his blunder, it became the engine fueling global jihad.

Even during Reagan’s presidency, the Iran-Contra Affair of 1986 demonstrated an ill-advised American assumption that “moderate” factions within Tehran could be swayed by transactional arms deals, fundamentally underestimating the regime’s foundational commitment to its “Great Satan” ideology. By treating the Iranian leadership as rational geopolitical actors rather than revolutionary ideologues, the United States failed to grasp that for the Ayatollahs, the theological necessity of opposing American influence far outweighed the temporary benefits of military hardware.

President Barack Obama’s misguided 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) continued U.S. misunderstanding of the radical messianic nature of the Islamic Republic.

The JCPOA pact included “sunset clauses” that were set to expire between 2026 and 2031 – disregarding the nature of the regime’s “long war” jihad. Most critically, Obama released tens of billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets and delivered a billion dollars in cash to the regime. This mistaken move helped finance an accelerated ballistic missile program, expanded Hizbullah’s arsenal in Lebanon, deepened Hamas’s terror infrastructure in Gaza, armed the Houthis in Yemen, and entrenched the IRGC across Syria and Iraq.

Obama told Americans: “Judge me on one thing – does this deal prevent Iran from breaking out with a nuclear weapon for 10 years?” The answer, even by his own admission, was that Iran would be left with nuclear breakout times approaching “almost zero” the moment the deal expired. He chose appeasement, called it diplomacy, and left his successors to manage what was a strategic and even existential disaster in waiting.

Iran’s Goal of Regional and Global Supremacy

Trump has understood what Carter and Obama did not: the Palestinian issue has never been the engine fueling Middle Eastern instability. Rather, the Iranian regime’s ideologically driven and religiously fueled campaign has sought to dominate the region – and in its own words – ultimately the world, through proxy terror, nuclear extortion, and political subversion.

Iran’s terror proxies Hamas, Hizbullah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthis, and the IRGC’s Quds Force-funded militias in Iraq are not expressions of political or territorial grievance. They are instruments of Tehran’s messianic and imperial ambitions, constructed methodically across Israel’s borders to execute what Iranian military planners call the “ring of fire” strategy on their way to regional and global dominance.

The regime’s strategy has its roots not in politics but in its particular brand of radical Shi’ite end-of-days beliefs. The Islamic Republic’s messianism – the belief that the return of the hidden Mahdi, the 12^th imam, who disappeared in 874 CE – holds that end times must be actively hastened through jihadist struggle.

The IRGC does not merely fight for geopolitical objectives. Its senior commanders recite religious invocations before missile strikes. Its ideological training, which now consumes more than half of all required IRGC instruction, frames the eradication of Israel and the defeat of America as divine obligations – prerequisites for the Mahdi’s return. Khamenei did not hide this. He declared repeatedly that “Israel will not be secure whether there is a nuclear deal or not.”

The Iranian regime’s successful survivability despite setbacks and tactical defeat is rooted in its adherence to religious and ideological doctrine and not Western-style rational self-interest. Trump and Netanyahu’s targeting of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other religious authorities in Qom and the other IRGC senior leadership is a corrective to past failures in understanding and countering regime political and religious culture.

To be sure, the Islamic Republic is a regime whose leaders believe that triggering an apocalyptic conflict is a shortcut to heaven. Within the regime’s doctrine of messianic jihad, those lost in the fight against the West are martyrs, and those at home who rebel against the regime are heretics deserving of death. In December 2025 and January 2026, several million Iranians were driven to the streets in protest by an economy in freefall, a currency in collapse, and 47 years of suffocating theocratic rule. The regime’s response was to massacre them. By late January 2026, some 40,000 protesters had been killed and half a million wounded – most of them on January 8 and 9 alone, when the regime imposed a near-total Internet blackout to conceal its atrocities.

Iranian bodies across scores of cities were piled in refrigerated trucks at Tehran’s Kahrizak morgue. Families searching for their children were shown hundreds of body bags on video screens. Khamenei called them “rioters” and “terrorists affiliated with the United States and Israel.” In fewer than two days, the Islamic Republic killed more of its own citizens than it has killed Israelis and Americans over 47 years across the entire Middle East.

Risks and Opportunities Opposite the Regime

The Iranian people across 150 cities have been risking and sacrificing their lives, confronting the regime, waving American and Israeli flags, and calling on Trump and Netanyahu to help save them. Both leaders have responded that “help has arrived.” They have both called on the Iranian people to rise and take control of their institutions. In Trump’s address to the Iranian people – delivered as American and Israeli aircraft were striking regime targets – he told Iranians directly that “the hour of your freedom is at hand.” This was a clarion call for an Iranian-Western partnership in changing the regime.

Trump’s Corrective Approach

The Trump-Netanyahu partnership has now done what decades of American foreign policy failed to do: It has stood behind American declarations of support, which ultimately failed to operationalize assistance to the Iranian people who have felt abandoned by U.S. administrations. This is particularly true after the 2009 Green Movement, the 2017-19 economic protests, and the 2022-23 Mahsa Amini “Women Life Freedom” protests.

The U.S.-Israel joint attack on the regime has reenergized the determination of the Iranian people to topple the Islamic republic and usher in a new era of freedom, security, and prosperity. Trump and Netanyahu’s approach has underscored that it is the Iranian regime and not the Palestinian issue that is the source of Middle Eastern terror, subversion, and instability.

Trump’s operational approach has influenced Middle Eastern allies to publicly condemn the Islamic Republic. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states’ declaration of support for the American attack on Iran is a strong indication the Arab Sunni establishment is following the “winning horse.” Recent statements made by the leaders of Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, and Bahrain condemning Iran as an enemy indicate a possibility of unprecedented military action by the Arab states together with their American ally.

Trump’s no-tolerance approach in confronting the Iranian regime’s nuclear, ballistic, and terror proxy threats is far more effective than the appeasement of Carter, the illusion of Oslo, or the self-deception of the JCPOA. The United States and Israel working together with amenable Middle Eastern allies is the region’s best hope for security, stability, prosperity, and perhaps, peace. A U.S.-led defeat of the regime would also send an important signal to the “axis of resistance” that the West has the political and moral will to stand up to jihad and overcome both radical Shiite and Sunni Islamic extremism.