“Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces launched multiple ballistic missiles from Iran in an attempted surprise attack on U.S. forces based in the Middle East,” U.S. Central Command announced Monday night. “All Iranian missiles were successfully intercepted.” The U.S., along with Saudi Arabia, retaliated with airstrikes on Iran-backed militias in Iraq. However, the unusual reversal in the conflict’s usual flow of initiative highlights the ongoing differences between the Trump administration and the Israeli government over tactics.

“President Trump has repeatedly said that the main goal, from his perspective, is to ensure that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. And obviously, Israel agrees,” summarized FRC Senior Fellow Jody Hice. “But there are some areas of disagreement.”

“The Israeli and American goals are the same,” agreed Gregg Roman, executive director of the Middle East Forum, on “Washington Watch.” “They want to be able to have a verifiable end to enrichment in Iran. They want to be able to remove the support for proxies. They want to collapse the government and the regime … to see forces in power that won’t pose a threat to Israel, to the United States national security interests, and to U.S. and Israeli allies in the region.”

But that underlying agreement does not mean that Netanyahu and Trump always agree on tactics. The reason why Iran got to attack first is because America once again decided, unilaterally, to stop shooting at and start talking to the genocidal regime whose word cannot be trusted. Trump said he had opened only a short window for diplomacy and would return to “very strong military action” if it led nowhere, but Iranian forces took the window as an opportunity to exploit.

“The Israelis would rather have there be a quick end to this Iranian nuclear debacle,” Roman continued, but “Trump paused American strikes to give talks a very short window. … This in and of itself can be one of two ways: [it’s] either a lifeline to the regime, or the quiet that precedes the storm.”

“If the president thinks he needs more political credibility, both with Gulf Arab allies of the United States, and to give a short respite to be able to put U.S. forces in the correct position for a massive strike, that’s where the Israelis and Americans are having tactical disagreements [while] the strategy remains the same,” Roman reiterated.

Yet Roman also saw promising signs that the allies continue to work through their differences. “Look at the meeting that took place in the White House [Tuesday],” he proposed. “There was no press spray. Prime Minister Netanyahu came in from a side entrance to avoid the media, and they got straight down to business for 80 minutes.”

Netanyahu recently faced attacks from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D), who threatened to arrest him if he visited the city for the United Nations General Assembly. Netanyahu was likely happy to avoid distracting interactions with the drama-hunting American press corps.

Beyond the obvious military discussions regarding Iran, Trump and Netanyahu also discussed a potential nuclear deal between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. Israel expressed concern after reports that the deal would allow Saudi Arabia to enrich their own uranium — creating a threat to Israel similar to that posed by Iran. However, President Trump and top officials have clarified that there are more conditions placed on that deal than were first reported.

“The Energy secretary announced the deal prior to the president being able to vet it through the White House,” said Roman. “The president quickly came back saying that the Saudis would have to join the Abraham Accords as a precondition to be able to get this nuclear civilian nuclear accessibility from U.S. technology.”

“In addition to that, another statement was made by Secretary of State Marco Rubio a few days ago, where he said that the Saudi deal would have to follow the Emirati deal,” Roman added, “meaning this is a clean enrichment, a clean deployment of civilian nuclear energy. There will be no enrichment in Saudi Arabia.”

Roman suggested that the war with Iran, which is now snarling oil exports through both the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, could make the Saudis more open to joining the Abraham Accords, as part of an anti-Iran alliance. “If they hope to be able to get the kind of investment and technology that will really [help them] fit in the jigsaw puzzle of the Abraham Accords — they are a keystone, but they can only be that keystone if they’re willing to make a deal to normalize relations with Israel,” he said. “If Israel keeps on its current path and the Saudis continue to face Shia threats, they’re more likely to normalize now than they were even three weeks ago before the Houthis started getting involved.

While the Abraham Accords broke new ground by normalizing Israeli relations with several Muslim nations during the first Trump administration, progress has been slower during his second term. “The only real notable success was saying that Kazakhstan had joined the Abraham Accords,” Roman pointed out. “But there’s larger strategic plays that are being put in place too. … All the pieces of the chessboard are being put in place for a large event to take place, but they have to take incremental microscopic steps before you can have that big play.”

As one example, the White House’s National Energy Dominance Council “is seeking to integrate the Eastern Mediterranean with Greece, Cyprus, and Israel having a way in which to get Israeli and then eventually, hopefully, other Middle Eastern natural gas through the eastern Mediterranean into Europe,” Roman said. He also suggested the Iraqi government may eventually join the Abraham Accords.

The high risks and high rewards of a “big play” in international diplomacy fit President Trump’s personal style, but they also carries their own disadvantages. One major consideration is that more complex deals have more parts that can go wrong through accidents, misunderstandings, or intentional sabotage. This makes it all the more important that President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continue to hammer out the details in a close working relationship. They share the same strategic vision, even if, tactically, they don’t always see eye-to-eye.