The Netanyahu Administration is happy that the US is again attacking Iran. That doesn’t mean that they want to participate.

Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has described the renewed US war on Iran as the ideal outcome for Israel, provided Israelis do not have to fight it themselves.“Israel has no interest in joining the campaign – the current situation is the best for us,” Smotrich said on Tuesday in comments carried by Kan news. Israel has stayed out of the war since the US renewed the bombing campaign despite the fact that, according to the official State Department rationale, the US launched the conflict “at the request” of Israel. Smotrich said that Israel still sought regime change in Iran, something Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told President Trump would happen if he launched the war.

The new phase of the attack on Iran is not going well. While Trump is planning a wider war, the expansion of US operations is limited by the dwindling stockpiles of air-defense and long range munitions and constraints on the ability to surge more troops and aircraft into the area because US bases in the Middle East have been decimated.

The US way of war is to use overwhelming force and high-tech stand-off weapons systems to avoid casualties. Political support for the attack on Iran has never been strong and US narratives to shore it up rely on overwhelming American superiority and a perception of the war presenting minimal risk. Body-bags, casualties and the loss of major bases and expensive warplanes flys in the face of this narrative and is eroding support for the war.

Iran is not playing along. After destroying much of the radar network protecting regional US bases in February, March and April, Iranian planners have now prioritized targeting fuel storage, drone hangers, refueling tankers, and barracks. The American response has been to relocate the US Air Force Mideast command center from Qatar to South Carolina and move aircraft and military forces further from Iran to bases in Jordan.

Iran has made upgrading its intelligence/surveillance/reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities a priority since the US and Israel attacked them in June 2025, and they have now demonstrated that Jordon does not offer sanctuary. Multiple US personnel were killed and as many as dozens injured two days ago in an Iranian missile attack on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. Subsequent disclosures from the New York Times revealed that this was the fourth Iranian attack on Jordan to result in casualties and major losses of air assets in the previous week. A strike on King Faisal Air Base days prior wounded five, and another attack on a base—unidentified by the NYT but confirmed by mappers to be Prince Hassan Air Base—damaged multiple Black Hawk helicopters on the ground. Then, 20 personnel were wounded in an attack on Muwaffaq Salti on the 16th. The attack that killed at least two US personnel occurred the next day.

The Iranians have thus forced American planners into an uncomfortable choice. It’s what Larry Johnson is calling–“DeBasification… A Fancy Word for Booting the US Out of the Middle East”. Jordan was the clear fallback point for assets that previously operated out of bases closer to Iran in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE. But Jordanian bases are turning out to be deathtraps, with the US taking dozens of casualties and losing an unknown number of air assets in the span of just five days. Footage of Iranian MRBM strikes within Jordan reveals an appallingly low interception rate for US and Jordanian air defenses, even when interceptors are expended in 3:1 ratios and above against incoming projectiles.

The only retreat now is Israel itself. While falling back to Israel will bring US assets within the protective range of Israeli air defenses, officials like Smotrich have made it clear that the Israelis don’t want any part in this phase of the war. There’s also little reason to think they’ve been able to replenish their own interceptor stocks in the brief pause in the fighting, and the IDF was facing a crisis in that area before the pause. Even when interceptors were more plentiful, the Israelis were unable to fully protect their own airbases.

Iran seems to be herding the US air-force assets further west to Israel with the hope to operate under a more reliable air defense architecture. Iran, however, has already proven that it can hit targets in Israel and so any assemblies of U.S. fighters, AWAC’s and tanker air planes on Israeli air bases will become a bulls-eye for Iranian ballistic missiles and drones.

I don’t think the irony is lost on the Iranians. They are forcing the US to retreat to Israel, whose government wants the US to do all the fighting and dying. Then Israel will be the target while much of the rest of the world cheers on their destruction.

The Washington Post presents an even more astonishing revelation via leak from another ‘anonymous official’—that US stockpiles are in such bad shape that there’s not enough munitions to even sustain operations. The more shocking part: that Trump is apparently being kept in the dark about all this.

Military analyst Will Schryver lays out the brutal reality facing the Trump Administration. “The truth of the situation is becoming shockingly clear to more and more people in Washington. But the dilemma remains: withdraw and relinquish West Asia to the Iran / Russia / China bloc, or continue to fight and relinquish the entire empire.”