Iran’s decision to attack ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz and the U.S. decision to retaliate and threaten to abandon diplomacy have pushed both sides close to the resumption of a war that neither wants.

For the United States—which joined Israel in late February in a war to end Iran’s nuclear ambitions, among other goals—allowing Iran’s continued attacks on ships in the strait risked signaling that Tehran still holds the whip hand over one of the world’s most strategic waterways. But the resumption of large-scale military operations in an unpopular war, ahead of November’s midterm elections and with no guarantee of changing Iran’s behavior, is hardly an attractive alternative. So the Trump administration this week attempted to thread the needle: using missile and drone strikes to try to open the strait without reigniting a broader conflict.

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“The U.S. military option is what I would describe as controlled escalation, a sustained military campaign largely consisting of strikes that are focused on degrading Iran’s ability to influence the Strait of Hormuz,” JINSA Generals & Admirals Program participant GEN (ret.) Joseph Votel, who led U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for U.S. military operations in the Middle East, told us.

President Donald Trump, in a marathon of media engagements on Wednesday at the NATO summit, declared the U.S.-Iran ceasefire “over,” warned that the United States could carry out additional strikes on them that night, but also downplayed the possibility of an escalation, which he’s long threatened.

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JINSA Generals & Admirals Program participant GEN (ret.) Joseph Votel, the former commander of U.S. Central Command, described the current tension as “controlled escalation,” designed to “degrade the regime’s ability to have influence over the Strait of Hormuz,” during an interview with the Washington Examiner.

“This is the most acute flare-up since the signing of the MOU on June 17th, and it highlights the fragility of this agreement,” he added. “I don’t know if it’s in our interests or if it’s the president’s desire to go back to a much broader campaign, like you saw back at the beginning of this, in late February, early March. I don’t know that that will get us where we need to get, but I think we have to get back to some type of political process here, negotiation process that begins to address these issues, and I think it’s clear that what we had in the MOU was not sufficient to move this forward in a meaningful way.”

Ever since Hamas launched its unprecedented cross-border assault on southern Israel nearly three years ago, Israelis have been acutely alert to the prospect of another surprise incursion along its borders.

In the immediate aftermath of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack, attention turned to Hezbollah on the northern border, but recent comments have now raised fears that the most potent threat may actually be a more distant and possibly underestimated adversary: the Houthis in Yemen.

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Jonathan Ruhe, Fellow for American Strategy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said he was “surprised” at Zini’s reported warning.

While Ruhe did not doubt the Houthis’ intent to harm Israel, he questioned the group’s military capabilities to launch such an attack, noting that “they don’t really have any expeditionary capabilities.”

Still, he emphasized, “It’s important for everyone to keep in mind that things that seem fantastical once upon a time have all become real in the past couple years — in a post-October 7 world, anything is possible.”

Amichai Chikli, Israeli minister for diaspora affairs and combating antisemitism, leaves little doubt about what he thinks of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

“Greetings to the patron of Hamas and ISIS, the dictator who jails every critical journalist, the man behind the barbaric rapes and massacres of Kurdish, Druze and Alawite minorities, the megalomaniac who has lost his mind, a grotesque hybrid of Hitler and Sinwar,” the Israeli politician wrote on Monday.

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JINSA Vice President for Policy Blaise Misztal told JNS that despite its membership in the transatlantic alliance, Turkey should not be considered one of those close partners.

“Turkey is a NATO member in name only,” Misztal said.

He pointed to the country’s record of trying to block Sweden and Finland from joining the alliance and Erdoğan’s purge of the Turkish officer corps after the 2016 coup attempt.

“The idea that Turkey somehow naturally fits into NATO and that it is a member of NATO in good standing is very much open for dispute on the evidence over the past decade,” Misztal told JNS.

Misztal said that he would not describe Turkey as a “true enemy” of Israel, but the Israeli perception of Turkey is driven by how Jerusalem’s view of threats changed after Oct. 7 and concern over Turkey’s role in Syria under Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa.

“The lesson that Israel painfully learned on Oct. 7 is that it can no longer watch major military capabilities amass on its borders,” Misztal said. “The way the Israelis put this is they have to focus on capabilities, not intents, and so they see Turkey both significantly helping arm and train the new Syrian military, turning that into a more capable fighting force and seeking to have its own military in place in Syria.”

“From Israel’s new doctrine of not wanting to have a buildup of military capabilities on or near its borders, that looks problematic—especially given how big Turkey’s military is,” he added. “That is a fundamental problem.”

A US-Iran memorandum of understanding has left Gulf Arab states in an uncertain “new normal”, forcing them to support diplomatic talks that could give Tehran major leverage over the Strait of Hormuz.

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“What you want to do is you want to spread out that necklace of bases far to the west, where you make it harder for the Iranians to see you, you make it harder for the Iranians to range you,” Kenneth McKenzie, retired general and a former US Central Command chief, told a virtual conference hosted on Monday by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America.

The United States is reportedly exploring the possibility of relocating some of its bases in the Middle East to Israel. The U.S.-Israel war against Iran and its aftermath may see Israel living up more than ever to its reputation, which it embraced and promoted for decades, as the equivalent of an unsinkable American aircraft carrier in that strategic region.

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Ahead of the most recent U.S.-Israel war, the U.S. Air Force deployed fifth-generation F-22 Raptor stealth fighters to Israel’s Ovda Air Base, marking the first-ever deployment of U.S. combat aircraft to Israel. The U.S.-based JINSA think-tank hailed the move, recalling Israel’s reputation as “the largest aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk” before positing that: “Deploying F-22s to Ovda now gives the United States a third aircraft carrier in the region to confront Iran.”