Natalie Kitroa

And what do they tell us about where all this is headed?

They run those war games, you're saying.

Right.

And at the same time, it sounds like Trump is not concerned with the potential reaction within his own base to another foreign war.

It is possible, right, that he's not just not worried about potential political downsides, but that he sees political upsides here.

I mean, if you look at the possible best-case outcome here—and I know we are far off from that—but just as a way of understanding the best version of a rationale for what we're seeing—

A world in which Iran's ability to attack its neighbors and repress its people is significantly degraded.

A world in which Iran becomes potentially less openly hostile to the U.S., less of a chaos agent in the Middle East.

That could be a world-changing development, right?

OK, I want to ask.

We've obviously seen that while there have been many factors that brought Trump to this decision of going to war, Netanyahu has been a driving force.

He has constantly been in Trump's ear pushing for this, and he has followed through on his promise to be a full partner in it.

And we've seen that over the last several days.

Now that we are five days into this war, what do we know about how aligned Netanyahu and Trump are right now?

What you're saying is that the two sides, U.S.

and Israel, they may begin to diverge in terms of how long each side wants to stay in this conflict, with potentially Trump favoring getting out of it early and Israel pushing for a longer engagement.

And I feel as though part of the issue for Israel, but also for the rest of us, is that Trump hasn't really laid out a coherent vision for how this ends.

He has called and talked to several different reporters, media outlets on this question recently, including our Times colleague, Zolan Kano Youngs, and he's been unclear about what he sees as the best resolution for this conflict and how to get there.

He has said he wants the Iranians to rise up and take over their government, but he's also suggested that he's open to negotiating with whatever's left of the Iranian regime.

Those are conflicting and confusing messages about what the U.S.