Washington, DC – The administration of US President Donald Trump has offered a carousel of contradicting final objectives for the US-Israeli war with Iran: destroying its regional military might; decapitating its leadership; fomenting dissent; eliminating its nuclear programme.But beyond the rhetoric, military targets over three weeks of fighting have painted a picture of how the US and Israel are prioritising those goals, while raising further questions about Washington’s final endgame in the conflict and its potentially diverging ambitions from Israel.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listIn some ways, the targets have reflected the Trump administration’s stated multipronged war aims, offering several avenues for Trump to claim some level of success and attempt to disengage.But how the US and Israel have so far prosecuted the war has also removed many off-ramps in the grinding conflict, opening the door to prolonged escalation, analysts told Al Jazeera.“President Trump has outlined a wide array of goals,” Jon Alterman, a global security and geostrategy analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told Al Jazeera.“This will give him the option of stopping the assault whenever he wants,” he said, “but what he won’t be able to do is control what the Iranians do in response.”“A halt in American bombing alone will neither stop the war nor necessarily open the Strait [of Hormuz], let alone lead to security in the Gulf.”From ‘shock and awe’ to gasfield strikesThree weeks …
