The war on Iran is not the war on Gaza. This time the reins are in America's hands, and Netanyahu will not be able to drag it out to serve the needs of his trial and his election campaign. But the difference runs deeper than that: Trump wants to topple the ayatollahs; Netanyahu wants "victory photos" to fuel a reverse revolution — the Judaization of Israel. The question is whether these two projects are destined to collide.

President Trump confirmed this week what many had suspected: Bibi did not want this war and rushed to the White House on his own to talk Trump out of launching it. After Israeli sources whispered to the media that it was Netanyahu who pushed Trump into the war, the American president made clear that the opposite was true.

What is the difference between Trump and Bibi? While Trump seeks regime change in Iran, Bibi seeks regime change in Israel. Trump wants to remove the ayatollahs out of superpower geostrategic considerations; Bibi wants to collect "victory photos" for the elections, and to link the war to the campaign in order to overwrite the narrative of the October 7 massacre with a narrative of national resurrection.

From Trump's scattered remarks, it is possible to discern that he does not want to reach a deal with the current regime — and that, too, now appears impossible, since the Revolutionary Guards have seized the political reins in order to prevent any agreement with the United States. Reports that Khamenei's son, Mojtaba Khamenei, has been chosen as successor are consistent with this assessment, as he is a Revolutionary Guards man through and through. In other words, from Trump's perspective, the address in Iran will have to come from an opposition that does not yet exist — or at least one we do not yet know about.

Israel, too, wants to see the Iranian regime fall, but here again there is a difference with the United States. Bibi is in a hurry. He needs campaign footage, and has twice issued desperate appeals to the Iranian people — take to the streets! Topple the regime! The United States, by contrast, understands that this is a long-term project, and reports suggest it is already working toward that end — whether through the Kurds in Iraq, or through the active opposition movement Mujahedin-e Khalq and its leader, Maryam Rajavi.

In contrast to America's desire for regime change in Iran that would free it from religious tyranny, the trend in Israel is the opposite — to turn Israel into a religious tyranny. To understand this, we might begin, of all places, with the case of Israel's Arab citizens. What do Lucy Aharish, Justice Kabub, and the Tarabin tribe in the Negev have in common? All of them embody the integration of Arab citizens into the Israeli state. Why would this government object to Arab Israelis integrating into the state? To understand that, I must return to a personal experience from many years ago, when I was sent by the old Kol Yisrael radio to cover a day of Knesset debates.

In the speaker's chair sat Dov Shilansky of the Likud. On the podium, MK Walid Sadiq of Mapam rose and opened his remarks with the declaration: "We, the Israelis." Shilansky intervened and said: There are no Israelis — there are Jews and Arabs. The embarrassed MK nodded and continued his speech.

Lucy Aharish, Justice Kabub, and the Tarabin tribe enlisting in the IDF all represent the Israelization of the state — a process that "the Jews" want to halt.

When I visited the Israeli pavilion at the Dubai Expo, the person who represented Israel with great honor was Lucy Aharish. Imagine what would have happened to Israel's reputation if MK Talia Gotlib had been asked to do the job.

The targeting of precisely those Arabs who are already part of the Israeli fabric illustrates what bothers this government — they embody the transformation of Israel from a Jewish state into an Israeli state. Objectively, there need be no conflict between Israel and Judah; after all, the tribe of Judah was part of Israel, and "Jewish" and "Israeli" could coexist peacefully. But it was the Likud itself — and Bibi in particular — that initiated the distinction between Judah and Israel. His whisper into the ear of the kabbalist Rabbi Kaduri is still remembered: "They have forgotten what it means to be Jewish." And, of course, his election slogan — "Bibi is good for the Jews."

This also explains why the interior minister at the time, Eli Yishai, who also tried to align with Kahanist lists, initiated the deportation of foreign workers' children from Israel. They were Israelis but not Jews, and they endangered the deep right's DNA project — to cleanse Israel of Israelis who are not Jews.

The Nation-State Law and all the accelerated religious legislation of recent days, together with the intensification of the judicial overhaul, are designed to advance the religious Judaization of the state and to block its "Israelization." And Bibi needs those "victory photos" from the war on Iran to cement the election narrative — Judah versus Israel.

Anyone who thinks the Judaization process will stop with the Arabs should think again. "The Jews" have already initiated a confrontation with Reform Judaism over prayer at the Western Wall — in effect, expelling American Jewry from the fold of Israel. And secular Orthodoxy is also considered EREV RAV — the biblical "mixed multitude" שרenot of the seed of Israel. The current assault on the status of women is bound up with this EREV RAV ideology. Out of respect for the Jewish religion, and so as not to amplify the EREV RAV discourse, I will not detail the words of the rabbi who, regrettably, represents the mainstream of this government's “Judaism.”

It follows that while the war on Iran interests Bibi as a lever for an election campaign that will reshape Israel's character, Trump is interested in America's standing — though he, too, is not free from complications in his own domestic politics.

On this matter, personal friction between Bibi and Trump is likely to arise, and it is worth paying attention to the photograph מלשכת העיתונות הממשלתית:released by the Government Press Office:

What do we see? Bibi holding a "Churchill-style" cigar, before him a large blank sheet — we would have expected a pen, not a cigar — a map of the Middle East, and a book about Churchill titled "Allies at War." The message: he is Churchill, coordinating

the war alongside Trump as an equal among equals.

There is no certainty that this is not a staged photograph, since the "Judaism" books were removed to focus attention on the "Churchill" motif.

Trump did not like it and was quick to respond that it was he who forced the war on Bibi. Accordingly, one should expect that the war will also end when Trump decides — and if Bibi wants to continue for the well-known reasons, Trump will tell him: don't.