This month, U.S. President Donald Trump rejected an Iranian peace proposal that would have seen the removal of Iran’s highly-enriched uranium and its nuclear program put on hold. Most importantly, the proposal would have reopened the Strait of Hormuz and ended a war that so far has cost the United States at least $29 billion and resulted in thousands of deaths.
In turning down such a deal, Washington passed up an opportunity to back away from this conflict and make good on its 2026 National Security Strategy commitment to subordinate the Middle East to higher priority regions. But recent reporting suggests Iran is still open to making a similar deal. Washington should take that deal and use it as an off-ramp to bring its conduct in line with its stated strategy, which rightly outlines the Middle East as a fourth order priority behind the Western Hemisphere, Asia, and Europe.
Ending the War in Iran
From the outset, the U.S. should relinquish its maximalist demands in negotiations with Iran. Trump has insisted that Iran hand over its entire stockpile of enriched uranium – terms that go beyond even what the JCPOA required. Achieving that without Iranian cooperation would require ground troops to physically extract nuclear material from heavily damaged underground facilities at Isfahan, which experts say would be “the most complex uranium removal operation in history.” That assessment assumes Iran agrees to the removal. In the context of a ground invasion, under heavy Iranian fire, it would be something else entirely.
The United States has already expended far too many resources on war with Iran. Analysts estimate that it will take five years for the United States to replenish the over 500 Tomahawk missiles it used within the first 16 days of the war. Moreover, replenishing that supply requires materials largely controlled by China, whose analysts view the war as diminishing U.S. global dominance and potentially revealing an inability to defend Taiwan.
Iran has already offered to put its nuclear program on a long-term hold and to transfer its highly-enriched uranium to Russia. This is an offer that Washington should work with.
The U.S.-Israel Relationship
An Iran deal alone will not realign U.S. Middle East policy with the National Security Strategy. That realignment also requires a harder conversation about the U.S.-Israel relationship. The U.S. and Israel share similar interests, but not identical ones. The United States wants a stable region it can disengage from. Israel wants to transform the region, even if that means decapitating and destabilizing its enemies. If the relationship does not become more transactional, those diverging objectives threaten to pull Washington deeper into conflicts it would be better off avoiding.
The risks of unconditional support for Israel are made evident in the current ongoing war, where it has assassinated potential interlocutors including Ali Larijani, who could have provided the Trump administration with the earlier off-ramp it so desperately needed. It has also gone against the wishes of Washington by destroying Iranian energy targets, adding additional pressure to rising gas prices and eliminating infrastructure necessary for Iran to eventually rebuild its postwar economy.
The United States has supplied Israel with $300 billion in assistance since its founding, and $18 billion from 2024-2025 alone. In recent years, it has seen little to no return from this investment. The Trump administration has rightly aimed to take a more transactional approach to alliances, but thus far, Israel has been a notable exception. Washington could remedy this by making assistance conditional on Israeli behavior that aligns with U.S. interests. Withholding aid from IDF units involved in settlement construction, for example, or reducing military assistance commensurate with Israeli support for settlements, would apply the same transactional logic Trump has demanded of NATO allies.
In the past, such actions have been politically impossible for U.S. presidents. Domestic political opinion is now shifting, providing the opportunity to reassess the relationship. According to Gallup polls, in 2020, 20 percent of Americans said their sympathies were primarily with Palestinians and 60 percent with Israelis. Fast forward to 2026, 41 percent of Americans say they sympathize primarily with the Palestinians and 36 percent with Israel. Though support for Israel remains popular, today’s Americans are less dogmatic in their support than they were during prior administrations. When it comes to Israel, Trump is uniquely positioned to renegotiate a better deal for Americans, recognizing that U.S. and Israeli interests continue to diverge.
Trump’s National Defense Strategy makes exactly this distinction, stating that it “does not conflate Americans’ interests with those of the rest of the world—that a threat to a person halfway around the world is the same as to an American.” Applying this framework to the Middle East, including to Israel, would doubtlessly benefit the millions of American taxpayers who contribute a baseline of $3.8 billion per year towards an Israeli defense policy that, in its current form, does not benefit them.
Toward a Different Approach
The Trump administration's own National Security Strategy offers a clear-eyed vision for the Middle East: not endless military entanglement, but “partnership, friendship, and investment.” The days in which the Middle East dominated American foreign policy, it declares, are “thankfully over.” The region is to become a source of economic opportunity, not a drain on American resources and strategic focus.
Both the war with Iran and the relationship with Israel that has repeatedly deepened U.S. entanglement in it represent a direct contradiction of that vision. The United States is following a strategy in the region that has not yet caught up with the much more sensible documents that are supposed to govern it.
Scarlett Kennedy is a national security analyst based in Washington, D.C., with a background in U.S. foreign policy, strategy, and emerging threats
