Israel believes Iran war could last months, testing U.S. resolve

NEW YORK – US and Israeli officials have privately cast doubt on the Trump administration’s predictions that the war with Iran could end within weeks, warning instead that a months-long campaign could be needed to destroy the country’s ballistic missile capabilities and install a pliant government, multiple sources told The Times.

The possibility of extended conflict creates political risks and uncertainties for President Trump, whose penchant for dramatic, short-term military operations has suddenly given way to a full-scale attack on the Islamic Republic, shocking the MAGA base that has supported calls to end wars in the Middle East for good for years.

An Israeli official told The Times that the war “could certainly be longer” than the four-week period Trump has repeatedly suggested to reporters, despite internal guidance from Israeli officials to adhere to the time frame outlined by the US President.

A U.S. official said that in private conversations, senior administration officials assumed the campaign would require a longer road because remnants of the Iranian government chose to resist rather than acquiesce to Washington.

Prolonged war was always a possibility. Trump was presented with US intelligence assessments that laid out the potential conflict, highlighting how unpredictable the consequences of an attack would be; an analysis that the intelligence community believes was borne out on the ground in the chaotic early days of the conflict.

A longer conflict could create diplomatic space between Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has advocated overthrowing the Islamic Republic for more than 30 years.

The Israeli leader managed to persuade Trump to take military action in Iran that American presidents have rejected for decades, from bombing its nuclear facilities to assassinating leaders including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the opening attack over the weekend.

The goal of regime change is disappearing

But just days after the war began, White House officials have all but stopped talking about a democratic spring that could sideline the Iranian government.

The four US objectives for the mission no longer require changing the regime itself. Netanyahu’s government is nevertheless eager to replace the government, and the country’s longest-serving prime minister sees the current war as the best opportunity to do so, an official said.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Trump denied reports that the Israelis persuaded him to launch the attack.

“No, I may have pushed them,” Trump said. “The way the negotiations were going, I think they were going to attack first, and I didn’t want that to happen. I mean, I could have forced Israel’s hand, but Israel was ready, we were ready, and we made a very, very strong impact because almost everything was knocked out.”

In a series of interviews this week, Trump said he was given projections for a four- or five-week war, but said he was prepared for longer if necessary.

Former Pentagon official Michael Rubin, an Iran expert at the American Enterprise Institute, said it would be a strategic mistake for the Trump administration to stipulate a deadline at the beginning of the conflict because it would essentially give Iran’s remaining leadership an end date to wait out the war.

“Successive presidents have shown that America has strategic attention deficit disorder,” Rubin said. “If this is the case in Iraq and Afghanistan, this is especially true under Trump. In Gaza, he imposed a ceasefire that allowed Hamas to survive and fight another day; they still have not disarmed.”

The duration of the war will depend in part on Iran’s ability to resist and defend its remaining capabilities; It will also depend on the president’s willingness to accept an outcome that would leave the Islamic Republic in place.

That decision has yet to be made by Trump, who has vacillated between calls for a democratic uprising across Iran and U.S. military options to support resistance groups inside the country, as opposed to a shorter campaign that crippled Iran’s political leadership and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“I could go on for a long time and take over the whole thing, or I could finish it in two or three days and tell the Iranians, ‘I’ll see you again in a few years if you start rebuilding,'” Trump told Axios.

Another source familiar with the operation said one of Israel’s primary goals is to effectively eliminate the country’s ballistic missile program, and progress on that front is ahead of schedule. “Things are going very well right now,” the source added. “Great pace.”

An Israeli military source told The Times that the stated goal of the mission was to significantly reduce, but not necessarily destroy, Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities; The source said this goal could be achieved within Trump’s preferred time frame.

“Israel was very pleased with Trump’s order” [June 2025] Once the 12-day war is over, it’s over,” said Patrick Clawson, director of the Iran program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who said he expects the current war “will take time” to comprehensively degrade Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities, after a series of missions against Israel’s missile program in 2024 failed to set them back for more than a few months.

“Some Israelis think that Iranian production has been fully restored to what it was before the latest attacks,” Clawson said. “So a truly comprehensive attack on Iranian missiles is an important Israeli goal.”

Maduro model

But no one within the Islamic Republic system has so far emerged to take on a Trump-appealing role, such as the way Delcy Rodríguez stepped in as Venezuela’s acting president after U.S. forces captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro in a daring night raid in January.

Since then, the Stars and Stripes have flown alongside the Venezuelan tricolor at government buildings in Caracas, where senior Trump administration officials have been welcomed to discuss lucrative opportunities in Venezuela’s oil industry.

Trump is now seeking an Iranian counterpart for Rodríguez, he said Tuesday, stating that he is willing to keep the Islamic Republic in place even as it encourages its citizens to revolt against the government.

“Most of the people in our minds are dead,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “We had in mind some people from the dead group. Now we have another group. They may be dead too. Very soon we won’t know anyone.”

“So Venezuela was incredible because we carried out the attack and kept the government completely intact,” he added.

Dennis Ross, a diplomat with experience on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict who served in the George H.W. Bush, Clinton and Obama administrations, expressed doubt that Trump would be willing to sustain a months-long campaign regardless of Israel’s ambitious goals.

“I believe that President Trump has not defined clear objectives so that he can decide to end the war at a time of his choosing and at that point declare our purpose and declare that we have accomplished what we set out to do,” Ross said, noting that finding a figurehead in Iran, as in Venezuela, is always a “long shot.”

“He could unilaterally declare that we have made the regime pay for killing its citizens and weakened Iran enough that it is no longer a threat to its neighbors,” Ross added. “Then Iran can say that if they continue the war, we will hit them even harder.”