After the US and Israel launched a surprise attack against Iran, billboards sprang up across Tel Aviv with the Hebrew tagline: “Together we will win.”
The phrase has been a ubiquitous motto for wartime unity since Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack on Israel triggered a wave of regional conflict. But the new billboards, adorned with both the Israeli and US flags, signalled something different: a rare joint military campaign that has little precedent.
Israel since its independence in 1948 has almost exclusively fought alone. The sole exception was during the Suez Crisis, waged seven decades ago with Britain and France, two fading colonial powers forced into ignominious retreat.
In the years after Suez, the axiom for Israel was: “We will defend ourselves, by ourselves.”
The US alliance did become the bedrock of Israel’s security, providing tens of billions of dollars in weapons and arms, diplomatic cover and intelligence sharing. But an offensive war waged by both militaries as equals is, according to several current and former US and Israeli officials, without parallel.
The speed and ferocity of the aerial campaign has required extraordinary levels of co-ordination — from the initial war plan that was put together to the thousands of phone conversations every day between the two militaries. “It’s a mind meld,” said Dan Shapiro, a former senior US defence official and ambassador to Israel.
US defence secretary Pete Hegseth contrasted Israel as a “capable” partner with many traditional allies “who wring their hands and clutch their pearls”.
Former US officials look back to the second world war for a comparable example of American forces fighting alongside another military in such a truly combined manner.
Whether in the various Gulf wars, Afghanistan or the campaign to defeat the Islamic State, “the US usually convenes a broad coalition, designs the concept of operations, brings the vast majority of capabilities to bear . . . and then works to find a role for its partners,” said Dana Stroul, a former senior US defence official now at the Washington Institute think-tank.
“This [war] is different — it’s two partners on equal footing, both bringing intelligence, certain exquisite capabilities, and dividing the targets amongst themselves,” she added.
Several current and former US and Israeli security officials said the foundation for the current offensive can be traced back to Donald Trump’s first term as president and the Abraham Accords normalisation deals brokered in 2020 between Israel and four Arab states.
A year later Israel transitioned to US Central Command, the military body responsible for operations across the Middle East, from the European combat command.
“This was a crucial component,” said Oded Basyuk, a retired Israeli general who led IDF operations during last year’s 12-day war against Iran, which the US briefly joined to strike Tehran’s nuclear facilities. “This [current campaign] couldn’t have happened without us joining… Centcom.”
Shapiro said US-led training exercises helped establish a region-wide air defence architecture that proved essential through two major exchanges of fire between Israel and Iran in 2024.
The US bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear sites last June was made possible only after the IDF suppressed Iran’s air defences, he added, a role Washington’s war planners had never envisaged for another military.
Billboards in Tel Aviv adorned with both the Israeli and US flags Billboards in Tel Aviv adorned with both the Israeli and US flags signal a rare joint military campaign that has little precedent.
Israel’s top military officer Eyal Zamir and other Israeli security chiefs flew to the US for consultations with the Trump administration in the weeks before the strikes on Tehran last month.
“We understood from the political level that we were heading into another confrontation, and we went to the Pentagon to plan,” said one senior Israeli military official.
The US military streamed additional forces and materiel — multiple US carrier strike groups, air defence batteries, armaments and logistics — to the region. Likely for the first time ever, dozens of American air refuelling aircraft and F-22 fighter jets arrived on Israeli soil.
The IDF has focused on western and central Iran, including regime targets in Tehran, while the US military has focused on Iran’s southern flank and navy. Multiple officials described it as a “division of labour” that reflected their respective capabilities.
Several Israeli military officials highlighted the sheer capacity of the US military, especially the huge US air tanker fleet that has been vital in refuelling Israeli fighter jets on bombing raids.
The first 48 hours of the war, said one former senior US defence official, saw Israeli fighter jets clear much of Iran’s remaining aerial defences. The US did much of its initial targeting via “stand off” platforms at sea, such as destroyers and submarines.
Former US officials and analysts said it was likely the killing of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was deliberately undertaken by Israeli jets because of legal sensitivities in Washington over assassinating a foreign head of state.
“Each side has its own unique capabilities, but that doesn’t mean the other couldn’t. It just suits each side’s strengths,” said Shapiro, who is now at the Atlantic Council think-tank.
The close co-ordination, across the entire chain of command, has involved some 4,000 to 5,000 calls per day — from the chief of staff level down to the hundreds of pilots in the air at any given time, according to the senior Israeli military official.
IDF officers say they are mostly “fighting this war in English”, given the intensity of contact with Americans. Officers are also embedded in each other’s respective combat cells in both Israel and the US, including Centcom headquarters in Tampa.
Such co-operation has not yet halted Iran’s retaliation, which has wreaked havoc across the Gulf, shut the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important shipping lanes, and upended energy markets.
But despite the setbacks, senior Israeli and US officers remain convinced they are winning the war. Their one mantra, according to the senior Israeli military officer, is: “Stick to the plan.”
Yet it remains unclear whether Trump will give them enough time to see through Israel’s most ambitious objectives given the economic price that Americans may have to pay.
Israeli officials had previously indicated that “several long weeks” of fighting were required for a planned multiphase campaign. From the start, they privately raised concerns about Trump’s commitment, and the Islamic regime has vowed to keep fighting in what has become a war of attrition.
Trump and his senior aides have stopped touting regime change in Tehran as part of the goals of the war. In contrast, Israeli officials still maintain that a core objective is to “set the conditions” for toppling the Islamic republic. Israeli defence minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday that the “operation will continue without any time limit, for as long as it takes”.
Cracks also appeared at the weekend when pro-Israel US figures, including senator Lindsey Graham, criticised the recent IDF strikes on fuel depots in Tehran that turned Iran’s skies charcoal black.
“Please be cautious about what targets you select,” Graham wrote on social media platform X. “Our goal is to liberate the Iranian people.”
Even Hegseth has hinted at some divergence in goals. “Where they have different objectives, they’ve pursued them. Ultimately, we’ve stayed focused on ours,” he said on Tuesday.
US public opinion is deeply sceptical of the current war, and support for Israel had already fallen, among both Democrats and Republicans, even before it was launched — a backlash to Israel’s devastating offensive in Gaza.
The bigger question for Israel is whether this deepening military partnership can endure as these wars open ever bigger political cracks in its relationship with the American public.
“The militaries are operating as if everything is fine,” said Stroul, the former US defence official. “While everyone else — fairly or unfairly — is asking the question: is this a partner for stability in the Middle East?”
Additional reporting by James Politi in Washington
Cartography and satellite image visualisation by Steven Bernard and illustration by Ian Bott
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