As the Iran war grinds on with no clear endgame, a private phone call between US Vice-President JD Vance and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has blown the lid off quiet but consequential differences between the two allies.
Far from routine diplomacy, the exchange reflects growing unease in Washington over how the conflict was initially framed and how realistic the expectations were. It also highlights a deeper question now shaping the war effort: whether early assumptions about Iran’s internal fragility and the prospects of regime change were misjudged.
According to sources cited by Axios, Vance directly challenged Netanyahu’s pre-war projections, particularly around the likelihood of internal upheaval in Iran.
“Before the war, Bibi really sold it to the president as being easy, as regime change being a lot likelier than it was,” a US source told Axios. “And the VP was clear-eyed about some of those statements.”
Hellbound and Down 