Axios reported Sunday that Israel's strikes on 30 Iranian fuel depots went far beyond what the US expected when Israel notified Washington in advance — the first documented disagreement between the allies since Operation Epic Fury began on 28 February. US military officials were "surprised by how wide-ranging the attacks were."
Two concerns drove the American reaction. First, that striking civilian Energy infrastructure could rally Iranian society behind its government rather than fracturing it — precisely the opposite of the popular uprising that Netanyahu's regime change objective requires. The acid rain falling on nine million Tehranis is the kind of shared hardship that binds populations to wartime leadership, a pattern Washington's own analysts have documented from Hanoi to Baghdad. Second, the strikes directly worsened the oil price shock The Administration has spent nine days trying to contain. Brent Crude had already posted the largest weekly gain in the history of the contract before Sunday's 26.1% single-day spike above $116. Every barrel of Iranian fuel burning in a depot fire tightens a global supply that is simultaneously squeezed by Kuwait's force majeure, Iraq's production shutdown, and the collapse of war-risk insurance coverage.
The rift exposes a divergence in war aims that was structural from Day 1 but is only now surfacing through named reporting. Defence Secretary Hegseth has explicitly stated that dismantling Iran's security apparatus is "not Regime change." The US objective, as articulated across nine days of Pentagon briefings, is to destroy Iran's military capability and force a negotiated outcome. Netanyahu declared Regime change an explicit Israeli war aim on Saturday, telling Iranians directly that Israel has "an organised plan with many surprises to destabilise the regime." These two objectives require opposite targeting logic. Degrading military capability means hitting military targets — missile launchers, naval vessels, command infrastructure. Engineering Regime change through internal collapse means making daily life unbearable — fuel depots, refineries, power grids. Israel's fuel depot campaign follows the second logic.
How Washington responds will determine whether this remains a disagreement or becomes a constraint. The US has the leverage: Israel depends on American intelligence sharing, aerial refuelling, and munitions supply. But exercising that leverage publicly, during a war The Administration has rated "12-15 on a ten-point scale", would require a political confrontation The White House has shown no appetite for. The more likely outcome is private discomfort and continued acquiescence — which means the targeting logic defaults to Israel's.
