The United States and Israel share a broad strategic objective of weakening Iran's regional power and, ultimately, encouraging regime change in Tehran, but their immediate priorities differ, Sun Taiyi, associate professor of political science at Christopher Newport University in the United States, said in an interview with CGTN.  

The Trump administration has focused primarily on preventing Iran from acquiring or advancing nuclear weapons capabilities. Israel, by contrast, views Iran's expanding ballistic missile arsenal and precision-strike capacity as a more immediate existential threat, Sun said.

In addition, Washington has a wider geopolitical calculus: by striking Iran, the U.S. also aims to disrupt Tehran's military and technological cooperation with actors such as Russia and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Sun added.

In this sense, the Iran file is interconnected with multiple global security theaters – pressure on one front is intended to reverberate across others, Sun said.