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Trump seeks exit from Iran conflict as Netanyahu pushes to continue; Turkey's quiet diplomatic efforts already credited with neutralizing Kurdish militant dimension
A deepening fracture between Washington and Tel Aviv over the course of the ongoing war in Iran is becoming impossible to conceal, with U.S. President Donald Trump actively seeking an off-ramp from the conflict while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists on pressing forward toward regime change. Amid the widening rift, Turkey's behind-the-scenes diplomatic maneuvering has already scored a notable success — and Ankara may be positioning itself as a key broker if negotiations materialize.
Trump Begins Distancing Himself
The first public sign of Trump's discomfort came during a rambling address on March 9, in which the president appeared to distribute responsibility for the decision to strike Iran among his closest advisers — a remarkable departure for a leader who has long cultivated the image of a decisive commander-in-chief.
"The situation was approaching a critical point very quickly," Trump said. "Based on what Steve, Jared, Pete, and the others told me — Marco was involved too — I thought they were going to attack us. If we hadn't acted at that moment, I believe they were planning to strike us."
The names he cited — Middle East Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio — amounted to a rare public effort to share, or even deflect, accountability for a war that began with U.S. strikes on Iran on February 28, according to veteran Turkish political analyst Murat Yetkin, writing in his widely read Yetkin Report column.
"Trump was essentially trying to share the 'commander-in-chief' responsibility," Yetkin wrote. "That alone tells you he already sees this war as a political liability."
The Minab School Strike
The political toxicity of the conflict was laid bare when a reporter pressed Trump on the bombing of a girls' school in the Iranian city of Minab on the first day of strikes, in which at least 168 people — the vast majority of them children — were killed by a Tomahawk cruise missile.
Trump's response raised eyebrows. "Tomahawk — one of the most powerful weapons around — is used by others, sold and used. Iran has some Tomahawk too," he claimed, adding that the matter was "being investigated."
Yetkin noted that Trump's statements were misleading on multiple fronts. Iran does not possess Tomahawk missiles. The only four countries to which the United States has sold Tomahawks — the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, and the Netherlands — had no Tomahawk-capable vessels in the region at the time. Meanwhile, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) had published footage on its own website showing American warships launching Tomahawks at Iranian targets.
The school strike is understood to have caused significant consternation even within the White House and is believed to be one of the catalysts behind Trump's search for an exit strategy.
Turkey's Diplomatic Win: The Kurdish File
Among the most significant revelations in Yetkin's analysis is the role Turkey played in neutralizing what could have been one of the war's most dangerous and destabilizing dimensions — the potential use of Kurdish armed groups as ground proxies against Tehran.
According to Yetkin, Israel had provided Washington with "greatly exaggerated" intelligence about the capabilities and readiness of Kurdish armed factions in Iran, presenting them as a viable ground force that could help topple the Islamic Republic. The strategy, pushed heavily by Netanyahu and Israeli officials, was designed to draw the United States deeper into the conflict, ideally into a ground war.
"Through both open and covert diplomatic initiatives by Turkey, the Kurdish file in the Iran war was closed before it could even be opened," Yetkin wrote.
The detail is striking. For Ankara, which has long viewed any empowerment of Kurdish militant organizations — whether the PKK in Turkey and Iraq, the YPG/PYJ in Syria, or PJAK in Iran — as an existential security threat, the prospect of a U.S.-Israeli project to arm and mobilize Kurdish groups on Iran's western frontier would have represented a nightmare scenario. That Turkey managed to prevent this through diplomatic channels, apparently without public confrontation, suggests a level of strategic influence in the crisis that has gone largely unnoticed in Western media.
Turkish officials have not publicly commented on the specifics of these efforts, but diplomatic sources in Ankara have indicated that Turkey communicated its red lines to both Washington and Tehran through multiple channels in the early days of the conflict. The message was clear: any attempt to weaponize Kurdish groups in a regional war would meet fierce Turkish opposition and risk a dramatic escalation involving NATO's second-largest military.
The U.S.-Israel Split
The divergence between Washington and Tel Aviv was brought into sharp relief on March 10 by The Wall Street Journal, which reported that the United States wants to end the war but Israel does not.
Yetkin's analysis frames the split in stark terms: Trump has come to recognize that air strikes alone cannot topple the Iranian regime. He is searching for a negotiated settlement with an Iranian leadership he can reach agreement with on key issues, allowing him to present a "victory" ahead of the November 2026 U.S. midterm elections, where he fears Republicans could lose control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Netanyahu wants the war prosecuted to its ultimate conclusion — the dismantlement of the Islamic Republic and its replacement with a pro-Israel government reminiscent of the Shah's regime. Yetkin notes that Netanyahu appears blind to the global surge in anti-Zionist sentiment fueled by the Gaza catastrophe and now compounded by the Iran war.
Israel is reportedly threatening to continue the war in Iran even if the United States withdraws, a move designed to keep the White House under pressure from the powerful Israel lobby and Christian Zionist churches in the United States. However, Yetkin notes that Israeli officials are making this threat while knowing full well that Israel could sustain independent operations for no more than approximately three weeks without U.S. and Western European military support.
Intelligence Failures and Misleading Information
A critical factor behind Trump's reassessment has been the growing realization in Washington that Israeli officials provided misleading intelligence to draw the United States into the war.
Yetkin reports that prior to the February 28 strikes, both the Pentagon and the CIA had warned of "high risk." Nevertheless, Trump yielded to Netanyahu's implicit threat that Israel would strike Iran unilaterally if the U.S. did not act, calculating that Washington would be forced to come to Israel's defense afterward.
Following the outbreak of hostilities, a National Intelligence Council report — subsequently published by The Washington Post — concluded that regime change in Iran through external military intervention was not achievable.
The current Iranian leader, Mojtaba Khamenei — already known as a hardliner before the war — lost his father, mother, wife, son, sister, and nephews in U.S.-Israeli strikes. Trump has publicly stated he will not deal with Khamenei, but as Yetkin observes, "even if they kill him too, someone else will take his place." Any exit from the war, the analyst argues, will require direct engagement with the Iranian leadership, free from Netanyahu's influence.
The Russia Factor and Turkey's Potential Role
Yetkin also flagged the importance of Trump's phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 9, suggesting that Moscow — which maintains significant influence in Tehran — could play a role in facilitating an exit.
For Turkey, the evolving situation presents both risks and opportunities. Ankara maintains diplomatic relations with Tehran and has kept communication channels open throughout the crisis. Turkey is also a NATO ally with direct leverage over the United States, as demonstrated by its successful effort to shut down the Kurdish proxy dimension of the conflict.
Should formal or back-channel negotiations between Washington and Tehran materialize, Turkey — alongside Russia — could emerge as a critical intermediary. Ankara's geographic position, its relationships with all major parties, and its demonstrated ability to shape the conflict's parameters without direct military involvement give it a unique diplomatic standing.
As one Ankara-based foreign policy analyst, speaking on condition of anonymity, put it: "Turkey has already changed the shape of this war without firing a single shot. If there is going to be a diplomatic solution, it will be very difficult to achieve without Ankara at the table."
What Comes Next
The coming weeks are likely to prove decisive. Trump's political clock is ticking toward November, and every day the war continues without a clear victory narrative, the midterm calculus worsens for Republicans. Netanyahu, meanwhile, faces his own domestic political calculations ahead of Israeli elections in October 2026.
The rift between the two allies — papered over for decades by shared strategic interests and domestic political dynamics in the United States — is now more visible than at any point in modern memory. How it resolves will shape not only the future of the Iran war but the broader architecture of Middle Eastern security.
For Turkey, the imperative is clear: stay engaged, protect core interests — above all preventing Kurdish militant empowerment — and be ready to step into a mediating role if and when the moment arrives.