The United States’s efforts to permanently neutralize the Iranian threat are getting tangled by disagreements between allies who, theoretically, should be cheering on the regime’s collapse.

President Donald Trump has ordered a second aircraft carrier to join military patrols in the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. envoys are meeting with increasingly desperate Iranian counterparts with the goal of negotiating an end to the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. Yet in ally Saudi Arabia, more ink is being spilled over the United Arab Emirates and Israel.