U.S. – Israel

Israel, Middle East and Arab World

15 July
With death of Lindsey Graham, Israel loses key backer as its isolation deepens
The senator represented a foreign policy consensus on U.S. support for Israel that has begun to collapse under President Donald Trump.
In recent years, when Sen. Lindsey Graham was not in Washington or back home in South Carolina, he could often be found in Israel.
The hawkish Republican senator, who died Saturday at 71, visited the country at least a dozen times since the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which plunged the region into conflict. Before that, he often visited in the company of the senators Joseph Lieberman and John McCain, who died in 2024 and 2018 respectively.
Even as public opinion on support for Israel grew increasingly divided in the United States, becoming a wedge issue, and as growing factions within his own party called to reassess the alliance, Graham remained one of Israel’s most unwavering advocates to the last. Israelis took notice.

7-8 July
In Israel, Rahm Emanuel Calls for End of Unconditional U.S. Support
The former Chicago mayor, a Democrat exploring a 2028 presidential run, delivered a speech in Tel Aviv that was sharply critical of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Unconditional U.S. support of Israel should end, Mr. Emanuel bluntly warned in a speech at Tel Aviv University on Wednesday, demanding that Israel make major changes if it is to retain U.S. backing at its historic strength.
Above all, he said, Israel will need to allow again for the possibility of Palestinian sovereignty and give up on dreams of annexing all of the West Bank.
He said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government have isolated Israel and led it “into a dead end” and argued that Mr. Netanyahu sees every security problem as a nail and military action as the only hammer. …
Mr. Emanuel’s…overall rethinking of the U.S.-Israel relationship comes after many Democrats have already made a similar turn. A New York Times/Siena poll this spring found that 60 percent of Democratic supporters said they were more sympathetic to Palestinians than Israelis; only 15 percent were more supportive of Israel.
…Mr. Emanuel calls for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel, saying bluntly that Israel is wealthy enough to buy weapons like any other ally. He says that he would use sanctions, much as former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. did, to fight both construction of illegal settlements and violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
The ‘Special Relationship’ With the U.S. Is Gone, and Israel Isn’t Ready for What’s Coming
(Haaretz) This week in Tel Aviv, Israelis will hear directly from presidential hopeful Rahm Emanuel on the future of the U.S.-Israel relationship. Ignoring his message, and the reality behind it, would be a dangerous mistake

30 June
A generational shift is transforming the US-Israel relationship</strong
Kenneth Roth
(The Guardian) The Iran war has accelerated the fraying of ties. An end to unconditional US support would force a reckoning with reality
generational shift is under way in the relationship between the United States and Israel. Tensions were already palpable because of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Benjamin Netanyahu’s role in pushing Donald Trump to join a counterproductive war against Iran was the last straw.
Stopping unconditional US support for Israel would certainly be important for curbing US complicity in Israeli war crimes. It may also be the best thing for Israel if it is to have any hope of avoiding the dangerous dead end of relentless military escalation. And it is a prerequisite for Palestinians to have any prospect of escaping Israel’s endless occupation.

28 June
The Republican Party is starting to turn on Israel
How much of Israel’s lost standing is tied directly to Netanyahu — who’s facing one of the toughest election fights of his career this fall — as opposed to the country itself
(Axios) … More Republicans, especially younger ones, turned on Israel as its military leveled Gaza — and then Netanyahu alienated President Trump and his team as they sought to end the Iran war.
For 15 years, Netanyahu offset collapsing Democratic support by cultivating Republicans. If Republican support is no longer guaranteed, he has a serious problem — and so does Israel.

17 June
Where does Iran deal leave US-Israel relationship as they reach ‘a fork in the road’?
Andrew Roth
Prime minister faces prospect of going it alone against Iran as strategic interests of US and Israel are diverging
(Thr Guardian) It took more than a day after news of Donald Trump’s deal with Iran went public for Benjamin Netanyahu to speak out.
When he finally appeared at a press conference on Monday evening, the Israeli prime minister skirted a cornerstone of his past public appearances: his excellent relationship with the US president.
“There are cases in which President Trump and I do not see eye to eye,” he said when asked about that. “I am responsible for Israel’s security interests, and it needs to be done wisely.”
As to the deal, he told its many critics not to pass judgment yet: “We do not know what the agreement will be.”

14 June
Strikes aimed at Iran strengthen Netanyahu’s position, despite US disapproval
(Al Jazeera) At the moment, these attacks are playing out very well for Benjamin Netanyahu domestically because this is what the Israeli public wants. This is what the opposition had been pointing the finger at Netanyahu for not doing.
In fact, these strikes have enjoyed the support even from opposition figures like Benny Gantz. Without Trump actually taking steps of retribution that would hurt the strategic relationship between the US and Israel, it seems unlikely that Netanyahu is going to walk it back.
A senior security source was speaking to Channel 12 News in Israel, saying that this strike was conducted with Iranian retaliation in mind. If that causes the collapse of the deal, that would be a desired outcome for Israel because the memorandum of understanding was not in Israel’s favour.

Trump to Axios: Netanyahu has “no fucking judgment” but Iran deal still on
(Axios) The president is racing to save a deal that nearly collapsed the moment Israel struck Beirut, leaning on private diplomacy and public messaging to get it signed. Iranian officials haven’t confirmed a deal is expected to be signed today.
State of play: Trump said he was shocked when his advisers called to brief him about the Israeli strike in Beirut, and he fumed at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“It is so bad — I couldn’t believe it. An hour before we are supposed to sign the deal.”
The big picture: Trump claimed the deal with Iran will be good for Israel because it will prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, require the disposal of the nuclear material and allow snap inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Trump received any direct assurance from Tehran that the signing remains on track

6-8 June
Resuming the war would be a short-term political boon for Netanyahu.
(NYT) For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, the resumption of fighting with Iran on Sunday may have shown his supporters, at least momentarily, that he still was capable of standing up to President Trump.
But the halt to the fighting on Monday, after less than 15 hours, left Israel and its embattled leader in a bind and appearing as beholden to Mr. Trump as ever.
Though Trump says that both Israel and Iran are seeking a cease-fire, that’s not entirely clear. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has yet to publicly comment on the escalation with Iran some 18 hours after it began on Sunday night.
The growing Trump-Bibi divide
(Politico) Today’s pause provides a retreat and a reprieve, in which Trump seems to have pushed Netanyahu to get his way. But the attacks were another sign of a growing strategic gulf between allies Israel and the U.S. since they launched the war together a few months ago: Trump continues to drive toward a peace agreement, while Netanyahu seeks expanded war against Israel’s enemies.
Growing tensions between the U.S. and Israel over Lebanon have given Iran an opening and strained what began as a closely coordinated war between the two allies, WSJ’s Anat Peled and colleagues report. The divide stems from Trump’s and Netanyahu’s contradictory domestic political pressures: While the war is unpopular with Americans (to the extent that Trump is now falsely claiming he didn’t pledge to keep the U.S. out of wars), many Israelis — across political lines — are urging Netanyahu to stand firm and keep fighting Hezbollah, WaPo’s Gerry Shih and Heidi Levine report.
Pentagon Sees Growing Espionage Threat From Israel
The Defense Department has increased the counterintelligence threat assessment to its highest level, and Israel is believed to have eavesdropped on American negotiations with Iran.
(NYT) Recent U.S. intelligence reports have raised concerns about Israeli spy agencies eavesdropping on American negotiators working on a peace deal with Iran, amid rising concern over a more general counterintelligence threat by Israel.
Israel and the United States have long known, and tolerated, that each was spying on the other. But an intensified Israeli effort to learn about U.S. positions in talks with Iran has crossed a line, according to some American officials.
The reports include concerns that Israel has stepped up its efforts to eavesdrop on senior American officials, including Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s top negotiator, Elbridge A. Colby, the Pentagon’s top policy official, and one of his main deputies, Michael P. DiMino IV.
Another report, written by the Defense Intelligence Agency and other military intelligence offices and focused on earlier events going back several years, said that the counterintelligence threat level posed by Israel had been increased in recent weeks to the top level, from high to critical. The report, to which the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency contributed, outlines various efforts by Israel to spy on American military personnel and government officials.

9 April
Netanyahu-Trump Divisions on Iran War Threaten to Box In US
As Israel continues to strike Lebanon and Iran leverages the Strait of Hormuz, the shaky ceasefire deal is at risk from political fault lines that helped shape the conflict.
(Bloomberg) Years of lobbying by Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu paid off when Donald Trump decided to go to war with Iran. Now, as the US president tries to extricate himself from the conflict, the fault lines in one of his closest geopolitical relationships threaten to box him in.
Within hours of Trump’s announcement of a two-week ceasefire Tuesday, the Israeli prime minister was challenging its terms. His forces mounted their biggest attack of their latest invasion of Lebanon, killing hundreds and prompting Tehran to warn that the deal was at risk even before the first direct talks took place. A call from Trump led Netanyahu to agree to scale back the operation, according to the US president. Israeli forces continued strikes at a reduced level there Friday, exchanging fire with Hezbollah a day after the Israeli leader agreed to talks with Lebanese officials.
Netanyahu has firmly opposed renewed diplomacy to end the broader conflict with Iran, according to people familiar with the situation. Trump told him only shortly before the deal was announced Tuesday that Lebanon was to be included, they said.
Publicly, Trump played down any differences with Netanyahu over the issue. But the alignment between the two that in February delivered the Israeli leader a joint attack on Iran — something he’d spent decades pushing US presidents for — is showing signs of fraying as Trump seeks to end a war that’s shaken the global economy and threatened to escalate even further.
… In the run-up to the war, it was Netanyahu’s arguments that Iran was on the verge of obtaining a nuclear weapon that played a key role in convincing Trump, bolstered by Kushner and Witkoff, who were handling talks with Tehran, people with direct knowledge of the discussions said.
That pitch diverged sharply from more cautious assessments from Vance, Rubio and US intelligence agencies, which warned that Iran’s leadership was more resilient than proponents of escalation suggested and that the broader fallout could have severe repercussions across the region and world.

24 March
2028 Dem hopefuls scramble for distance from AIPAC
Democrats eyeing White House bids are distancing themselves from the powerful pro-Israel group amid slumping support for Israel within the party’s base.
(Politico) Democrats eyeing White House runs in 2028 are preemptively breaking up with AIPAC.
Their retreat underscores how rapidly AIPAC has become a bogeyman for Democrats seeking to criticize the Israeli government, particularly with the Netanyahu administration’s involvement with President Donald Trump’s operation in Iran. Many former AIPAC-friendly Democrats see the historically bipartisan group as becoming more and more aligned with Netanyahu’s right-wing government in recent years. Its emergence as an early touchstone in the shadow 2028 presidential primary reflects a calculation among leading Democrats that liberal voters’ hard shift away from the longtime U.S. ally will stick.

23 March
Exclusive: Trump approved Iran operation after Netanyahu argued for joint killing of Khamenei, sources say
(Reuters) Trump gave final order on Iran operation after conversation with Israel’s Netanyahu
Throughout war planning, Netanyahu waged lobbying campaign in favor of Iran attack – though no proof it was decisive factor for US president
Secretary of State Rubio told lawmakers in days before strikes that US would likely get dragged in
War planning picked up after January massacres
(Reuters) – Less than 48 hours before the U.S.-Israeli strike on Iran began, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke by phone to President Donald Trump about the reasons for launching the kind of complex, far-off war the American leader once had campaigned against.
Both Trump and Netanyahu knew from intelligence briefings earlier in the week that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his key lieutenants would soon meet at his compound in Tehran, ​making them vulnerable to a “decapitation strike” – an attack against a country’s top leaders often used by Israelis but traditionally less so by the United States.
How Israel is reacting to Trump’s ‘de-escalation’ with Iran (video)
There is expected to be significant pushback from Israel following President Donald Trump’s move towards de-escalation with Iran. Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim explains why Israeli officials appear unhappy with the recent developments.

19-21 March
Israel and the U.S. Are Starting to Show Their Different Priorities in Iran
The United States views Iran through a prism of global responsibilities and strategic goals. Israel has a more regional approach. After nearly three weeks of war, their paths are diverging.
Steven Erlanger covers European and Middle Eastern diplomacy and security.
(NYT analysis) … On a superficial level the two countries started with common goals of regime change and military dismantlement, including Iran’s nuclear program, said Natan Sachs, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington. But Mr. Trump has spoken of a Venezuela-like solution, with the regime still in place albeit with people at the top whom the U.S. can control, and Israel has a much higher bar for a different leadership in Iran, he said.
On a secondary level, Israel is focused on Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs and the pillars of the regime, like the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and the Basij militia. The United States, Mr. Sachs said, is far more focused on Iran’s short-range missiles and drones that can hit the Gulf, as well as its naval capacity. Most immediately, the need is to open the Strait of Hormuz.
“The price of oil, pressure from the Gulf States and even the international markets matter to Israel, but far less than to the U.S.,” he said. But Israel is sensitive to those concerns to the degree that they influence Mr. Trump, he added.
Even if there is no regime change, Mr. Sachs said, Iran would be much weaker and it would be easier for Israel to apply “forceful containment,” a more elegant term for intermittent attacks. But the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, all key American allies, do not want a broken Iran that creates migration flows and more terrorism. …

Trump’s Complaint About Israeli Strike on Gas Field Exposes Divergent Strategies
President Trump has been trying to preserve Iran’s oil and gas infrastructure and keep the country from retaliating at energy facilities throughout the Persian Gulf.
President Trump said he told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel he disapproved of the attack, which sent energy markets reeling. But Israeli officials said the Americans were informed beforehand.
(NYT) In a war that is about to complete its third week with no end in sight, the attack and the furious counterstrikes on the energy facilities of Persian Gulf states revealed that the two allies were clearly not coordinated in their approach.
European officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the military operations over the past few days were more evidence of Israel’s belief that if it can dismantle Iran’s main sources of revenue and decapitate its political, military and intelligence leadership, the country will devolve into what the Israelis call “state collapse.”

Trump tells Israel not to repeat strikes on Iranian energy as crisis deepens
Iran strikes badly damage Qatar gas output
Trump says US not told in advance of Israel’s gas field strike
Trump says not sending more troops to the region
(Reuters) – President Donald Trump told Israel not to repeat its attacks on Iranian natural gas infrastructure as tit-for-tat strikes on energy plants sent prices spiraling, ​sharply escalating the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.
The conflict has killed thousands of people, spread to neighbouring nations and hit the global economy since the United States and Israel launched strikes ‌on February 28, after talks about Tehran’s nuclear program failed to yield a deal.

17 March
Rift Widens Among Republicans Over Israel and War in Iran
As the U.S.-Israel-Iran war continues, conservatism’s most famous figures are in a rhetorical brawl over America’s role.
The podcaster Megyn Kelly and the Fox News host Mark Levin are two of the country’s best-known conservative influencers. She opposes the war in Iran. He supports it.
Ms. Kelly, herself a former Fox News host, recently argued that the war was sold to the American people by “Israel firsters like Mark Levin.” He called her an “emotionally unhinged, lewd and petulant wreck.” It only got uglier from there.
As the joint U.S.-Israeli military action against Iran rolls into its third week, leading figures of the MAGA movement have attacked each other with increasing vehemence over the wisdom of the war, and more broadly, what the American relationship to the Jewish state should be.

16 March
Netanyahu Won Trump, But He’s Losing America
Takeaways by Bloomberg AI
– President Donald Trump’s decision to launch a joint military campaign with Israel against Iran may prove a short-term success with heavy long-term costs.
– Netanyahu’s decades-long campaign to court the Republican Party’s most conservative elements has led to a decline in support for Israel among rank-and-file Democrats in America.
– Israel’s support has declined most among Democrats, especially younger ones, and cracks are also emerging in Israel’s standing with younger Republicans.
Over Netanyahu’s three decades at the center of Israeli politics, support for Israel has plummeted among rank-and-file Democrats in America, which has liberated a new generation of party leaders to forcefully criticize Israel. Now, the Iran war threatens to widen an incipient generational divide within the GOP.
On the ideological fringes of both parties, criticism of Israel does bleed into overt antisemitism — and the war is already elevating the risk of attacks on Jewish institutions. But it is wishful thinking to assert, as conservative Jewish leaders often do, that antisemitism is the principal force eroding Israel’s standing with the American public. It is Israel’s own choices, primarily under Netanyahu, that bear that responsibility.
Aipac: toxicity of pro-Israel Super Pac’s money to be tested in US primaries
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has funneled $13.7m through Super Pacs into Tuesday’s Illinois primaries
(The Guardian) … The group states on its website that any disagreements with the Israeli government are “best handled in private” – a policy it has applied so faithfully that in its more than 70-year history, only one big public break with the Israeli government in the 1980s has been recorded, according to a review by the Guardian.
The new problem it’s facing, however, is that Democratic voters have shifted sharply: polls now show the party sympathizes more with Palestinians than Israelis, and the devastating Gaza war has made Aipac’s brand a genuine electoral liability in the kinds of urban, educated districts it is now trying to hold.

13 March
Trump’s War Alliance With Israel Is Reshaping the Middle East. But It Carries Risks.
President Trump is the first American leader to embrace fighting a full-fledged, joint war with Israel. Washington has tried to avoid that level of coordination in the past.
(NYT) In 1991, American officials flew to Israel to keep the country from retaliating against Scud missile attacks and joining the Gulf War.
In 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned it would be “in Israel’s overwhelming best interests not to get involved” in the looming invasion of Iraq.
In 2026, the United States went to war alongside Israel.
“It’s the first time,” said Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, “that Israel is going to war together with a superpower.”
The United States has been the Jewish state’s most important backer for decades, providing it with weaponry and working closely with the Israeli military. But successive U.S. administrations avoided fighting with Israel as a wartime ally. They were worried about losing U.S. support in the Arab world and have seen Israeli interests in the Middle East as divergent from American ones.
…the U.S.-Israeli combination is creating tensions reminiscent of those that past American administrations have tried to avoid as they balanced the close relationship with Israel against other priorities.
Across the Middle East, the fighting is thrusting America’s Arab partners into a conflict being waged by both the United States and Israel, at a time when Arab public opinion remains widely critical of Israel in the wake of the Gaza war.
In the United States, the joint warfare is exacerbating the already charged domestic politics of American support for Israel, which has declined in recent years on both the left and the right.
There is also the risk of tensions between the two new war partners themselves. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel continues to urge regime change in Iran and revolution even though Mr. Trump has signaled he would be satisfied with a future, pragmatic Iranian leader from inside the ruling system. And Mr. Trump is more politically sensitive to the impact of rising oil prices, in part because, polls show, most Americans oppose the attacks on Iran.

12 March
How the Israeli Tail Wags the American Dog
The US attack on Iran may be less about American security than about the priorities of Israel’s government.
Eli Clifton and Ian S. Lustick
(The Nation) … Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged that the primary answer to the question of “Why [attack Iran] now?” was that US war-making decisions were effectively being driven by Israel. “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties and perhaps even higher those killed, and then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn’t act,” he said on March 2.
The first part of Rubio’s answer, that Israel was planning to attack Iran and that Iran would retaliate against US targets, is a statement of a real problem: Israel’s behavior imposes security and economic costs on the United States. Successive US presidents supplied Israel with billions of dollars of military aid, political cover in international forums and tirelessly worked to shield Israel from accountability for its war on Gaza and long-running occupation of the West Bank. Israel has become accustomed to acting with impunity and disregarding US interests, particularly with respect to presidents Obama, Biden, and Trump’s stated priorities of refocusing US foreign policy toward the challenges of a rising China.
But the Trump administration’s solution, as explained by Rubio, was simply to acquiesce to Israel and join a deadly war of choice against Iran that is predictably sowing chaos in the region, killing Iranian civilians, and promising, much like George W. Bush’s ill-fated Iraq War, quick regime change to a US- and Israel-friendly democracy.
The real goals of Trump’s war cannot be found in his strategic vision, which is overshadowed, if it even exists, by a pinwheeling embrace of postures that serve his vanity and his short-term political interests. While most combat operations have been undertaken by the US military, at considerable risk to US service members and costs borne by American taxpayers, the war was born, planned, and insisted upon by Israel, and its long-serving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I have tried to persuade successive American administrations to take firm action [against Iran], and President Trump did,” Netanyahu told Fox News, acknowledging his own efforts to push the US into yet another war in the Middle East. Netanyahu famously overpromises what US interventions will achieve. In 2002 he told Congress, “If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region.”
While commanding one of the most potent nuclear arsenals in the world, he has, for decades, railed against Iran as posing an existential threat against Israel simply by developing the capacity to build a nuclear weapon. The real reason for Netanyahu’s obsession, however, is the role it has played, against so much evidence, to promote himself as “Mr. Security”—as the one leader in Israel willing and able to do what is necessary to defend Jews against the Hitler of the age.
Facing the prospect of criminal conviction and prison if he ever leaves office, Netanyahu has a great deal at stake. Until now it has been the campaign for war that has helped him, but now that he has his war, and has killed the Iranian dictator, what is his plan? The best way to answer this question is to consider what he has sought to do and has done in Gaza.
After the Hamas-led attacks on Israeli settlements near the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, Netanyahu launched a war of destruction and punishment whose declared objective, the elimination of the Hamas regime there, was neither its actual objective nor what was achieved. Nearly three years of pulverization and the killing or wounding of more than 10 percent of Gaza, Palestinians have failed to remove the Hamas regime. But that war, prolonged and conducted in a way to preserve Netanyahu’s hold on office and his prospects in upcoming Israeli elections, has created Gaza as a field of suffering and chaos and a kind of free-fire zone for the Israel Defense Forces. That is, more or less, what is in store for Iran and it will, again, serve Netanyahu more than any other plausible US security or geopolitical interests.
To be clear, Israel is dependent on the US for military aid, as well as protection at the UN and the International Criminal Court when these multilateral institutions attempt to hold its leaders accountable for war crimes in Gaza, and could not execute its wars in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran without the support of our country.
… In 2001, Benjamin Netanyahu made his vision of Israel’s influence over America crystal clear in a hot-mic moment, telling Israeli far-right activists, “I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won’t get in the way.”
Israel’s lobby—spearheaded by a small bipartisan group of Israeli-American and American billionaires who prioritize the ambitions of Israel’s right-wing government—is once again poised to flood the campaign finance system for the 2026 midterms. Meanwhile, the United States is being drawn into a long-sought Israeli war on Iran with no clear US national security rationale. It’s easy to dismiss Donald Trump as yet another American president manipulated by Netanyahu.