Is the US-Israeli alliance under pressure? ‘It pays to look beyond rhetoric’

Judging by a lot Israeli media and politicians, the relationship between Israel and the United States is under severe strain. The panic stems from the agreement signed by the US and Iran on June 17 Memorandum of Understandingfollowed by the current negotiations on a US-Iranian agreement.

Israel is not a party to those negotiations and feels sidelined by its major ally, with which it launched a war against Iran on February 28. Not only Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters, but also most of his political opponents, want to continue the attacks on Iran.

To Israel’s dismay, the US-Iranian agreement also stated that the ceasefire also applies to Lebanon and that Lebanon’s sovereignty must be respected. That would mean an end to Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon.

“Crazy,” US President Donald Trump called the Israeli prime minister last month, according to the American news website Axios. This after Israel threatened to torpedo American negotiations with Iran with renewed attacks on Lebanon.

During a visit to Washington earlier this year, Netanyahu had managed to persuade Trump to unleash a war against Iran, which was guaranteed to lead to a rapid fall of the Islamic Republic and destruction of Iran’s nuclear program.

A few months of devastating warfare later, the American-Israeli war goals have not been achieved. Israel wanted to achieve regime change, and when that didn’t happen, continued bombing. Instead, Trump is now negotiating with the Iranians.

Undermining Netanyahu’s strategy

The global economic consequences of Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz have already led to diverging interests between Trump and Netanyahu, says Mairav ​​Zonszein, Israel analyst for The International Crisis Group. And now the US-Iranian deal further undermines Netanyahu’s strategy in the region. “Israel has been fighting on several fronts for years. It is not interested in a ceasefire, but in exerting military pressure,” Zonszein said by telephone from Tel Aviv. “Trump wants to quickly turn military force into an agreement and easy solutions.”

When Trump was re-elected in 2024, Netanyahu was able to close his hands. During his first term, Trump had recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel against international consensus, as well as the Israeli annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights, occupied since 1967.

In February 2025, Netanyahu sat next to Trump in Washington as the president delivered hisRiviera plan‘ for the Gaza Strip. This was in line with Israeli ambitions to expel the Palestinians from Gaza. Trump’s twenty-point plan for Gaza from October 2025 has so far resulted in the capture of Gaza approximately 60 percent of Gaza by Israel.

Yet the agreement with Iran is not the first time that Trump has antagonized Israel by negotiating with its enemies. In March 2025, he spoke directly to Hamas about Gaza. A few months later, he announced an agreement with the Yemeni Houthis. And last November he received Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa at the White House, after previously announcing the lifting of US sanctions on Syria.

Unconditional American support

Every reason for Israelis to wonder about the “special relationship” between the US and Israel under pressure stands. In recent decades, this has meant “unconditional American support for Israel,” said Yonatan Touval, an analyst for Mitvim, The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies, by phone from Tel Aviv. “Israel has the guarantee that it will be protected not only militarily, but also diplomatically – especially in the Security Council – against any measure that could undermine its position.”

In response to widespread Israeli outrage over the Iran memorandum, US Vice President JD Vance told reporters at the White House, thus The New York Times: “If I were part of the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not attack the only powerful ally I have left in the entire world.”

Vance was not only defending a deal with Iran. He also seemed to send the message: Israeli objections are no longer driving American policy. Zonszein calls Vance’s comment “unprecedented” within the US-Israeli relationship, but “not surprising”. The vice president is against the war in Iran, unlike US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Vance is also aiming for the presidency and is responding to American dissatisfaction with the costs of the Iran war. “Vance understands that American public opinion about Israel has shifted in recent years, and especially since the war with Iran. At the same time, he wants to show Israel that the Americans are in control.”

Changing public opinion

According to Zonszein, the tension in the American-Israeli alliance does not so much arise from the relationship between Trump and Netanyahu, but from a change in American political and public opinion. The majority of Democrats and Republicans remain pro-Israel, but unconditional support is starting to erode.

The Republican MAGA camp is angry that Israel has dragged the US into a costly war. The Americans feel this because of the global energy crisis caused by the Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Above all, Israel’s war crimes in Gaza have sparked criticism in recent years among progressive Democrats and a growing group of Republicans.

“If future US administrations believe that Israel should not be central to their view of the situation in the Middle East, then Israel lobby groups such as AIPAC will therefore have less influence,” Touval said.

Zoom in

Also Mouin Rabbani, Middle East expert and editor of online magazine Jadaliyyasees the changing American public opinion towards Israel, especially among Democrats, as the most important shift in American-Israeli relations. “For the Democrats, the big turning point was the genocide in Gaza, for Republicans the Iran war,” he says by telephone from The Hague.

The fact that public support is eroding is also evident from research by Pew Research Center: 60 percent of Americans surveyed have an unfavorable or very unfavorable view of Israel. And from one poll The Institute for Global Affairs report last June found that 38 percent of respondents want the US arming of Israel to stop.

Billions annually for defense

Israel has received more than $200 billion (approximately €175 billion) in US military aid since its founding in 1948. Every year it receives 3.3 billion dollars (2.9 billion euros) for the purchase of American defense equipment and 500 million dollars (438 million euros) for joint missile defense.

Last January, Netanyahu said in a interview of The Economist that he wants to phase out American military support to Israel. According to Zonszein, there is a large group of Netanyahu supporters in Israel who say: “We don’t have to do what America tells us to do, so we have to be more independent and strive for our own weapons production.”

It seems startling, but phasing out American military support will not happen that quickly, Zonszein thinks. “When I talk to Israeli officials and security experts, it is very clear to them that Israel cannot survive without American support.”

In fact, according to Steven Simon, a former employee of the US State Department, Israeli politicians are actually pushing for an institutional reorganization in which the American and Israeli defense industries are further integrated.

Publicly verifiable military aid would thus turn into “the opaque apparatus of defense procurement,” “where oversight is limited and political accountability minimal,” Simon writes in a memo of it Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Trump allowed Israel a lot

Zonszein calls the question of whether there is an actual removal in the alliance between the US and Israel “too early to answer.” American support is still strong, so “it pays to look beyond rhetoric to what is happening on the ground.”

Trump has been willing to join Israel in attacking Iran in June 2025 and in February 2026. He allowed Israel to further annex the West Bank and continue to destroy Gaza. He has asked for a pardon for Netanyahu’s corruption cases. And he has not forced Israel to withdraw from Lebanon or to stop military incursions into Syria.

Although Trump’s frustrations with Israel were “originally serious,” Rabbani calls it “highly exaggerated” to speak of a crisis in relations. Recently by the Americans mediated agreement between Israel and the Lebanese government, there is no mention of Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon. According to Rabbani, Trump is trying to accommodate Israel and rewrite the deal with Iran.

American leaders have been expressing frustration about Israel for decades – including Trump’s predecessor Biden – and “in the end, little or nothing changes,” says Rabbani. There is a difference: Biden was a self-declared Zionist, and Trump is “not a Zionist, but a Trumpist,” says Rabbani. “If Iran soon leads to a strategic defeat for the US, I can well imagine that he will make Israel the baby of the bill.”

According to Zonszein, it is in any case certain that Netanyahu will not be able to campaign as Trump’s self-proclaimed “best friend” during the upcoming elections in Israel. “But he is a very good politician, and will say: I am the only (politician) who stood up to the Americans.”

Give a gift





Part





Email the editor