When Donald Trump reclaimed the White House in November, the celebratory noise from Israel’s right was deafening. Israel’s settler movement, whose fortunes were already on the upswing after Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in December 2022, suddenly had its prized ally back in the White House. The joy was understandable. From US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital to the downgrading of relations with the Palestinian Authority and the drafting of a Middle East peace agreement heavily skewed in Israel’s favour, Trump’s first term was a golden age for Netanyahu’s government.
But as Trump now meets with Saudi, Qatari and Emirati potentates, seeking economic and investment deals in the hundreds of billions of dollars, Netanyahu has less to celebrate. Trump is proving to be more unpredictable and free-wheeling than the prime minister likely expected. In the past, US and Israeli leaders, regardless of their individual political orientation, sought to ensure there was no daylight between them on major issues. The assumption that both countries shared a distinct, special set of interests and goals has been ingrained within the US-Israeli relationship since the day the United States became the first country to recognise the State of Israel on 14 May 1948.
Yet Trump doesn’t appear to have much use for the old construct. If anything, he has demonstrated over the last several weeks a willingness to go his own way, bypassing Israel if required to achieve his objectives. Whether it concerns Iran’s nuclear programme, the Houthis in Yemen or the war in Gaza, Netanyahu is now dealing with an American counterpart who disregards conventionality, even if that happens to rankle the Israelis.
On Iran’s nuclear programme, the US and Israel have a common endgame: stopping Tehran from possessing a nuclear weapon. Yet Trump and Netanyahu are increasingly diverging on how best to achieve this goal, on whether a diplomatic deal is possible and, if it is, on what terms are acceptable. Netanyahu’s position on Iran is well-established and has been consistent throughout his political career. His speeches and remarks on the subject have often centred on how apocalyptic the Middle East would be if Tehran were to get its hands on a nuclear warhead. During his September 2012 address to the UN General Assembly, Netanyahu famously held up a picture of a cartoon bomb to illustrate just how close the Iranians were to acquiring nuclear bomb fuel. “A red line must be drawn… on Iran’s efforts to enrich uranium,” he declared at the time. His bottom line has only hardened in the years since. In 2018, Netanyahu helped persuade Trump to jettison the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and adopt a strategy of maximum pressure – in the form of sanctions – a move that proved counterproductive in the end and allowed Iran to free itself from virtually all the restrictions over its nuclear programme. This hasn’t deterred Netanyahu in the least. Today, his government seeks to convince the Trump administration that a military strike can end the Iranian nuclear problem.
Trump, however, isn’t buying it – at least not yet. When Israeli officials presented an attack plan to US officials that included an extensive bombing campaign against Iranian nuclear sites with US military assistance, Trump waved it off as premature. While the brash president may talk a big game about bombing the Iranians into submission when he’s in front of cameras, the practical costs, consequences and difficulties of actually doing so aren’t lost on him. Ordering another US-involved war in the Middle East has never been appealing for Trump. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, least of all Netanyahu; Trump’s electoral success owes partly to his fierce criticism of Washington’s past counterproductive wars in the region.
As a self-professed dealmaker, he’d rather reach an agreement with Iran. In March, Trump sent a letter to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; a month later, Trump announced that nuclear talks with Iran were underway. Netanyahu, who in Washington when Trump revealed this, was reportedly caught off guard. Since then, US and Iranian officials have met four times for what both sides describe as tough but constructive conversations, a process that may or may not lead to an accord that falls short of Israel’s maximalist specifications. Back in Israel, Netanyahu’s trip to the White House was seen as a bust.
When it comes to the Houthis, the divide between the United States and Israel has become evident. In response to Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, the Yemeni militia group has attacked civilian ships in the Red Sea and fired ballistic missiles at Israel. On 4 May, one of those missiles landed near Ben Gurion Airport, prompting Israel to bomb Yemen’s main international airport. Far from being daunted, the Houthi leadership threatened a retaliation that would be “Earth-shattering, painful, and beyond the capability of the Israeli and American enemy to bear”.
Here too, Trump’s response hasn’t pleased Netanyahu. In mid-March, the president authorised an air campaign against the Houthis, supplementing Israel’s strikes, and warned the group they would be “completely annihilated”. Yet on 6 May, after about eight weeks of incessant bombing, Trump announced that a deal had been struck with the Houthis that would trade a US bombing pause for a cessation of attacks against American shipping in the Red Sea.
All indications are that the US diplomatic demarche to the Houthis was a unilateral move that took the Israeli leadership by surprise. What’s certain is that Netanyahu had no reason to be pleased with the development. Not only did the ceasefire agreement not extend to Israel but after Trump made it public, the Houthis vowed to continue attacking Israeli territory until the war in Gaza stopped. In the end, the US reached an agreement with the Houthis on its own accord even though the terms excluded Israel.
How to explain Trump’s truce with the Houthis? To begin with, while the president is wont to warn countries, including Iran and Yemen, that military action is always on the table, he has an aversion to the military quagmires. He also senses, rightly, that war-weariness shapes the foreign policy instincts of much of the American electorate.
Trump also recoils from exercises in futility. He knows, based on the failure of Saudi Arabia’s own US-armed, decade-long military campaign to subdue the Houthis, which has taken 150,000 lives and displaced nearly five million people, that they are able to withstand targeted attacks – he even commended their “bravery” and resilience. Persisting with the bombing campaign was likely to be futile. The quick Houthi defeat he envisioned proved beyond reach. The Houthis downed seven US Reaper drones, and two F/A-18 carrier-based aircrafts fell into the sea. As the New York Times put it, “the US strikes burned through weapons and munitions at a rate of about $1bn in the first month alone”.
Trump even seems willing to put distance between the US and Israel on Gaza, if not publicly. The president and his team have reportedly been unhappy about Netanyahu’s decision to resume the war, abandoning the three-phase ceasefire deal agreed in January with Hamas. Trump apparently sees continued war as a wasted, even pointless effort. His ill-conceived plan to transform Gaza into an international tourist destination along the Mediterranean Sea, which Netanyahu and his far-right coalition allies eagerly embraced, was met with strong opposition from Egypt, Jordan and the rest of the Arab world. And in recent days, the Trump administration, bypassing Israel, negotiated directly with Hamas to free the sole living American hostage, Edan Alexander.
Could Trump’s willingness to go his own way be a harbinger of a larger change in US-Israel relations as Netanyahu hinted at on 11 May? Not quite. There’s no sign that Trump will end, or even substantially cut, military and economic assistance to Israel. And “detoxing” from US aid won’t be easy, even though Netanyahu recently said that might be necessary – itself a telling comment. Since Israel’s founding in 1948, Washington has provided it more than $350bn in aid, most of it military. Without the virtually unconditional arms deliveries from the United States following Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack – nearly $18bn worth as of last September – Israel could not have waged its Gaza war on the scale, and for the duration, it has.
To add to Netanyahu’s concerns, on 13 May Trump just announced that he’d be lifting sanctions on Syria “to give them a chance at greatness” and, at the urging of Saudi Arabia, met with its post-Assad president Ahmed al-Sharaa the following day. This comes after months of Israel encroaching on Syria’s territory and bombing its military sites – and after Netanyahu reportedly asked Trump not to lift sanctions on the struggling country.
Now more than 100 days into Donald Trump’s second term, it’s surely becoming apparent to Netanyahu and his far-right allies that the president’s “America First” mantra applies to even the closest of relationships. Certainly, the last few weeks have shown that America and Israel are no exception to Lord Palmerston’s 1848 oft-quoted observation that states – supremely self-interested creatures – have “no eternal allies and no permanent enemies”.