In his first term, President Trump was widely seen as a knee-jerk defender of Israel. Now, not so much.
Whether and how far Washington splits from Jerusalem — especially on Iran’s nuclear-weapons program — has enormous security implications for America, Israel and the wider Middle East.
For Trump, personal relationships with foreign leaders equate to the relations between their countries. If he is friendly with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then U.S.-Israel relations are good. And vice versa.
Today, neither relationship is fully broken, but both are increasingly strained.
Seeking the strongly pro-Israel evangelical Christian vote in 2016, Trump pledged to withdraw from President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal and generally provide Israel strong support. He kept that promise, exiting the agreement in 2018. Moreover, Trump moved America’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, merged the separate Palestinian liaison office into the bilateral U.S. mission, recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and protected Israel at the U.N. Security Council.
The transactional basis for these acts was clear. Having close personal relations with Netanyahu, or at least appearing to, buttressed this political imperative.
How good those first-term relations really were invites debate, but a continuing rationale was Trump’s desire for reelection in 2020 and, later, 2024. Keeping the pro-Israel vote was a top priority in both races. Even though tensions developed between Trump and Netanyahu, few surfaced publicly. In 2024, Trump held the evangelical vote while losing Jewish voters to Harris by a mere 34 points. Even many Harris voters believed Trump would safeguard Israel’s interests.
But now that electoral constraint is gone, since Trump has essentially admitted he cannot run again. Meanwhile, earlier irritants — such as Netanyahu garnering publicity for his role in the 2020 strike against Iran’s Qassem Soleimani, swiftly congratulating Joe Biden for winning in 2020 and his general aptitude for getting more attention than Trump himself — caused personal relations to grow frostier. And all of this was very likely fed by Trump’s recurring envy of Obama’s 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.
So in just four months since the inauguration, Trump concluded a separate peace with Yemen’s Houthi rebels, ending inconclusive U.S. efforts to clear the Red Sea maritime passage and leaving Israel in the lurch while Houthi missiles targeted Ben Gurion airport. The White House, without Israel, bargained with Hamas for release of Edan Alexander, their last living American hostage. Trump’s first major overseas trip was to three Gulf Arab countries, but he skipped Israel, in direct contrast to his first term. While in Saudi Arabia, Trump lifted sanctions imposed on Syria’s Assad dictatorship, clearly breaking with Israel, which retains grave doubts about the militant group that ousted Assad and now rules the country.
The record is not entirely negative. Trump sanctioned the International Criminal Court for initiating investigations against Netanyahu and his former defense minister. He broadly, but not unreservedly, backs Israel’s campaign against Hamas.
But the greatest divergence has emerged over the existential threat of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. On April 7, during Netanyahu’s second post-inaugural visit to the Oval Office, no one seemed more stunned than he when Trump announced that Steve Witkoff would soon be negotiating with Iran.
Trump had previously disclosed writing to Ayatollah Khamenei, expressing openness to negotiation but setting a two-month deadline, implying military force should talks fail. If the clock started from the date Iran received the letter, that two-month period has ended. If it began with the first Witkoff-Iran meeting (April 12 in Oman), the drop-dead date is imminent. Trump could extend the deadline, but that would simply extend Israel’s peril.
Reports that Witkoff has broached an “interim” or “framework” deal further exacerbate the dangers of Tehran tapping Washington along. Time is always on the proliferator’s side. While discussions languish, Iran can even further disperse, conceal and harden its nuclear weapons assets.
Trump acknowledges pressing Israel more than once not to strike Iran’s nuclear program. Such public rebukes to a close ally facing mortal peril are themselves extraordinary, proving how hard Trump is trying to save Witkoff’s endeavors. Little is known about the talks’ substance, but reports show signs of inconsistency and uncertainty — indeed incompetence — over such critical issues as whether Iran would be permitted to enrich uranium to reactor-grade levels, the original sin of the Obama deal. To say Netanyahu is worried is more than an understatement.
Trump’s behavior is entirely consistent with greater personal distance from Netanyahu and a desire to be the central figure, rather than Netanyahu’s Israel taking dispositive action against Tehran’s threat. It may also reflect the isolationist voices within his administration, although not among Republicans generally, as 52 senators and 177 representatives have publicly urged Trump not to throw Iran a lifeline.
Israel did not ask permission in 1981 before destroying Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor, or in 2007 before destroying Iran’s reactor that was under construction in the Syrian desert. Trump is grievously mistaken if he thinks Netanyahu will “chicken out,” standing idly by as Iran becomes a nuclear power. Cometh the hour, cometh the man.
John Bolton was national security adviser to President Trump from 2018 to 2019 and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006. He held senior State Department posts from 1981 to 1983, from 1989 to 1993 and from 2001 to 2005.
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