President Donald Trump’s efforts to get a nuclear deal with Iran have met a formidable obstacle: the Israel lobby.
Pro-Israel think tanks, lobbying groups, and analysts are urging Trump to ramp up sanctions on Tehran, make unreasonable demands, and issue more threats of war, rather than secure a landmark accord. They have also sought to delegitimize Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, who met with Iran’s foreign minister on Saturday to lay the groundwork for substantive negotiations. Witkoff, a trusted friend of the president, appears to have succeeded, with more talks scheduled for this weekend.
As the Israel lobby seeks to undermine the Trump administration’s diplomatic efforts, some Iran doves and MAGA conservatives have urged the president to pursue American, not Israeli, interests. This line of argument is compelling, but in the case of Iran negotiations, it overlooks an important consideration: A U.S. agreement with Tehran would serve Israel’s interests too.
Last Saturday, I laid out the basic reasons why in a post on X: “A deal would rein in Iran’s nuclear program, sideline its hardliners, stabilize the region, and avert a war that many Americans would blame on Israel.”
The same reasons also applied back in July 2015, when President Barack Obama struck the original Iran nuclear deal over strong objections from pro-Israel voices in America as well as the Israeli government itself. The lobbying group AIPAC burned tens of millions of dollars on a campaign to block that agreement, and in March 2015, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with astonishing chutzpah, gave an address to Congress opposing the U.S. president’s diplomacy. “That deal will not prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu declared.
A few months later, the U.S.—along with China, Russia, and Europe—signed the deal with Iran, and Netanyahu’s warnings soon proved ill-founded. Tehran, in exchange for sanctions relief, dismantled most of its centrifuges, shipped much of its enriched uranium out of the country, and granted inspectors broad access to verify that it wasn’t building the bomb. The Iranian government was still complying with the accord in May 2018, when Trump withdrew from it, and continued to comply for another year in hopes of keeping the deal on life support. In 2019, however, Tehran’s patience wore out, and it resumed enriching uranium beyond the limits set by the defunct agreement.
The nuclear deal, while it lasted, not only lengthened the “breakout time” needed for Tehran to build a nuclear weapon, but had a salutary influence on Iranian politics. Thanks to reduced sanctions and Iran’s improved diplomatic relations, the moderate president Hassan Rouhani won reelection in 2017 despite opposition from hardliners. Rouhani favored not only diplomacy with the U.S.-led West but also civil rights for women and minorities. But when the nuclear deal broke down, the political standing of Rouhani and other reformists diminished, and in 2021 the hardliner Ebrahim Raisi became president.
Evidently, the Iran nuclear agreement had worked, putting Tehran’s nuclear program in a box and nudging the regime in a more liberal direction. Moreover, it had been a good deal for the American people. The accord eased bilateral tensions, neutralized the problem of Iran’s suspected nuclear ambitions, and provided Washington an opportunity to disengage from the Middle East. For these reasons, Pat Buchanan, a co-founder of The American Conservative, hailed the agreement as the “seminal achievement of the Obama administration in foreign policy.”
It was also a good deal for Israel, as progressive pro-Israel groups in America have understood. J Street, for example, urged President Joe Biden to revive the accord, calling it “an historic diplomatic achievement” that had “blocked Iran from obtaining the world’s most dangerous weapons.” From the perspective of organizations like J Street, the Iran nuclear deal had accomplished a key aim of the Israeli government—preventing Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability—and had done so without launching a war that could destabilize the region.
Even within Israel, several top officials welcomed the nuclear deal and later opposed U.S. withdrawal. “Without an agreement, Iran will be free to act as it wishes,” wrote Efraim Halevy, former head of Mossad, in July 2015. The same month, Isaac Ben-Israel, then-chair of the Israeli Space Agency, said, “The agreement is not bad at all. It is even good for Israel.” In 2017, Carmi Gillon, former head of Israel’s internal security service, wrote, “Thanks to the agreement, Iran’s nuclear program has been defanged and all its pathways to a bomb blocked.”
These figures were frustrated when the deal collapsed, and many blamed Netanyahu. In 2021 Ben-Israel said, “Netanyahu’s efforts to persuade the Trump administration to quit the nuclear agreement have turned out to be the worst strategic mistake in Israel’s history.”
Other Israeli officials didn’t go that far in criticizing Netanyahu but still questioned the wisdom of flagrantly obstructing U.S. foreign policy. The former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak warned in 2014 that such actions could turn Israel’s superpower patron against it.
One reason that Netanyahu ignored pragmatic warnings from Barak and others may be simple hubris. The longtime Israeli leader has tended to be supremely confident that U.S. support for Israel will continue indefinitely. During a casual meeting with Israeli settlers in 2001, he told a cameraman to stop recording, but for whatever reason, the camera kept rolling and captured Netanyahu’s boast that “America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction.” Explaining why the world’s only global superpower was so pliable, Netanyahu added, “Eighty percent of the Americans support us. It’s absurd!”
The absurdity didn’t last. A slim majority—53 percent—now hold an unfavorable view of the country, according to Pew Research. That’s an 11-point increase compared to March 2022, and Israel’s popularity among Americans seems destined to decline even further. While Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to favor Israel, half of those ages 18 through 49 do not. These numbers present a worrisome challenge to Israel, which is surrounded by hostile nations and dependent on American military and diplomatic assistance.
Israel would be prudent to try reversing the sharp decline in favorability, but its opposition to U.S.-Iran diplomacy risks accelerating the trend. If Trump makes a war rather than a deal with Iran—and he seems to believe those are the only two options—many Americans will blame Israel for dragging the U.S. into yet another conflict in the Middle East. The Democrats, in that case, could very well become a monolithically anti-Israel party, while the Republican establishment would need to avoid alienating conservative millennials and zoomers who do not share their grandparents’ affection for the Jewish state.
The Israel lobby increasingly responds to declining favorability not with smart public relations, but by pushing the U.S. government to suppress criticism of Israel on university campuses. Many commentators have argued that the crackdowns on free speech are not just unconstitutional, but politically inexpedient. Zaid Jilani, a progressive journalist, wrote on X that “Israelis should understand this will not help their reputations and disavow anti-speech measures.”
Conservatives are also becoming fed up with the influence of Israel and the Israel lobby on the Trump administration. After podcast host Thaddeus Russell wrote on X that “Israel will be the rock on which MAGA breaks apart,” he revealed that “prominent members of MAGA” had liked the post.
Now seems a good time for Israel and its American supporters to reassess political tactics. They should start by recognizing the benefits of American-Iranian diplomacy for Israel—and the political risks of sabotaging a top geopolitical priority of a U.S. president who can quickly turn against friends and allies who challenge him. For Israel, acquiescing to a preemptive nuclear disarmament deal with Iran would hardly be a sacrifice. As Biden once told Netanyahu, and as Trump should tell him now, Israel would be wise to take the win.
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