There has never been an American president like Donald Trump regarding his relationship with Israel.

No less a figure than Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel who has worked closely with Trump during his two presidential terms, has repeatedly hailed him as the most pro-Israel president in history.

This is quite a claim, but it happens to be true.

Trump was the first US president to join forces with Israel to wage a war.

Last June, during the close of Israel’s 12-day war with Iran, Trump ordered B-2 stealth bombers to strike three Iranian nuclear sites — Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan — in Operation Midnight Hammer.

Trump, in a speech from the White House, said that the objective of the air raid was “the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat.” Calling the strikes “a spectacular military success,” he claimed that the facilities had been “completely and totally obliterated.”

Roughly eight months later, following Netanyahu’s visit to the White House on February 11, Trump agreed to mount joint US-Israeli air strikes in Iran. Netanyahu had convinced Trump and most of his advisors that Iran was weak and ripe for regime change.

Slightly more than two weeks later, on February 28, the two allies, in an unprecedented display of cooperation, struck Iran, killing its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and more than 40 of Iran’s top commanders in one fell swoop.

For the next 39 days, the US and Israeli air forces worked collaboratively day and night, bombing military command and control centers, the offices of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, nuclear sites, missile storage depots and missile launchers, weapons production factories and critical infrastructure.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth hailed the joint fighting force, saying that Iran’s “worst nightmare” had some to pass as it confronted “the Stars and Stripes and the Star of David.”

That level of coordination would have been “unthinkable” only a few years ago, former US diplomat Dennis Ross told The New York Times.

Although Israel has been its key ally in the Middle East for several decades, the United States was loath to carry out military missions with it until last June.

In 1991, during the first Gulf War, US President George H. Bush asked Israel to refrain from launching retaliatory air strikes after 39 Iraqi Scud missiles crashed into Israeli cities. Bush feared that Israeli involvement would jeopardize US interests in the Arab world. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir deferred to Bush’s request.

Twelve years later, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld advised Israel not to “get involved” in the planned US invasion of Iraq. Israel, yet again, stayed out of the war.

No such imperatives troubled Trump when he and Netanyahu conferred at the White House this past February. Trump was bent on denying Iran, Israel’s arch enemy, a nuclear arsenal.

Trump had already laid the ground work for an armed clash with Iran.

During his first term, he unilaterally withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement co-signed by Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — and imposed crippling economic sanctions on the Iranian regime.

Furthermore, Trump moved Israel into the US Central Command, which is responsible for the Middle East. This was a step closer to US-Israel defense cooperation, which has burgeoned since Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six Day War.

In light of these factors, Trump was prepared to attack Iran in conjunction with Israel, despite Israel’s sagging image in the United States, anti-war feelings among the American electorate, and anti-Israel sentiment in the “Make America Great Again” faction of the Republican Party.

A Quinnipiac University poll published recently found that 44 percent of American voters think that the United States is too supportive of Israel. Joe Rogan, a popular podcaster who voted for Trump, said that the Iran war “doesn’t make sense to me, unless we’re acting on someone else’s interests, like particularly Israel’s interests.”

Trump has denied that Israel pulled the United States into an unnecessary war with Iran. Yet anti-war activists have seized on it, and Democratic Party luminaries such as Kamala Harris, a presidential aspirant, have pounced on it for political gain.

The United States and Israel were on the same page for the first two or three weeks of the war, with their objectives overlapping in several major areas.

Trump and Netanyahu sought to create the right conditions for the collapse of the deeply-entrenched Iranian regime, which has been in power since the 1979 Islamic revolution. They attempted to further degrade Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, which was badly damaged in last year’s war. They struck missile manufacturing sites and other arms plants. They targeted political leaders and military commanders.

By about the third week of last month, the harmony that bound the United States and Israel together began to fray, exposing divergencies in their respective long-term aims.

On March 19, Trump chided Israel for attacking the South Pars natural gas field, which is shared by Iran and Qatar. Israeli officials insisted that the Trump administration had been warned in advance, but Trump, in a Truth Social posting, said he knew nothing about it.

Trump apparently feared that attacks on Iran’s oil and gas industries, plus Iranian counter-strikes on Arab Gulf states like Bahrain and Kuwait, would lead to greater price increases. Trump, too, was sensitive to Qatar’s interests. An American ally that hosts the largest US air base in the Middle East, Qatar recently gave Trump a multi-million dollar Boeing 747 passenger airplane as a gift. Last summer, Trump forced Netanyahu to issue an apology to Qatar after a botched Israeli air raid in Doha, Qatar’s capital, targeting high-ranking Hamas personnel.

Trump hoped to end the war within a six-week period, mindful of skyrocketing oil and gas prices and the opposition of American voters, who may well threaten his political standing in midterm elections in November.

While Trump was eager to halt the war, claiming that the United States was “very close” to meeting its goals, Netanyahu had no deadline to finish the job. He is bent on eliminating Iran and its proxies as threats to Israel’s security once and for all. In this respect, Netanyahu cares more about this objective than the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to maritime traffic. For Trump, it is a necessity, since a lengthy closure may cause a sustained global recession and higher fuel prices.

After the United States and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire, which ends on April 22, Netanyahu said that Israel has “more goals to accomplish” in Iran. “We will achieve them either through agreement, or through renewed fighting,” he said.

And while Trump would probably be satisfied with a cosmetic change of leadership in Tehran, basically leaving the Islamic regime intact on the Venezuelan model he established in January after ousting President Nicolás Maduro, Netanyahu would prefer to crush it altogether.

Trump and Netanyahu are at odds over some issues because geography matters. As Aaron David Miller, a former US diplomat who specialized in Middle East affairs, put it, “We are a global power and (Israel) is a regional one. So their threat assessments create a different set of objectives than ours.”

Trump and Netanyahu appear to agree on two related issues. Iran must not be allowed to enrich uranium beyond 3.6 percent, the level permitted under the 2015 agreement. And Iran must hand over to the United States 440 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium, which lies under the ruins of two of its bombed nuclear facilities. The United States and Israel fear that Iran may try to convert this fissile material into 10 to 12 nuclear bombs.

Trump and Netanyahu, however, found themselves in disagreement over a ceasefire in Lebanon. Netanyahu wanted to continue Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah in the south. Trump, intent on reaching a peace accord with Iran, forced Israel to scale back its attacks, open negotiations with Lebanon, and agree to a 10-day truce.

Initially, Trump claimed that the ceasefire with Iran did not apply to Lebanon, while Vice President JD Vance said there had been a “reasonable misunderstanding.”

The Iranian regime, in lockstep with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan, the host of the first meeting between US and Iranian negotiators, declared that the truce was applicable to Lebanon as well. Unwilling to alienate Trump, Netanyahu agreed to abide by a truce and permitted Israel’s ambassador in the United States to meet his Lebanese counterpart in Washington, DC earlier this month.

After grudgingly accepting the ceasefire in Lebanon, Netanyahu said that the campaign against Hezbollah is not yet finished. Suspecting that Netanyahu might jeopardize the US truce with Iran, Trump posted a provocative message on Truth Social on April 17.

“Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer,” he wrote. “They are PROHIBITED from doing so by the USA. Enough is enough.”

According to the Times of Israel, Netanyahu was “stunned and shocked” by Trump’s brazen statement, which underscored Trump’s unmatched leverage on Israel.

The following day, Trump made a sharp U-turn. In a tweet on his Truth Social platform, he wrote, “Whether people like Israel or not, they have proven to be a GREAT Ally of the United States of America. They are Courageous, Bold, Loyal, and Smart and, unlike others that have shown their true colors in a moment of conflict and stress, Israel fights hard, and knows how to WIN!”

Despite the ceasefire in Lebanon, two Israeli soldiers have been killed since it went into effect. Lidor Porat died after his engineering vehicle ran over a Hezbollah explosive device. Barak Kalfon was fatally wounded in a booby-trapped building. Their deaths brought to 15 the number of Israeli troops who have fallen in Lebanon since March 2.

In the meantime, Israel has created a buffer zone in southern Lebanon. And in a move conforming with its tactics in the Gaza war, Israel has continued to systematically demolish private and public buildings in villages close to the Israeli border.

Interestingly enough, Trump has not criticized Israel’s moves, confirming the widely expressed assessment that he has a dual approach to Israel. It can be summarized in a single sentence. He applies vinegar to Israel after smothering it in honey.

Trump, in his first term, recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and transferred the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He recognized Israeli sovereignty over the disputed Golan Heights, decreed that Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank do not conflict with international law, and closed the PLO’s office in Washington.

During his current term, he omitted Israel on his first trip to the Middle East, forced Israel to support a United Nations resolution supportive of Russia in its conflict with Ukraine, opened a dialog with Hamas without Israel’s approval, cut a deal with the Houthis of Yemen that left Israel high and dry, and forged a rapprochement with Syria and its new president, Ahmed al-Shara, over Israel’s objections.

In addition, he bulldozed Netanyahu into accepting the second phase of a ceasefire in Gaza before he was ready to end the two-year Israel-Hamas war. And he compelled Israel to end its first war with Iran prematurely in 2025.

“Netanyahu cannot say no to Trump on an issue the president really cares about, and Trump knows that,” write Daniel Kurtzer and Aaron David Miller in an essay published by the Carnegie Endowment. “If Trump believes Netanyahu stands between him and a big win, he will not think twice about sacrificing Netanyahu’s preferences for the victory.”

On the positive side of the ledger, Netanyahu has been invited to the White House more often than any other foreign leader. And Trump has publicly asked Israeli President Isaac Herzog to pardon Netanyahu, who has been indicted on charges of criminal fraud, corruption and breach of trust.

Trump has sent weapons to Israel that his predecessor, Joe Biden, withheld during the Gaza war. He was instrumental in gaining the release of the last remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. He has backed Israel’s incursions into southern Syria since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December 2024. He has not condemned Israel’s expansion of settlements in the West Bank. He has yet to explicitly endorse Palestinian statehood, though he has let it be known that he opposes Israel’s annexation of the West Bank.

In spite of his spats with Netanyahu, Trump is doubtless favorably predisposed toward Israel, as his record shows. But in Kurtzer’s and Miller’s view, Trump’s support of Israel is “transactional and functional, designed for broad political purposes to engage (Christian) evangelicals and to use his pro-Israel sensibilities to paint Democrats as enemies of the Jewish state.”

Trump, they argue,”sets the content and the tone” of the United States’ bilateral relations with Israel and is “remarkably unsentimental” about it and its future.

True or not, the United States under Trump’s presidency has forged unprecedented strategic ties with Israel. Only time will tell whether they will endure.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)