Is It Just About AIPAC’s Money, or Does the US-Israel Rot Run Far Deeper?

by Ramzy Baroud | Jul 29, 2026

https://original.antiwar.com/ramzy-baroud/2026/07/28/is-it-just-about-aipacs-money-or-does-the-us-israel-rot-run-far-deeper/

Two major stories regarding the United States and Israel in recent days represent profound watershed moments in the history of the relationship between both countries.

The first incident occurred on July 8 when US Congressman Ro Khanna (D-CA) and his delegation were detained by armed, illegal Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank.

“These hoodlums come in with machine guns – an M4, an American-made machine gun – and they detain us,” Khanna recounted in a stunning statement. “They block off the road. And then they call the IDF, and the IDF is on their side, not on the side of the Americans.”

Equally shocking to the congressman’s direct encounter with the raw, lawless reality of the occupation was the response of US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. Rather than defending an elected American lawmaker, Huckabee dismissed Khanna’s harrowing experience as a mere “stunt.”

This defiance of old taboos, however, is not confined to progressive factions. In an even more unprecedented development on July 15, US Vice President JD Vance used an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience to deliver some of the sharpest criticism of Israel ever uttered by a sitting, top-tier US official.

Addressing a reported Israeli government-funded online influence campaign aimed at sabotaging the administration’s diplomatic efforts, a furious Vance accused “certain elements within the Israeli government” of actively trying to derail peace negotiations and manipulate American public opinion. He went so far as to target the operators behind the foreign-backed campaign, telling them directly to “go to hell.”

Yet, even as fierce criticism of Israel reaches the very apex of American politics, a profound, schizophrenic rupture divides Washington. While the American public, influential media personalities, and top-tier politicians are openly turning against Israel’s unbridled violence, the traditional power structures continue to toe the line.

This is explicitly evident in Congress, where establishment politicians remain busy acting as defense contractors for Tel Aviv. Lawmakers are quietly pushing forward with Section 219 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2027. Far from distancing the US from the ongoing regional bloodbath, this legislation aims to permanently integrate and synchronize the US and Israeli militaries under a joint “Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative.”

This institutional blind spot is why the entire alliance is beginning to look utterly ridiculous.

Traditional foreign policy theory views Israel as an American ‘vessel’ or ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’\ in the Middle East, policing the region on behalf of Western hegemony. Whether that was ever true is highly debatable. Today, the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the relentless war on Iran, and the escalating aggressions against Lebanon and Syria have yielded zero strategic value to the American people. Instead, the United States has paid a massive financial and moral largesse to fund bloody regional wars that disrupt the global economy and make Washington a direct, complicit partner in the destruction of the Palestinian people.

Yet, the American administration continues to offer unquestioning support, with the exception of occasionally leaked, manufactured accounts of ‘tense’ phone calls between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. No matter the physical, economic, or reputational damage inflicted on the US, Washington continues to march blindly toward the precipice.

To believe this subservience is a recent phenomenon is to misunderstand history. For many, the physical detention of Congressman Khanna by Israeli forces evokes the memory of Rachel Corrie – the 23-year-old American peace activist who was brutally crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer in Rafah on March 16, 2003, while peacefully shielding a Palestinian family home from demolition. In both cases, the message from Tel Aviv was clear: American status offers no protection.

Yet, this dependency runs deeper, rooted in the 1967 USS Liberty incident. During the Six-Day War, Israeli forces launched a relentless two-hour attack on an unarmed US intelligence ship, killing 34 American sailors and wounding 171. Instead of demanding accountability, the Johnson administration accepted Israel’s excuse of a “mistake” and covered up the truth to protect its ally. This established a decades-long precedent: Washington would act as a political and military shield for Israeli actions, even at the cost of American lives.

It is often argued that Israel’s stranglehold on American policy stems entirely from the financial power of its lobby in Washington, particularly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Conventional wisdom holds that AIPAC’s true dominance as the ultimate kingmaker began in 1981, when it waged a historic, ferocious battle to block President Ronald Reagan’s proposed sale of AWACS early-warning surveillance aircraft to Saudi Arabia.

But the USS Liberty incident occurred long before the lobby wielded such immense power. The truth is that the US government has simply lost control of the very creature it has nurtured and shielded for decades. Blaming this dependency solely on campaign contributions no longer suffices; the rot is far deeper. It is driven by a deep-seated fear and trepidation among American politicians who have spent their entire careers learning that political survival requires absolute obedience to Tel Aviv.

This is precisely why JD Vance’s recent remarks are so critical. It proves that the armor of absolute impunity is cracking, and the language of genuine, systemic criticism of Israel has officially been normalized in mainstream political discourse.

There must be a profound political awakening in America. If the American public and its leaders fail to reclaim their foreign policy from this destructive alliance, the only path forward will be one of perpetual conflict, economic ruin, and endless war.

No route around Hormuz: Why West Asia’s pipeline alternatives fall short

The rush to bypass Hormuz leads back to the same problem: Every alternative route remains hostage to war, rival chokepoints, or political disputes.

Hussein Askary

JUL 23, 2026

https://thecradle.co/articles/no-route-around-hormuz-why-west-asias-pipeline-alternatives-fall-short

“The only alternative to the Strait of Hormuz is the Strait of Hormuz.” 

This blunt assessment, offered by an Iraqi expert in a recent interview, captures the central weakness in the rush to revive old pipeline schemes and promote new ones across West Asia. Since Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz after Israel and the US launched their second war against it in February 2026, the region has been flooded with proposals for alternative oil-export routes. 

Washington has encouraged these plans, while several governments have presented dormant or unfinished pipelines as strategic solutions. Yet the closer one looks at geography, markets, costs, capacity, and security, the clearer it becomes that most of these projects cannot substitute for Hormuz. 

Even if oil bypasses the strait, it still faces the rival chokepoint of Bab al-Mandab, where the Ansarallah-aligned armed forces have declared a maritime blockade against Saudi Arabia and attacked Saudi tankers. 

These expensive detours will remain exposed unless security in the Persian Gulf itself improves. Until the war on Iran ends and an inclusive regional security architecture is established, Iranian and Yemeni missiles and drones can reach the pipelines and loading terminals built to evade them.

Asia still runs through Hormuz

The first reason is straightforward. The Strait of Hormuz is the natural outlet of the Gulf energy system. In 2024, oil flows through the strait averaged about 20 million barrels per day (bpd), roughly one-fifth of global petroleum liquids consumption. The International Energy Agency (IEA) describes it as one of the world’s most important oil transit chokepoints. 

Most of this oil is not heading west. About 80 percent of the oil moving through Hormuz is destined for Asia, with China, India, Japan, South Korea, and other Asian economies as the principal buyers. The pattern is even clearer for liquefied natural gas (LNG). 

The US Energy Information Administration estimated that 83 percent of LNG moving through Hormuz in 2024 went from Persian Gulf exporters to Asian markets, especially China, India, and South Korea.

This market reality matters because many proposed alternatives send oil away from its main customers. Pipelines to the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, or the Levant may appear useful on a map, but they often move Gulf crude farther from Asia rather than closer to it. 

Commercially, building multibillion-dollar infrastructure to move oil westward, only to redirect it by sea toward Asian markets, is inefficient. If Hormuz is open, the direct route remains cheaper and faster. If it is closed by war, the underlying problem is not a lack of pipelines but the collapse of regional security.

Old routes, unresolved disputes

The older pipeline options illustrate the point. The Kirkuk–Baniyas pipeline once carried Iraqi oil across Syria to the Mediterranean. Built in the early 1950s, it had genuine strategic value in its time but has been largely inactive since it was damaged during the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. Washington is now backing efforts to revive the route, with US companies expected to play a role. Yet the project still requires extensive reconstruction and years of work before it can provide meaningful export capacity. 

Estimates for a full restoration and expansion to around 700,000 bpd run as high as $8 billion. It cannot answer an immediate crisis in Hormuz, and if regional peace is restored before completion, the commercial case for reviving it weakens sharply.

The Iraq–Turkiye pipeline faces a different but equally serious problem: politics. The route through the Kurdistan region to Turkiye’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan was repeatedly interrupted by disputes among Baghdad, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Ankara, and international oil companies. 

A 2023 arbitration ruling against Turkiye over unauthorized Kurdish exports led to a two-and-a-half-year shutdown. Flows resumed in September 2025, and exports have continued, but the route still depends on fragile agreements over contracts, payments, federal authority, and revenue sharing.

Its limited throughput and political vulnerability prevent it from becoming a structural replacement for a maritime passage that normally carries a vast share of the world’s seaborne oil.

The Iraqi pipeline in Saudi Arabia, known as IPSA, is another example of strategic nostalgia. Built in the 1980s during the Iran–Iraq war, it was designed to move Iraqi crude from the Basra region to the Red Sea. 

It stopped operating after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia expropriated it in 2001. Reopening the line would therefore require a Saudi–Iraqi political settlement over ownership and control, as well as a major technical assessment after decades of disuse. In other words, IPSA is not an available alternative; it is a diplomatic and engineering problem dressed up as a solution.

The proposed Basra–Aqaba pipeline is even more controversial. Its advertised purpose is to move Iraqi oil from southern Iraq to Jordan’s Red Sea port of Aqaba, bypassing Hormuz. Yet it has faced intense objections inside Iraq because of its projected cost, uncertain financing, and questionable strategic value. 

Since much of Iraq’s crude is sold to Asian customers, sending it westward to Aqaba would add distance and complexity rather than solve the basic market problem. The pipeline would also move Iraqi exports closer to another zone of instability, including the Israeli military sphere and the wider Red Sea security environment. 

A bypass route that merely exchanges one security risk for another is no solution. Iraq’s severe fiscal pressures also leave Baghdad poorly placed to finance such an expensive project, while international investors are unlikely to embrace it without strong political and security guarantees.

Bypasses within missile range

The existing Saudi and Emirati bypasses are more credible but still limited. Saudi Arabia’s East–West Pipeline, or Petroline, moves crude from the eastern oil region to Yanbu on the Red Sea. The UAE’s Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline carries oil from Habshan to Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman. 

These systems reduce exposure to Hormuz for Saudi Arabia and the UAE and have become important national energy-security assets. But they cannot replace the strait for the region as a whole. They offer little to Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Iran, or most Iraqi exports, and they do not solve the LNG problem, especially Qatar’s dependence on Hormuz. 

The IEA estimates that only 3.5 to 5.5 million bpd of spare pipeline capacity is available to bypass the strait. Neither Yanbu nor Fujairah are immune from attack; regional conflict has already shown the vulnerability of ports, tankers, and energy infrastructure. 

The crisis pipelines cannot solve

This is why the alternative pipeline debate is misleading. It treats the closure of Hormuz as a logistical puzzle when it is primarily a political and security crisis. If the Persian Gulf remains militarized and unstable, no pipeline network can fully protect exports. 

Pipelines cross vulnerable territory, depend on political agreements, and terminate at ports that can also be threatened. If Gulf security improves, however, Hormuz will almost certainly reopen because this serves the interests of producers and Asian consumers alike. 

Once that happens, the commercial rationale for many alternative pipelines will fade. Why spend tens of billions of dollars duplicating a natural route with unmatched capacity and direct access to the main buyers? 

The more honest conclusion is that alternative pipelines may offer limited resilience for individual states, but they are no strategic replacement for Hormuz. They are costly, slow, politically fragile, geographically inefficient, and in some cases obsolete before construction begins. 

The answer to the crisis is a security arrangement that keeps the Persian Gulf open, prevents attacks on shipping, and restores normal trade through the strait. 

Under such an arrangement, oil and LNG would continue to flow mainly to Asia by the most direct and economical route. Hormuz will remain indispensable, while the grand pipeline alternatives amount to expensive insurance policies against a crisis that only diplomacy and regional peace can resolve. 

Netanyahu Says War Will End When Iranian Government ‘Toppled or Sufficiently Weakened’

by Kyle Anzalone | Jul 26, 2026

https://libertarianinstitute.org/news/netanyahu-says-war-will-end-when-iranian-government-toppled-or-sufficiently-weakened/

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he expects the war against Iran to continue until there is regime change in Iran or it is weakened to the point that Tehran must bend to US and Israeli demands. 

On Sunday, Netanyahu was asked by Maria Bartiromo when the conflict in the Middle East will end. “I think when this regime is either toppled or it’s sufficiently weakened that it knows it has to end its nuclear program and has to change its course.”

After the start of the war, Netanyahu and President Donald Trump listed regime change in Tehran along with other ambitious goals, including eliminating Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. 

During the opening strikes of the conflict, the US and Israel assassinated the Iranian supreme leader and several other top officials. However, rather than causing the government to fall, the strikes created a “rally around the flag effect,” and the intelligence community believes the current administration in Tehran retains a strong hold on power.  

Additionally, Iran has secured strategic victories, such as establishing control over the Strait of Hormuz, that have weakened Trump’s position for negotiations. 

On Sunday, The New York Times reported President Trump decided against further escalating the conflict after military officials warned that the Department of War lacked the interceptors to defend US troops in the region.

NETANYAHU TO ARRIVE IN WASHINGTON AGAIN TO GIVE ORDERS TO TRUMP

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will arrive in Washington this week to give orders to his subordinate, Donald Trump, regarding the war against Iran. He will also ensure that the United States keeps the West under control, now that the Israeli government is carrying out ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and is likely preparing new incursions into Lebanon, having achieved the complete subservience of the Lebanese puppet government to Israel's wishes.

Following his master Netanyahu's orders, Trump has been bombing Iran for 14 consecutive days (after discarding the Memorandum of Understanding agreed with Tehran), hoping to achieve the surrender of the Iranian theocratic regime, but without success.

Therefore, faced with growing American aversion to continuing a war initiated and provoked by Israel, Trump tried to convince his cabinet to increase the intensity and frequency of attacks on Iran. However, Vice President Vance and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Cain pointed out that the United States' stockpiles of munitions, missiles, and interceptors were rapidly depleting without achieving the objective of Iran's surrender.

This is why Netanyahu, the true head and commander of the United States armed forces, is going to the White House for the seventh time during Trump's second presidential term to "impose order" on those who refuse to continue the destruction of Iran, regardless of the enormous military, economic, political, and social costs this is incurring for the United States.

Netanyahu, the Zionist oligarchs who have bought off the Trump administration and the pathetic US political class, and international Zionism in general, couldn't care less about the price the United States and the world must pay for international Zionism to achieve its goals of complete domination of the Middle East, total ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, and the abject subordination of the West and most of the Global South to Israel and the Zionist oligarchs who manipulate the world at will.

The Israeli government has decided that this is the best time to defeat those it considers its enemies, and to this end, it is prepared to force its Western lackeys to spend whatever it takes, to jeopardize their economies, and to have their citizens risk their lives for the interests of Israel and international Zionism. And all indications are that the lackeys of the US government and its European stooges will carry out their orders.

Israeli crackdown in occupied West Bank intensifies, settlers cause mayhem

The surge in violence comes after four Palestinians and two soldiers were killed in a gunfight on Friday.

By Al Jazeera Staff and Reuters

Published On 26 Jul 2026

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/26/israeli-crackdown-in-occupied-west-bank-intensifies-settlers-cause-mayhem

The Israeli military has launched an aggressive crackdown in the occupied West Bank, storming several towns and villages and detaining hundreds of Palestinians, amid escalating attacks by Jewish settlers, in a furious reaction to a shootout in a village near Nablus in which four Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers were killed.

The “wide-scale military operation” across the West Bank ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following the deaths of the soldiers intensified on Sunday, and settlers became bolder and more violent, marauding through villages, scrawling graffiti on buildings and attacking Palestinians.

Settlers tried to set two mosques ablaze. At one of those, the newly built Al-Rahma Mosque in the town of Qusra southeast of Nablus, settlers spray-painted slogans like “Jewish revenge” on the walls, said Abdel Azim Wadi, ⁠head of the village council in Qusra. Videos verified by Al Jazeera showed fire consuming the mosque.

The other mosque targeted in the arson attack was in the village of Kour, south of Tulkarem. Farid Jiyousi, a member of the village council, said three settlers tried to set the mosque ablaze at dawn, but worshippers put out the fire before it could reach the main area of the premises.

Reporting from Ramallah, Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh said Israeli forces raided Rafidia near Nablus.

“They were also spotted in Huwara, in the Nablus area, assaulting a paramedic and a man. There is video circulating from witnesses about that. The Palestine Red Crescent Society also reported an assault on one of its paramedics in Masafer Yatta, to the south of Hebron,” she said.

“So, all across the occupied West Bank there were overnight raids.”

Separately, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that 30 people were arrested in the village of Tal, where the confrontation that led to the crackdown took place, as well as 14 in Ramallah, five in Jenin, eight in Hebron, three in Bethlehem and six in Tulkarem.

Wafa also reported that Israeli forces launched a large-scale raid across the city of Jenin and several towns and villages in the governorate of Jenin, including Zababdeh, Faqqua, Yabad, Burqin, Jalbun, Qabatiya, Jalqamus, Silat al-Harithiya, al-Yamoun, Kafr Dan, Deir Abu Daif and Zububa.

The national broadcaster Kan reported that Israeli forces imposed strict traffic restrictions and numerous security checkpoints on main roads and at the entrances to villages across the occupied West Bank.

The firefight that triggered the punitive and oppressive military response took place on Friday in Tal, southwest of Nablus. Each side disputes the other’s account of the events that led to the confrontation. However, video footage confirms the testimony of villagers who say a group of about 20 Israeli settlers, many of them wielding rifles, approached Tal with the intent of causing violence.

Villagers came out of their homes to confront the settlers, and as tensions rose, Israeli soldiers arrived. One of the villagers grabbed a gun from a settler, and a shootout erupted.

Lieutenant Colonel Ella Waweya, a spokesperson for the Israeli army, said on Sunday that Israeli forces were raiding houses in Tal belonging to villagers suspected of involvement in Friday’s violence. She said the homes “were raided in preparation for their temporary sealing, as a preliminary step preceding their demolition”.

Israel has a policy of demolishing the homes of Palestinians accused of carrying out lethal attacks, a practice rights groups condemn as collective punishment that violates international law.

Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, said Israeli settlers are not being held accountable for their crimes. “We’re seeing an increase in direct war crimes,” she told Al Jazeera.

Bennis said Israel’s distinction between settlers and soldiers is false.

“Some of the settlers are themselves part of the Israeli military. They serve in the reserves. They are armed by the military. Many are trained by the military. They’re all using US-provided arms. So, this distinction is not a very important one. They are all supported by the Israeli state,” she said.

“And what we’re seeing here is a decision that they make to deliberately commit war crimes. So, we’re seeing collective punishment. We’re seeing attacks on hospitals.”

Israeli forces and settlers intensified their attacks in the occupied West Bank after October 7, 2023, when the genocidal war on Gaza began. Since then, they have killed at least 1,185 Palestinians, including more than 250 children. At least 12,652 Palestinians have been wounded and more than 24,000 have been detained.

As of July 1, 2026, 9,299 Palestinians remain in Israeli jails, of whom 3,244 are held without charge.

The United Nations and rights groups have criticised Israel for a lack of accountability, saying settlers are rarely prosecuted and Israeli soldiers are seldom convicted.

The latest violence also comes just three months before general elections in Israel.

Opinion polls suggest Netanyahu could lose power. Landgrabs and accelerating the establishment of new illegal settlements sit well with his right-wing support base.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said Israel plans to build 763 new units in the illegal Eli settlement, south of Nablus.

Meanwhile, hundreds gathered in Tel Aviv on Saturday to protest the surge in settler violence and the military crackdown in the West Bank.

Israeli police arrested nine protesters, saying the demonstrations had gone ahead without authorisation and had begun to “disrupt public order and block the roadway”.

Why Israel now sees Turkiye as a strategic threat

Ankara’s rising value to Washington is strengthening its regional hand, while exposing the limits of its confrontation with Tel Aviv. 

Turker Erturk

JUL 24, 2026

https://thecradle.co/articles/why-israel-now-sees-turkiye-as-a-strategic-threat

In practical terms, neither Turkiye nor Israel currently poses an existential threat to the other. Their relationship is also far older and more deeply rooted than the hostile rhetoric of recent years suggests. Turkiye recognized Israel on 28 March 1949, less than a year after its establishment, becoming the first Muslim-majority state to do so.

An old partnership behind the hostility

Relations during the Erdogan era have repeatedly deteriorated at the diplomatic and rhetorical levels, yet their strategic and commercial foundations proved remarkably durable. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan supported the US-led “Greater Middle East” initiative and publicly described Turkiye as one of its co-chairs. Ankara also played an important role in the wars and regime-change operations that reshaped Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

On the night of 6 September 2007, Israeli aircraft struck the suspected Al-Kibar nuclear facility in Syria’s Deir Ezzor province during Operation Orchard. External fuel tanks were later found in the Turkish provinces of Hatay and Gaziantep, indicating that the aircraft had crossed Turkish airspace on their return. Ankara protested the violation, while then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert later apologized in the event that Israeli aircraft had entered Turkish territory.

Economic ties also survived successive political crises. Even during Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, Ankara initially maintained trade despite mounting domestic criticism. Turkiye formally halted direct imports and exports with Israel in May 2024, but Azerbaijani crude continued to reach Israel through the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan Pipeline and the Turkish Ceyhan Port. The distinction allowed Ankara to defend its embargo while oil transit continued beyond the scope of direct bilateral trade.

Israel’s growing hostility toward Turkiye therefore stems from a wider geopolitical concern, rather than any immediate military threat. Washington’s need for Ankara has increased across the Black Sea, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Levant. Israeli leaders fear that the resulting expansion of Turkish influence will eventually undermine their own strategic position.

NATO member Turkiye occupies the junction between several theaters central to US policy. It is essential to western efforts to contain Russia in the Black Sea and Caucasus, limit China’s reach into Central Asia, and pressure Iran across West Asia. 

Its geography, defense industry, control of energy corridors, and large, combat-experienced armed forces have made it increasingly difficult for Washington and NATO to bypass.

Tel Aviv wants to curb Turkish power at the same time that Turkiye is becoming more valuable to Israel’s principal patron. As Ankara’s position within the US-led order strengthens, Israeli efforts to contain it risk disrupting Washington’s wider regional plans.

Washington’s indispensable frontline

The US understands this tension and has tried to keep both states within a shared strategic framework. US Ambassador to Turkiye Tom Barrack has taken an unusually expansive regional role, acting at times less like a conventional envoy than Washington’s troubleshooter across Turkiye, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. A major part of that role has involved preventing Turkish–Israeli tensions from escaping US control.

Ankara’s own political vulnerabilities limit its room for maneuver. Erdogan’s government faces a deep domestic legitimacy crisis, intensified by pressure on opposition parties, the imprisonment of political rivals, and the steady erosion of rights and freedoms. 

The support it receives from US President Donald Trump therefore carries added value. That dependence constrains how far Ankara can move against Israel, regardless of the severity of its public rhetoric.

The present dispute nevertheless extends across several fronts: Gaza and Palestine, the security order taking shape in Syria, energy routes and maritime claims in the Eastern Mediterranean, and the broader contest for influence across West Asia. Together, these disagreements have begun to affect the balance between two states that Washington still needs to keep on the same side.

At the same time, the US is turning its own global strategy into NATO strategy, placing the alliance’s members behind objectives drawn largely in Washington. The strains produced by that effort were visible at the NATO summit held in Ankara on 7–8 July 2026.

Washington wants NATO to intensify pressure on Russia, align more closely against China, assume a larger role in the Ukraine war and confrontation with Iran, and shift more attention toward the Asia-Pacific. It also wants alliance members to increase military spending and expand their capabilities, with much of that expenditure flowing back into the US arms industry.

Trump’s longstanding hostility toward European dependence on US protection shaped the summit. His demand that European states assume more responsibility and raise defense spending dominated the proceedings. The summit did not resolve the disputes that have deepened between Washington and its European allies over the past two years. It contained them long enough to produce new commitments.

NATO 3.0 takes shape

Washington presents rearmament as the solution to these divisions. Its immediate objectives are to push NATO members toward spending five percent of gross domestic product on defense and to construct a self-reinforcing cycle of weapons purchases, with US manufacturers among the principal beneficiaries. The Ankara Declaration pledged €70 billion (around $79.7 billion) in military equipment, assistance, and training for Ukraine in 2026, while summit announcements included tens of billions of dollars in new procurement.

Turkiye’s role in this emerging “NATO 3.0” is steadily expanding. It is being positioned as a frontline state entrusted with important tasks by Washington. This helps explain why the US has little interest in political change in Ankara and remains willing to overlook the government’s authoritarian practices when larger strategic interests are at stake.

For Washington, Turkiye’s value lies above all in its geography and military capacity. It sits at the intersection of the Black Sea, Eastern Mediterranean, and West Asia, making it a central pillar of NATO’s southern front. 

Its access to the Black Sea, borders with Syria, Iraq, and Iran, gateway to the Caucasus and Central Asia, growing defense sector, and extensive combat experience give it a role few other alliance members can reproduce.

Turkiye is consequently moving beyond its traditional position as a state on NATO’s flank. In the alliance’s evolving posture, it is increasingly treated as both a central hub and a forward base. The establishment of a new headquarters at the 6^th Corps in Adana and NATO’s Maritime Component Command on the Bosphorus are clear indications of this.

Trump used the Ankara summit to signal a possible reset in US–Turkish defense relations. He pledged to lift the CAATSA sanctions imposed over Ankara’s purchase of the Russian S-400 system and indicated that Turkiye could return to the F-35 program. Discussions also continued over US approval for engines and other components required by Turkiye’s KAAN fighter project. 

These steps remain subject to legal, congressional, and technical obstacles, and negotiations are continuing. Yet the political direction is significant. Israel has openly opposed any restoration of Turkiye’s access to the F-35, fearing that it would alter the regional balance and erode the qualitative military advantage on which Israeli strategy depends.

The limits of confrontation

Could the increasingly hostile rhetoric between Turkiye and Israel lead to war, and how would the US and NATO respond? 

A direct, large-scale war remains theoretically possible but highly unlikely in the near term. Indirect confrontation, proxy escalation, or an unintended clash in Syria presents a more immediate danger. 

Several factors restrain both sides. They share no land border, while each possesses powerful armed forces capable of imposing high costs on the other. Washington and other major NATO states would work to prevent a direct conflict that could destabilize the Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia. 

The global consequences for energy routes, commerce, and financial markets would give outside powers an additional reason to intervene before escalation reached that point.

The more plausible routes to conflict lie elsewhere. Turkish and Israeli aircraft could confront one another in Syrian airspace, while faulty intelligence or miscalculation could produce a limited military incident. Drone or missile strikes, special-forces operations, and escalation through regional armed groups offer both sides means of applying pressure without formally declaring war. 

Political, diplomatic, and intelligence competition will therefore continue to intensify even if open war is avoided. Syria and the Eastern Mediterranean remain the most likely arenas for a limited clash. 

If fighting expanded, NATO’s response would depend heavily on where and how it began. A direct Israeli attack on Turkish territory could bring Article 5 into play, although the clause leaves each ally to determine the assistance it considers necessary and does not guarantee military intervention. 

A clash involving Turkish forces in Syria, or a war Ankara was judged to have initiated, would be far less likely to trigger collective defense. Washington would probably move first to contain the conflict while maintaining its bilateral military and intelligence support for Israel, leaving Turkiye with little assurance of meaningful NATO backing. 

Ankara has few options for offsetting that imbalance. Its growing defense ties with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are unlikely to develop into a separate collective-security pact resembling NATO’s Article 5, as Turkiye’s membership of the alliance limits its ability to enter a competing military bloc. 

Ankara’s value to Washington is growing, its defense industry is expanding, and its reach across neighboring theaters is becoming harder for Israel to ignore. Yet its place within the US-led alliance structure continues to limit how far it can challenge Israel when the interests of the two states collide. 

Iranian missiles show deadly precision amid US-Iran war escalation

The killing of three US soldiers at a Jordan base shows Iran maintains the ability to exact a deadly toll in grinding conflict.

By Joseph Stepansky

Published On 22 Jul 2026

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/22/iranian-missiles-show-deadly-precision-amid-us-iran-war-escalation

An Iranian attack on a United States military site in Jordan that killed three US soldiers has shown the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s (IRGC) ability to inflict a deadly toll five months into the US-Israel war on Iran.

The strikes on Friday were the first time US soldiers have been killed by Iranian attacks on US military installations since March 1, just hours after the US and Israel launched the war.

While the Pentagon has not released full details of the attack, analysts say the deadly incident underscores an uncomfortable reality for Washington: Despite barrage after barrage of US air strikes, Iran maintains the military capability it needs to continue a prolonged asymmetric war.

“Iran’s military capabilities remain formidable. It has reconstituted faster than expected,” Jennifer Kavanagh, the director of military analysis at the Defense Priorities think tank, told Al Jazeera.

“Its attacks are becoming more precise over time, likely with the help of Russian and Chinese intelligence,” she added.

“Iran’s military is certainly not ‘combat ineffective’ as the Pentagon has suggested. It has sustained significant damage but is learning and adapting over time.”

Why is Iran still able to kill US soldiers?

Iran’s ability to continue to kill US personnel in the region is due to a combination of many factors, undergirded by the location and design of the US military sites spread across the Middle East and the Gulf, according to Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer at the School of Security Studies at King’s College London.

Some 50,000 US forces are operating from “exposed, fixed bases within range of Iran’s increasingly sophisticated missile and drone arsenal”, he said.

Many personnel are “often housed in semi-permanent facilities, designed primarily to protect against rockets, mortars and improvised explosive devices, rather than precision ballistic missiles carrying large warheads”.

Such strikes, therefore, can “cause substantial damage”, he said. Near misses can lead to traumatic brain injuries from “blast overpressure”, while interceptions can cause injury from falling debris.

All told, the official US military death toll in the war stands at 18, including the seven soldiers killed in the March 1 Iranian strikes on a tactical operations centre in Kuwait and the Prince Sultan airbase in Saudi Arabia.

Aside from the three killed in Jordan, the military has said other deaths were not the direct result of Iranian strikes. They include six airmen killed in an accidental refuelling crash in March and, most recently, an Army sergeant killed during the controlled detonation of a downed armed drone in Iraq.

About 500 US soldiers have been wounded since the war began, with about 220 structures and pieces of major US military equipment or buildings reported damaged or destroyed following the breakdown of the ceasefire on July 8.

Overwhelming air defence

Iran has relied on its “increasingly sophisticated” missile and drone arsenal to overwhelm US air defence systems, including the surface-to-air Patriot systems and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) ballistic missile intercepting system, according to Krieg.

It has developed ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as armed drones, that can approach targets “along different trajectories and different speeds”. When coupled with decoys and dispersed sites, they can render the US defence systems less effective.

“Even when most incoming weapons are destroyed, a small number penetrating the defensive shield can inflict considerable casualties,” Krieg said.

Mona Yacoubian, the director of the Middle East programme at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said that Iran appeared to show “greater intent” in attacking US military assets in the recent round of attacks, compared with the early weeks of the war.

“I think what’s important to underscore is that this does appear to be a new pattern in terms of, I would argue, the intensity of Iranian strikes that are seeking to hit US military targets,” she said.

“That seems to be much more the case now than even in other periods of the war.”

Yacoubian added that the toll of the latest strikes may be a result of increased accuracy, the degradation of US defence and radar systems, or more “lucky hits” from the sheer scale of attacks. It may be a combination of the factors, she said.

As of Wednesday, the US and Iran have traded strikes for 11 consecutive days.

Iran’s army said it most recently targeted F-15 warplanes, drone preparation sites and a helicopter storage facility at the Prince Hassan and King Faisal bases in Jordan. Bahrain’s military also said it had intercepted several aerial attacks from Iran.

The US, meanwhile, repeatedly struck sites along the Strait of Hormuz in the most recent escalation, with Central Command (CENTCOM) saying on Tuesday that US forces had targeted “Iranian military operations centres, maritime capabilities, aircraft hangars, drone storage facilities, and military logistics infrastructure”.

‘A number of tools’

On Tuesday, US Senators grilled Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on his claims that Iran’s military had been “functionally destroyed” in the war.

“Mr Secretary, you stated that on day 14 of this conflict, on the second week of the conflict, you stated that Iran’s military had been ‘destroyed,’ and ‘made combat ineffective.’ Was that an accurate statement, yes or no?” Senator Jon Ossoff asked.

Hegseth maintained the war had been a “historic military victory”, with Iran’s navy, air force and “defence industrial base” rendered ineffective.

However, he conceded, “We never expected they would stop having capabilities to shoot. The question is at scale against opponents like the United States of America.”

But Jason Campbell, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and former Pentagon official, said the US attacks appear to indicate that not only does Iran maintain its missile and drone capabilities, but that it may be tapping advanced weapons not previously used.

“We’re aware that Iran had a number of tools that it had refrained from using early on in the war that it could bring to bear later on if it chose to,” Campbell said.

“And one of those is using some of its larger, more capable ballistic missiles that can be, as they’ve just demonstrated, fired with great precision and have greater capability to evade air and missile defences”.

Campbell said that “US senior leadership, at many stages along this way, has vastly either overstated the degree to which Iran and Iran’s capabilities have been degraded, or focused on aspects of Iran’s capabilities that really are not very prominent in their ability to carry out their own strategic objectives”.

Patrick Bury, a senior associate professor at the University of Bath and former NATO research analyst, agreed that Iran will likely be able to continue to exact a deadly toll on US assets and personnel for the foreseeable future, despite Washington’s vast military superiority.

“The real issue American military power faces is that there is an asymmetry of cost imposition,” he told Al Jazeera.

“It’s well documented that the Iranian stockpiles, particularly of drones and missiles, are much cheaper to produce and fire than the kit needed to intercept them at the moment.”

“That’s why Iran is able to inflict damage in the strategic sense”, he added, “and why this problem isn’t going away at all”.

Or, as security lecturer Krieg explained: “Iran does not need to defeat the United States militarily; it needs only to penetrate its defences often enough to impose human, operational and political costs on America’s regional presence.”