The Israel Lobby’s Responsibility for the Iran War
Advocates for the U.S.-Israeli special relationship
have played a special role.
By Stephen M.
Walt, a columnist
at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of
international relations at Harvard University.
News flash: The war in Iran is not going as expected.
I could say not going as “planned,” except that word seems completely
inappropriate in this case. As Americans and others experience yet another
Middle East debacle, they want to know who is responsible. It is vitally
important to place blame where it belongs, but equally important that those who
are not responsible not be wrongly accused.
Not surprisingly, some observers think this is a war being fought on Israel’s
behalf. As evidence, they point to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s statement that the administration knew Israel was going to
attack, anticipated that Iran might retaliate against U.S. forces in the
region, and therefore chose to preempt. Furthermore, Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu had been pushing hard for another war for months, and there are plenty
of pro-Israel pundits—like former Jerusalem Post editor in
chief and current New York Times columnist Bret Stephens—who
have repeatedly called for war on Iran in the past and are defending the
current war even now.
This raises an obvious question: To what extent does
the “Israel lobby” here in the United States also bear some responsibility for
the war? Before I consider that question in detail, however, two notes of
caution are in order.
First, it is still early days, and more evidence for
how and why this happened is bound to come to light in the months ahead, along
with the usual efforts to kick up dust and shift the blame if things go further
south. Unlike the 2003 war in Iraq, this conflict was not preceded by a long
campaign to sell the war to the American people, so it’s harder to know exactly
who was pushing for it and who was raising doubts.
Second, in trying to gauge the impact of any lobbying
effort, it is essential to define it properly. As John Mearsheimer and I made
clear in our 2007 book on this topic, the Israel lobby is not defined
by religion or ethnicity, but rather by the political positions its members try
to advance. It is a loose coalition of groups and individuals whose common aim
is maintaining a “special relationship” between the United States and Israel.
In practice, this special relationship means providing Israel with generous
military and diplomatic support no matter what it does. The lobby is comprised
of both Jews and gentiles, and many American Jews are not part of the Israel
lobby and do not support the special relationship. Moreover, some key parts of
the lobby (such as Christian Zionists) are not Jewish.
It would therefore be both analytically wrong and
dangerously divisive to blame the American Jewish community for the war, just
as it was wrong to blame that community for the 2003 war in Iraq. Indeed, back
in 2002-03, surveys showed that Jewish Americans were less supportive of
going to war against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein than the American
population as a whole. Although Israel’s Jewish People Policy Institute
(JPPI) recently
released a poll purporting
to show that a majority of Jewish Americans supports the current war against
Iran, these results are from a carefully selected and decidedly unrepresentative
group of
respondents and are almost certainly bogus. (As a side note, it’s irresponsible
for JPPI to release such dubious findings, as it risks fueling precisely the
sort of antisemitism that all of us want to prevent.) It is also worth noting
that J Street, the largest mainstream liberal pro-Israel group, and
progressive groups like New Jewish
Narrative and Jewish Voice
for Peace have already
issued public statements condemning the war.
So who is responsible?
First and most obviously, President Donald Trump, and
his collection of feckless and incompetent loyalists. Like George W. Bush in
2003, he made the decision, and he bears the ultimate responsibility for the
consequences. And, of course, Netanyahu, who is trying to establish Israeli
hegemony over the entire region but has no chance of doing so without active
U.S. support, bears direct responsibility as well.
But no president acts entirely alone—whatever Trump
wants us to believe—and it is well established that Trump can be swayed by what
he hears from those around him. And Trump’s inner circle includes many people
who are staunch defenders of Israel, longtime beneficiaries of Israel-related
campaign contributions, or both. Trump’s two Middle East envoys—Steve Witkoff
and Jared Kushner—are both ardent supporters of Israel, as is U.S. Ambassador
to Israel Mike Huckabee. Rubio, who also serves as national security advisor,
was a reflexive proponent of the special relationship during his Senate career
and one of the biggest
recipients of
pro-Israel campaign funding. Current White House chief of staff Susie
Wiles worked as a
consultant for
Netanyahu’s 2020 reelection campaign. Except for Director of National
Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who questioned excessive U.S. support for Israel in
her pre-MAGA career, it is hard to think of anyone in the upper reaches of the
administration who publicly favors distancing the United States from Israel.
Second, Trump himself has acknowledged his own debt to
ardent pro-Israel figures such as the late Sheldon Adelson and his widow,
Miriam. As Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick recount in a recent article in the Nation (and
a soon-to-be-published
book), Trump singled
out Miriam Adelson—the largest single contributor in recent U.S.
elections—during his address to the Knesset in October 2025, and even
speculated that she might love Israel more than the United States. Similar
concerns may also explain why some Democratic Party leaders have been reluctant
to criticize Israel for starting the war or the Trump administration for
joining in and have focused instead on the failure to plan the war more
carefully.
Third, this war did not come out of nowhere. To be
sure, the United States and Iran have been at odds for decades, and neither
Israel nor the lobby is solely responsible for the suspicion with which each
country views the other. Nonetheless, lobby groups such as AIPAC, the
Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Zionist Organization of America, and
United Against Nuclear Iran have worked to demonize Iran over the years,
prevent U.S. companies from doing business there, and derail prior attempts by
former Iranian presidents Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammed Khatami to
improve relations. (For evidence on the latter point, check out chapter 10 of
our 2007 book.) Unlike J Street, these groups worked overtime to thwart the
2015 agreement that reduced Iran’s enrichment capacity and nuclear stockpile,
and they eventually persuaded Trump to tear up the deal in 2018 even though
Iran was in full compliance. Had Trump not done so, of course, there would be
much less reason to worry about Iran’s nuclear program today.
Finally, by making it almost impossible for either
Democratic or Republican presidents to put meaningful pressure on Israel, the
lobby has enabled Netanyahu to engage in “reckless driving” all over the
region, whether in Israel’s sustained efforts to oppress its Palestinian
subjects or in its repeated attacks on Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Iran, and
even Qatar. Although Steven Simon is correct to say that Israel did not “compel” the U.S.
into this latest war—the Trump administration jumped in voluntarily and
enthusiastically—the lobby’s role in defending the special relationship and
enabling Israel to keep disturbing the peace helps us understand why Americans
keep finding themselves embroiled in costly conflicts far from home.
The bottom line: As this latest disaster unfolds,
Americans and others will rightly want to hold those responsible to account.
They should focus on the specific groups and individuals—from the president on
down—who embraced Israel’s approach to the region and managed to convince
themselves that yet another orgy of violence would be in the U.S. interest.
Until the lobby’s influence is reduced and the United States establishes a more
normal relationship with Israel, such episodes are likely to be repeated, making
the United States look like a heartless bully and leaving all of us worse off.
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