Editor's Note: This column was co-authored by Hugh Hallman.
Since President Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia, and especially after he removed Michael Waltz from the position of National Security Advisor, almost all media outlets have raised concerns and posted analyses claiming Donald Trump is sidelining Israel. A recent headline and story from the Wall Street Journal summarizes innumerable other statements, commentaries, and op-eds: “Trump’s Middle East Tour Boosts Arab States at Israel’s Expense.”
To such pundits, the Trump administration’s various releases about negotiations with Iran further fuel such concerns. As they are based on several misconceptions—some the fault of thinking wrongly about American foreign and defense policy, the role of the president, and especially the way this president views foreign policy—the concerns are unfounded.
First, too many have viewed and spoken of America’s problem with Iran as if the United States’ position is the same as Israel’s and as if Israel’s foreign policy is or should be the same as that of the United States. Almost anytime Iran is brought up by American media, Israel is mentioned within the first few sentences, as if the United States only has a problem with Iran because Israel does. But foremost, Donald Trump is not the president of Israel; he is the President of the United States. And too many forget the United States has much to worry about in its own right when it comes to Iran.
Let us not forget, the current regressive regime of the then-modernizing Iran stormed in and turned the country backward by hundreds of years. That regression was birthed with a calling card: Seizing the United States Embassy and taking over 50 American hostages for 444 days. There was then a successive series of acts of terrorism against Americans, from the slaughter of 241 Marines in Beirut to the murder of 19 Americans in Khobar. There was the death sentence-fatwa pronounced on Salman Rushdie, nearly executed three years ago, the maiming and killing of hundreds of Americans in Iraq, and the bomb plot to take place in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. and at other D.C. locations.
There have been assassination and hostage-taking attempts on numerous dissidents and journalists in America and assassination attempts on former United States National Security Advisors, Secretaries of State, and, indeed, Donald Trump himself. And there are the now-routine chants of “Death to America,” from the schools to the streets to the parliament in Iran. As the Ayatollah of Iran, Ali al-Khamenei, puts it: “Death to America is not just a slogan, it’s a policy.” Now they want a nuclear weapon. To quote Maya Angelou, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.”
President Trump’s position, rightly, is that the U.S. has a problem with Iran (or ten problems) and Israel has a problem with Iran, albeit a really big one—as the existential threats against Israel are much more tangible given the geographies. President Trump’s position is to let Israel do what it needs to for itself (which is the right view, at long last), and when it does, there likely will be ancillary and direct benefits to the United States. Concomitantly, the United States will do what it needs to do and, as it does so, there likely will be ancillary and direct benefits to Israel.
In candor, the more Israel is independent, and the less the U.S. and Israel are yoked together or seen as the same country, the better for both. Almost all the goals are the same, but it hurts both countries to be identified as one, and it confuses Americans and Israelis when the discussions over Iran conflate America’s and Irael’s positions, interests, and strategies.
As for other perceived daylight between the United States and Israel, let us not forget our own leadership team and their views. The Ambassador to Israel, Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, and Secretary of Defense (Mike Huckabee, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth) are the three most important American players in all things Middle East and Israel. Now add Mike Waltz at the United Nations (the locus of so much defense of Israel from the United States in the past). Each is not just highly supportive of Israel, when each speaks of Israel, the voice heard is even stronger than that of Bibi Netanyahu.
Finally, in his major speech in Saudi Arabia, President Trump raised his desire that the Saudis continue on the path of the Abraham Accords, which proposes that Muslim (not just Arab) nations normalize relations with Israel. To his hosts in Saudi Arabia, President Trump had to know doing so was or would be highly controversial at the least, as it must have been to all the Department of State staff who vet these speeches and wring their hands over upsetting allies and would-be allies. Nonetheless, President Trump wanted to assert his position and plant the flag of yet greater normalized relations between the Arab (and broader Muslim) world and Israel, with the United States taking a side and stance for exactly that, as it did in the first Trump administration.
President Trump’s direct outreach to the Arab world, and his efforts to bring in Arab states from the cold (with a strong set of reservations about Qatar), is not only a good thing, but will serve, especially in the case of Saudi Arabia, as a further bulwark against Iran. None of this is anti-Israel or an incipient distancing between the United States and Israel. Rather, it is the righting of a series of misconceptions and mistaken priorities where American concerns have been previously blurred, and Israel’s security has been wrongly outsourced.
Seth Leibsohn is the host of the Seth Leibsohn Show and a Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute.
Hugh Hallman is an author and the Managing Director of Hallman & Affiliates, a legal firm practicing at the intersection of law and international affairs.
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