The Rocky Future of the US-Israeli Special Relationship

After four harmonious years of US-Israeli relations, during which the Trump administration was closely aligned with the Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the US-Israeli relationship is bound to come under strain during the next four years of Joe Biden’s presidency. Although President Biden himself has always been a strong supporter of Israel since his early days in the US Senate, his administration’s policies and preferences will almost certainly differ substantially from those favored by the Israeli government— whether it is led by Netanyahu or Naftali Bennett (who is farther to the right than Netanyahu). On the hot-button issues of Iran’s nuclear program and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is already clear that the Biden administration is trying to reverse several of the policies of its predecessor—policies that the Israeli government enthusiastically supported. President Biden wants the United States to rejoin the 2015 nuclear agreement and get Iran to fully comply with it again. To do that, he will need to lift crippling US sanctions on Iran, which will be widely viewed in Israel as a dangerous concession to Tehran. By ending the