From Lobby to Hegemony

The American researcher and one of the most prominent scholars in international relations and U.S. foreign policy, Jeffrey Sachs, does not hesitate, in his commentary on the American campaign against Iran, to state that Israel today fully leads America in the Middle East. This is something many now regard as one of the core assumptions in analyzing U.S. foreign policy. Previously, two of the most prominent American theorists in international relations, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, had written extensively about the major and dangerous role of the Zionist lobby in shaping U.S. policies toward the region.

Today, there is an old–new variable in this equation: the Neo-Evangelical movement, which has increasingly intertwined with Christian Zionism and the Jewish-Zionist lobby. Together, these forces form powerful, influential actors within the corridors, lobbies, and decision-making kitchens of political power and policy production in the United States. Netanyahu himself did not hide this reality in his meeting, months ago, with representatives of the Christian Zionist movement, attributing to them the credit for laying the foundations of Zionism since the nineteenth century — a historical fact also affirmed by the Israeli historian Ilan Pappé.

Describing Christian Zionism and the role of the Neo-Evangelical as an old–new variable reflects the fact that this movement is not new, nor is its influence on American politics. What is new is that it has now become a direct, active, and almost openly declared actor in shaping U.S. policies toward the Middle East. This has become public even inside the United States itself, leading to internal conflicts within the Republican Party, which constitutes the main political incubator of these currents, as well as within the MAGA movement (which played an active role in President Trump’s campaign).

From another angle — and here lies the core of the matter — although Israel has, for decades, constituted one of the strategic interests in U.S. Middle East policy, the value of this interest and the nature of the U.S.–Israeli relationship has not always been constant. They witnessed a qualitative shift and unprecedented convergence beginning in the era of Henry Kissinger in the early 1970s, as documented by Martin Indyk in his famous book Master of the Game: Henry Kissinger and the Art of Middle East Diplomacy. Key figures in American politics, such as Kissinger and Indyk himself, played a major role in defining U.S. interests in ways that served Israel. One clear example is the “dual containment” strategy of the 1990s, which treated both Iraq and Iran as problems and built U.S. policy around containing both simultaneously, preventing either from becoming a strong regional power for fear of threatening Israel’s interests.

The situation changed after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which opened the door to the awakening of the Iranian giant. Following the Arab Spring, Tehran became a major regional actor amid the decline — and even collapse and fragmentation — of the Arab regional order. Israel subsequently redefined the sources of threat, making Iran, Shiite political Islam, and Sunni political Islam the primary threats, instead of the Arab nationalist regimes that had played that role in the past.

Over the past 25 years, since the rise of the neoconservatives to power, it has become clear that the Israeli issue has grown stronger in influence and dominance within right-wing, conservative, and neoconservative currents. The role of Christian Zionism has risen, and its ties with neo-Christian movements have deepened, forming a large and effective internal political force within these circles. This force led to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and its destruction, and after the events of September 11 it promoted the idea of changing Middle Eastern regimes to make them democratic. U.S. policy thus shifted from protecting regimes to changing them, through initiatives such as Colin Powell’s project to expand democracy in the Islamic world, and the theory of “creative chaos” adopted by the same Washington circles.

With Trump, another crucial factor emerged: populist right-wing politics, along with the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant base. Questions of political and social identity rose to the surface, and the Christian Zionist current rode this wave, becoming today the dominant force within the White House. It now shapes the contours of a new strategy: transforming the entire region so that Israel becomes the hegemonic power. The second Trump phase (his second term) differs from the first in that this current has become more entrenched and more controlling. Trump himself even moved away from presenting the “Deal of the Century” peace plan he offered in his first term, because the current phase is designed to transform Israel into a regional power, end the Palestinian cause, and exploit the condition of complete geopolitical weightlessness in the Middle East in favor of the Israeli factor.

In conclusion, despite everything that can be said about the shift in the thoughts of the younger generation in America toward Israel — which is entirely true — and despite debates over the Zionist lobby, none of this has translated into a reduction of the influence and power that this current now possesses, more than at any time in the past.