Trump's Middle East moves revive the question of who's in charge
US President Donald Trump's tour of the Middle East last week - which included stops in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE - marked a notable departure from his previously unflinching alignment with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In the days leading up to the visit, Trump negotiated a ceasefire with the Houthis without requiring Yemen to halt its attacks on Israeli targets, and authorised direct talks with Hamas that offered humanitarian aid into Gaza in exchange for the release of a US-Israeli captive.
These moves, made over Israeli objections, have unsettled longstanding assumptions about the balance of power between Washington and Tel Aviv - a debate that has occupied historians, academics and international relations experts for decades.
On the one hand, some view the relationship as one of manipulation by the Zionist lobby to serve the interests of the Israeli regime.
A powerful argument for this view was advanced by political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in their seminal book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.
They included numerous examples stretching back decades that demonstrate the enormous power of the Zionist lobby in the US, particularly over policymakers and the political class in Congress - across both major parties - as well as successive US administrations.
For example, they cite the influence of the lobby and the neoconservatives, who almost always favour Israel, in the George W Bush administration's lead-up to the invasion of Iraq after the 9/11 attacks.
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Moreover, the deep involvement of the US in the so-called global "war on terror" and regime change in the Middle East for over two decades cannot be easily explained by pure US interests or geopolitical imperatives alone.
Israel played a major role in promoting and fostering these policies.
Dog or tail?
In his book Jewish Power, journalist JJ Goldberg explains the essence and configuration of the lobby's power in advancing Israeli interests.
This influence has also been surveyed meticulously in a recent book by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, which traces the Zionist lobby's manipulation of foreign policy in both the US and UK for over a century.
On the other hand, American author and intellectual Noam Chomsky has argued in several of his books that it is the US that manipulates and controls the Zionist regime in order to serve its own geopolitical interests across the Middle East.
In this account, Israel is merely one tool in the broader US toolbox used to ensure American primacy and hegemony in the region and beyond.
There are indeed historical precedents supporting this argument. One dates back to the 1956 invasion of Egypt by Israel, France and the UK, when US President Dwight D Eisenhower ordered Israel's withdrawal from the Sinai one week before his re-election.
Another is the 1991 Gulf War, during which the US demanded that Israel not respond to Iraqi Scud missile attacks to avoid upsetting its Arab allies.
So the critical question of which side manipulates the other is not only relevant but vital in any analysis seeking to understand how events unfold in the Middle East during crucial moments.
Put differently: is Israel the tail wagging the dog, or has the US always been the one holding the leash?
Military outpost
Since the 7 October 2023 Toufan Al-Aqsa attack, Israel has exploited the event to launch a genocidal war and ethnic cleansing campaign against the Palestinians in Gaza.
US strategic interests require a powerful Zionist regime as an advanced military outpost and regional hegemon
Among its objectives is to solve a long-term demographic problem and counter its deteriorating image as an apartheid state. At the same time, it has pursued aggressive settlement expansion and land grabs in the West Bank to create facts on the ground and consolidate its "Greater Israel" project.
For 15 months, the Biden administration carried out a policy that was not only indistinguishable from Israel's, but also actively sustained the genocidal nature of its aggression.
Whether this policy resulted from Zionist lobby pressure or from perceived US geopolitical interests hardly matters. Former President Joe Biden is on the record saying: "If there were not an Israel, we'd have to invent one."
In other words, US strategic interests require a powerful Zionist regime as an advanced military outpost and regional hegemon to protect American strategic, security and economic interests.
This view was understood by Zionist leaders from the start.
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In his autobiography, the first president of the Zionist state, Chaim Weizmann, wrote: "A Jewish Palestine would be a safeguard to England, in particular in respect to the Suez Canal...what the position would have been in the Near East, not for England alone, but for the world democratic cause, if we had not provided in Palestine a foothold for England."
The Zionist project was founded first for the benefit of the British Empire, and later integrated into the service of American global hegemony.
Known quantity
Throughout Israel's genocidal campaign since October 2023, the US has fully backed the regime - providing it with the most deadly arms, unlimited funding, political cover and diplomatic protection - causing extensive damage to its reputation and harming its status as the primary superpower in charge of maintaining regional stability and global order.
Even though it is ludicrous to deny the power of the Zionist lobby over US Middle East policy, the question of which side leads the other persists, especially in light of President Donald Trump's recent policy shifts.
Trump began his second term not only as a known quantity, but as the most pro-Israel president in US history. During his first term (2017-2021), he recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital - in defiance of decades of declared US policy - and moved the US embassy there.
He also recognised Israeli "sovereignty" over the Syrian Golan Heights, another gross violation of international law.
Moreover, he severely weakened the Palestinian Authority (PA) by closing the PLO's Washington office and cutting most US aid to the PA, Palestinian NGOs, charities and UN aid agencies that serve Palestinian refugees, including Unrwa.
Notably, it was the PLO that had legitimised the futile Oslo process, which the US controlled since 1993, giving Israel time to consolidate its grip on the West Bank.
Trump is a transactional president. He likes to present himself to his "MAGA" base as a consequential leader with clear accomplishments.
He is unwilling to waste time on Netanyahu's illusory promises of bringing the Palestinian resistance to its heels - promises he has repeatedly failed to deliver.
Breaking ranks
After Israel violated the 19 January 2025 ceasefire - which Trump's team helped broker - by resuming its genocidal assault on Gaza on 18 March, Trump gave Netanyahu two additional months to achieve his objectives, which ultimately went unrealised.
In fact, Trump surprised him during his 7 April White House visit by announcing the start of US-Iran nuclear negotiations.
Netanyahu had been discussing military strikes against Iran with Trump's national security adviser, Michael Waltz. Trump rejected those plans and removed Waltz from his post, choosing instead to pursue diplomacy - to Netanyahu's frustration.
To Netanyahu's utter surprise, Trump backed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and called on Israel to reach a settlement with the Turks
During the same visit, Netanyahu sought Trump's backing for his Syria policy, which the Zionist regime has pursued since the ouster of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.
After destroying most of Syria's remaining military assets, Israel launched a series of air strikes and a ground invasion, seizing over 400 sqkm in addition to the 1,800 sqkm it already occupies in the Golan Heights. The main objective has been not only to weaken Syria, but to fragment it into four ethnic or sectarian regions - Druze, Alawite, Kurdish and Sunni.
But such a dangerous plan runs directly counter to Turkey's geopolitical interests and to preserving Syria's territorial integrity. Turkey, the main beneficiary of the regime change in Syria, has embraced the new government. Meanwhile, several Israeli ministers issued threats against Turkey.
But to Netanyahu's utter surprise, not only did Trump back Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in this spat, he also announced the imminent withdrawal of some US troops from northern Syria and openly called on the Israeli prime minister to seek an understanding and reach a settlement with the Turks.
Unilateral moves
Over the last three decades, policy differences have been extremely rare in the relationship between the US and Israel. Consequently, Trump's position forced the Zionist regime to begin a negotiated settlement with Turkey in Syria to avoid escalation or direct conflict.
In addition, despite Israeli objections, Trump announced the lifting of all US and international sanctions on Syria during a recent visit to Saudi Arabia - a move prompted by intense lobbying from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Erdogan.
Trump's economic goals also factored in. Eager to tout success to his supporters, Trump sought trillions of dollars in Gulf arms sales and commercial deals.
But Saudi Arabia has refused to normalise relations with Israel amid its ongoing genocide in Gaza. Saudi demands for a normalisation deal included US security guarantees and a civilian nuclear reactor. Months of Biden administration efforts to broker a deal between the two sides failed due to Israel's refusal to back a political resolution with the Palestinians.
Trump, however, dropped the requirement of normalisation and proceeded with a visit to Saudi Arabia, where he signed the largest arms deal in history - worth $142bn - and agreed to a civilian nuclear reactor.
The Israelis, who opposed both deals, were stunned but unable to prevent them. Had this been a Democratic administration initiative, Netanyahu would likely have rallied Republican support to scuttle the deal. But because it came from a Republican administration without Israel's backing, he was unable to do much about it.
Trump delivered another blow to Israel by announcing a 6 May ceasefire agreement with the Houthis in Yemen, without requiring them to stop their attacks on Israeli targets.
The Houthis had been targeting Israel for months in an effort to stop the genocide in Gaza. The US spent over $1bn trying to halt these attacks, with little success. Trump cut his losses and abandoned Israel on that front.
Tactical not strategic
Across party lines, US policy in the region has been to give Israel a free hand in dealing with non-state actors like Hamas and Hezbollah, while restraining it when it comes to state actors like Iran, due to broader American strategic interests.
Even so, Trump gave Netanyahu months of leeway to conduct a genocidal campaign in Gaza - including indiscriminate bombing and a starvation policy that has denied over two million Palestinians access to food, water, medicine and fuel since 2 March.
Yet Trump was keen to secure the release of Israeli captives - a low-hanging fruit he could claim as a foreign policy success.
But his attempts were met with Netanyahu's intransigence and insistence on achieving his "total victory", which would almost certainly prolong the war and seriously jeopardise the lives of the captives.
So, ahead of Trump's Gulf tour, his team opened direct talks with Hamas - a US-designated terrorist group - to secure the release of Edan Alexander, the last surviving US-Israeli dual citizen among the captives.
After sustained pressure from Qatari and Egyptian mediators, and a direct promise from US negotiators to provide substantial aid to starving Palestinians in Gaza, Hamas released Alexander on 12 May 2025, the eve of Trump's visit to the region.
The release was presented as a gesture of goodwill towards the US president.
The move infuriated Netanyahu and his right-wing cabinet, as it exposed their willingness to sacrifice the captives in pursuit of ethnic cleansing and the colonisation of Gaza under the Greater Israel project.
No reversal
Instead of celebrating the captive's release, many Israelis viewed Trump's intervention as a betrayal.
But no one should be deceived by such policy reversals.
The Trump administration remains staffed with some of the most ardent Zionists of any US government. Whether these shifts signal long-term change remains to be seen.
Perhaps the ultimate litmus test of who leads whom in this relationship is whether Trump can force Israel to stop its genocidal war in Gaza
They appear more tactical than strategic, as the end goals remain the same, but the means may be shifting to serve American long-term interests in the Middle East.
Perhaps the ultimate litmus test of who leads whom in this relationship is whether Trump can force Israel to stop its genocidal war in Gaza.
That would be the moment of truth - to stand for US security and economic interests in the region, or to back an expansionist, messianic Greater Israel project.
That test may finally show whether the tail has been wagging the dog all along.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
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