American presidents and their emissaries insist on the US’s deep and permanent ties with Israel. The truth is that the relationship is deeper in some areas than others, and that it has always changed with the political seasons. We are seeing another of those changes of season now. The forecast is stormy.

The Netanyahu government is attempting to redefine Israel’s borders, its judiciary and its definition of who is a Jew. The Biden administration has explicitly declared against the first two of these moves. Most Jewish American organisations are more agitated about Netanyahu’s who-is-a-Jew move. Either way, no one here is happy.

In that distant planet known to Americans as the Outside World, US and Israeli interests are also at odds. President Biden’s recent visit to Kyiv represents a doubling-down of his administration’s intent to keep fighting Russia in Ukraine. It also makes it a domestic issue in next year’s presidential elections.

The Democrats now own the Ukraine war just as the Republicans owned the fiasco of the second Iraq war.

Zelensky Biden (5)

Presidents Zelensky and Biden meeting in Kyiv

Israel has not explicitly declared against the war in Ukraine. Whether under Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid in a left-right coalition or Netanyahu with a hard-right coalition, Israel has kept a deliberate distance.

The vast majority of American media depicts the Ukraine war as a triumphant revival for the Western alliance.

But the fact is that the US has failed to rally the non-Nato troops, just as it has failed to destroy Russia’s economy. The US no longer has the same leverage over the rest of the world.

Israel’s cautious position is not much different from those of India or Hungary, two other American allies that have abstained from sending the kind of military support that the UK, for instance, has rushed to provide.

Or from Turkey, which has drifted into being America’s frenemy in Nato, and is also playing both sides in Ukraine.

We should be heartened that, despite Israel’s political breakdown, its security establishment has its priorities in order. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is not a direct or even an indirect threat to the State of Israel.

The regime in Iran is, though, a consistent threat to Israel’s survival. Russia has supported Iran’s nuclear programme for decades. Russia holds the balance of power in Syria.

Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting on the restoration of residential infrastructure in the border areas destroyed during emergency situations, via a video conference at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence, outside Moscow, on February 1, 2023. (Photo by Mikhail KLIMENTYEV / SPUTNIK / AFP) (Photo by MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images)

Russian President Vladimir Putin on 1 February 2023 (Photo by MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images)

Netanyahu used to boast about his personal rapport with Putin. Less so, recently.
It’s common to hear that Israel and the US are on a “collision course”.

This might apply to Israel’s domestic arrangements, over which Democratic administrations in particular seem to assume an imperial concern.

But, as I’ve written frequently over the last couple of years, the diplomatic reality under Obama and Biden has been divergence.

Two Democratic presidents, Obama and Biden, diverged with Israel over Iran and its nuclear programme.

Both Democratic presidents were wrong.

The Biden administration, beset by Russia and China, is doing its best to pretend that its strategic folly over Iran will have no consequences. Too late.

This administration tried and failed to isolate its Iran-Israel-Russia policy from its Russia-Iran-Ukraine policy. Russia was already backing Iran in Syria, and Iran is now supplying Russia in Ukraine. Israel and Iran are on the verge of open war.

The US and Iran are on opposite sides in the war in Ukraine.

If the American and Israeli positions on Iran are now converging, it is because the two theatres, Ukraine and the Middle East, are coalescing as one American policy collapses into another.

If Israel and Iran go to war, American support will be conditioned on Israeli convergence with the US in Ukraine.

Link those two theatres of war, factor in Russia and Iran’s deepening ties with China, and who-is-a-Jew will be the least of anyone’s worries.