The Israel Lobby Thesis Tested Against the Long View

Introduction

Few relationships in American foreign policy are as durable, expensive, politically protected, strategically consequential, and morally contested as the relationship between the United States and Israel. It has survived changes in American presidents, Israeli governments, regional wars, peace agreements, terrorism, political scandal, shifting public opinion, and profound changes in the international system.

The persistence of that relationship creates an obvious analytical problem. Does it persist because Israel is unusually valuable to the United States, or because unusually effective political organizations have persuaded or coerced American policymakers into supporting Israel beyond what American interests would otherwise justify?

John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt forcefully posed that question in The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy in 2007. Eli Clifton and Ian S. Lustick have returned to it nearly twenty years later in Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power, published in August 2026.¹

The newer book does not make the previous book obsolete. Mearsheimer and Walt supplied the fundamental causal thesis: the extraordinary American commitment to Israel cannot be adequately explained by strategic interests or moral considerations and therefore must be explained substantially by the political power of a loosely organized pro-Israel lobby. Clifton and Lustick now describe how that political power operates in the vastly changed campaign-finance, media, academic, and partisan environment of the 2020s.²

Both works identify genuine phenomena. The United States provides Israel with exceptional military assistance. Organizations committed to preserving that relationship possess substantial political influence. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and associated ideological organizations mobilize substantial financial resources, each pursuing what it regards as its own interests in supporting Israel or Israelis.

Israeli governments sometimes pursue policies opposed by American administrations while continuing to receive American assistance. American identification with Israel occasionally carries diplomatic and security costs in some parts of the world.

Defenders of the alliance accept those realities but none of those facts actually prove the central proposition necessary to complete what we here call the lobby thesis: “America in the Grip of a Foreign Power.”

Political influence is not synonymous with policy distortion.

To establish that American policy has been distorted, one must show not merely that the lobby affects policy but that the policy produced by that influence leaves the United States worse off than the policy a reasonably informed American government would otherwise pursue.

That requires an independent examination of Israel’s strategic value.

It also requires a counterfactual question almost entirely absent from political argument conducted in the heat of daily events:

What would probably happen over the next fifty years if the United States substantially disengaged from Israel?

That question requires a long view of historical consequences and invites an obvious question. Given the unusually volatile state of politics in both the United States and Israel, how can anyone predict policy decisions in either country over the next fifty years? Leaders must continually re-examine the question.

The relevant consequentialist inquiry is more nuanced: which realistically viable political ideology is likely, over generations, to preserve more human life, liberty, prosperity, stability, technological progress, and capacity for peaceful political correction than the alternatives?

I. Mearsheimer and Walt: The Foundational Argument

Mearsheimer and Walt’s original 2006 paper and expanded 2007 book challenged one of the most durable assumptions in American foreign policy.

They accepted that Israel had possessed strategic usefulness during parts of the Cold War but argued that the contemporary “special relationship” went far beyond anything required by normal strategic calculation. The United States provided unusually large amounts of military and economic support, regularly defended Israel diplomatically, and continued supporting it even when Israeli governments adopted policies Washington officially opposed.³

Their explanatory variable was the “Israel lobby,” which they defined broadly rather than as a single organization. It included lobbying groups, political donors, Christian Zionists, policy intellectuals, think tanks, journalists, organizations and individuals seeking to move American foreign policy in a direction favorable to Israel.

In a later defense of their thesis, Mearsheimer and Walt explicitly argued that America’s special relationship was due primarily to lobbying influence rather than ordinary American public identification with Israel. They rejected the proposition that favorable public opinion, religious affinity, and cultural identification adequately explained the extraordinary degree of American governmental support.⁴

Their lobby thesis consists of several interlocking claims.

• Israel’s strategic value to the United States is exaggerated.
• American material and diplomatic support are unusually extensive and unusually unconditional.
• The relationship contributes to anti-American radicalization.
• Lobby organizations make criticism of Israel politically expensive and restrict the range of policies politicians are willing to consider.
• Pro-Israel policymakers and organizations encouraged American military confrontation with countries including Iraq and Iran.
• Unconditional American protection encourages Israeli policies that may ultimately damage Israel itself, particularly settlement expansion and rejection of meaningful compromise with Palestinians.⁵

Those individual claims remain analytically important even if one disagrees with Mearsheimer and Walt’s argument and conclusions. They force defenders of the alliance to answer questions rather than recite a slogan. One claim, however, should be separated from the rest. Mearsheimer and Walt argued that pro-Israel policymakers and organizations encouraged American military confrontation with Iraq and Iran. That is a historical argument about particular wars, especially the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It is not the same question as whether the standing U.S.–Israel security relationship is independently valuable today. The Iraq War had a large American strategic debate of its own—residual containment after 1991, weapons of mass destruction, September 11, and regional order—in which Israel and its American supporters were one influence among several, not a sufficient cause. Iran is different. It is an overlapping adversary of both countries, and Tests One, Four, and Seven treat that overlap as a current operational fact rather than as proof that a lobby marched the United States into a war it would not otherwise have considered. This essay therefore does not treat 2003 as the test of the alliance. It tests the relationship that still exists: intelligence, defense technology, regional balance, economic reciprocity, costs, and the likely consequences of substantial disengagement.

It is not sufficient to say that Israel is “our ally.”

What does the United States receive from the alliance, what does it pay, and what would happen if the relationship were substantially reduced?

II. Clifton and Lustick: The Updated Case

Clifton and Lustick’s Israel’s Lobby moves the argument from the political environment of 2007 into that of 2026.

Its subtitle, America in the Grip of a Foreign Power, signals that its thesis is stronger than a conventional study of interest-group influence. The publisher describes the book as an argument that the lobby’s influence works against American national interests and threatens American freedom.⁶

The political machinery they describe is substantially different from the machinery Mearsheimer and Walt examined.

AIPAC historically exercised much of its electoral power indirectly. Since 2021 it has created or supported electoral organizations able to participate much more visibly in candidate financing and independent expenditures.

The scale is substantial. FactCheck.org reports that the AIPAC-associated United Democracy Project spent approximately $61.4 million during the 2024 cycle. Federal Election Commission data show that UDP received approximately $107.5 million between January 1, 2025 and July 31, 2026 and disbursed approximately $77.2 million during that period.⁷

These numbers demonstrate political power, not foreign control.

An American citizen, contributing money to elect a candidate because that citizen believes supporting Israel serves American interests, is participating in American politics. The fact that the resulting policy also assists another country does not transform the donation automatically into foreign direction.

The same constitutional system permits political advocacy favoring Ukraine, Armenia, Cuba, Taiwan, environmental regulation, labor unions, petroleum companies, pharmaceutical companies, churches, abortion rights, gun rights, and thousands of other causes.

The relevant question is therefore not whether pro-Israel organizations influence policy. They clearly do, but the more salient question is whether their influence causes the United States to adopt policies that would fail a rational cost-benefit analysis.

III. What the Lobby Thesis Still Must Prove

The existence of a powerful pro-Israel political constituency is not in serious doubt. The remaining question is causal. Does that political power create a relationship that would otherwise make little strategic sense, or does it reinforce a relationship that has substantial independent value to the United States?

For purposes of answering that question, it is useful to distinguish three assertions that are sometimes allowed to blur together. First, pro-Israel organizations influence American policy. Second, that influence distorts American policy by producing outcomes contrary to American interests. Third, the United States is therefore, in Clifton and Lustick’s provocative formulation, “in the grip of a foreign power.” Each assertion requires more evidence than the one before it. The first is readily demonstrated. The second can be established only by comparing the costs and benefits of the policy itself. The third requires evidence not merely of influence, but of meaningful foreign direction or subordination.

The balance of this essay therefore does not treat seven propositions as seven claims formally enumerated by Clifton and Lustick. Rather, it applies seven empirical tests to the combined lobby thesis developed by Mearsheimer and Walt and updated by Clifton and Lustick. Those tests ask whether Israel supplies strategic capabilities the United States values independently of lobbying; whether intelligence cooperation yields identifiable American benefits; whether defense cooperation produces technology useful to American forces; whether Israel strengthens or destabilizes the regional balance; whether the economic and innovation relationship is reciprocal; whether the costs of aid and entanglement outweigh those benefits; and what a substantially disengaged United States would probably face over the next several decades. The tests also bracket the 2003 Iraq War. Even if that war was a mistake, and even if many pro-Israel advocates favored it, a wartime coalition in 2003 cannot decide whether intelligence integration, missile-defense co-development, and regional deterrence remain in the American interest a generation later.

This approach matters because campaign spending cannot answer any of those questions. A lobby can be extraordinarily effective and still advocate a policy that is independently rational. Conversely, a strategically useful ally can still receive excessive subsidies or political protection. The analysis must therefore separate the existence of the alliance from its degree, terms, and particular policies.

IV. Test One: Does Israel Have Independent Strategic Value to the United States?

The strongest version of the lobby thesis is easiest to sustain if Israel’s strategic value is modest. If the United States receives little from the relationship, exceptional support demands another explanation. But the public record makes the categorical version of that argument increasingly difficult to maintain.

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) reported in July 2026 that close U.S.–Israel cooperation reflects assessments across several presidential administrations and Congresses that the two countries share strategic interests, particularly in countering hostile regional states and militant organizations. An earlier CRS report stated the reciprocal point even more directly: Israel has provided benefits to the United States through intelligence sharing, military technology, and other innovations. These are institutional assessments rather than proof that every component of the relationship is beneficial, but they establish that the strategic rationale is not merely a slogan supplied by AIPAC.⁸⁹

Israel is unusually useful because it combines characteristics that are rarely found together in a small regional ally: a sophisticated intelligence service, a large indigenous military relative to its population, a mature defense industry, extensive cyber and technology sectors, democratic institutions capable of sustaining long-term agreements, and decades of operational experience against many of the same missile, drone, terrorist, cyber, and proliferation threats that concern the United States. Israel therefore contributes capabilities rather than merely requesting protection.

That distinction is important. The United States does not obtain the same value from every friendly government in the Middle East. Some partners provide geography, energy, basing, or diplomatic access. Israel adds a technologically sophisticated military establishment that can independently detect, deter, and attack threats. The relevant comparison is not whether Israel can replace the United States, which it cannot, but whether American security would be easier or harder to maintain if that capability were absent or strategically detached from the United States.

The answer is particularly clear in relation to Iran and Iran-aligned armed groups. CRS’s 2026 assessment describes Israel as having achieved major operational successes against Iran and elements of its regional “axis of resistance,” even while noting substantial humanitarian, diplomatic, military, and escalation costs. From the American perspective, the value lies not in endorsing every Israeli operation, but in the existence of a powerful local military capable of imposing costs on actors that also threaten American forces, maritime commerce, and regional partners. The United States would otherwise have to tolerate greater hostile capability, persuade another state to counter it, or generate more of the required military pressure itself.¹⁰

V. Test Two: Does Intelligence Cooperation Produce Identifiable American Benefits?

Intelligence is among the hardest elements of the relationship to evaluate from public sources because the most valuable exchanges are classified. That limitation should produce caution in both directions. Critics cannot reasonably assume that classified cooperation is worthless merely because its details are unavailable, while supporters should not invent unverifiable intelligence triumphs.

The public record nevertheless establishes both the breadth and the importance assigned to the relationship by American institutions. The State Department has described regular U.S.–Israel strategic dialogues and a Joint Counterterrorism Group through which the two governments address regional threats. More strikingly, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s reported FY2027 Intelligence Authorization Act called for expanded intelligence sharing with Israel on terrorism, cyber threats, sanctions evasion, missile and drone threats, proliferation, air and space awareness, and hostile state and nonstate actors. The committee text stated, as the sense of Congress, that Israel remains a critical security partner whose intelligence capabilities provide the United States a strategic advantage, and that timely Israeli intelligence has saved U.S. personnel and property in the region.¹¹¹²

That legislative language is not an independently audited measure of intelligence value. It is, however, highly relevant evidence of how the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence characterized the partnership in its reported FY2027 legislation, after years of access to classified reporting unavailable to the public. It also helps explain why the proposed legislation would require a documented national-security rationale for materially reducing intelligence exchanges with Israel.

Intelligence partnerships are valuable precisely because allies collect differently. Geography, language, human networks, technical sensors, operational access, and analytic specialties create information that the United States might obtain only at much greater cost, later, or not at all. CRS has explained generally that foreign intelligence partnerships can give the United States access to otherwise inaccessible targets, corroboration of sources, linguistic and cultural expertise, early warning, and joint operational capabilities. Israel’s location and sustained attention to Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, Syrian networks, missile programs, and regional proliferation make those general advantages unusually relevant.¹³

The strategic point is therefore modest but important: the public evidence does not permit a dollar valuation of Israeli intelligence, but it strongly contradicts the claim that the United States receives no meaningful security return. A rational American government has reasons, independent of campaign finance, to preserve intelligence integration with a capable service focused on overlapping threats.

VI. Test Three: Does Israel Contribute Military Technology and Operational Knowledge Useful to Americans?

Here the reciprocal value is unusually concrete.

The United States and Israel do not merely transfer finished weapons to one another. They jointly develop, test, improve, manufacture, and learn from complex systems. The U.S. Missile Defense Agency lists Israel as a partner in the deployed Arrow program, the Arrow System Improvement Program, development of David’s Sling, and Iron Dome co-production. In February 2026, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency and Israel completed a new David’s Sling test series built expressly around operational lessons from recent combat. In August 2026, the same agencies completed another Arrow test as part of a continuing multi-year development and upgrade program.¹⁴¹⁵

The U.S. Army itself purchased two Israeli-developed Iron Dome batteries as an interim cruise-missile-defense capability. The Army’s acquisition portfolio describes the system as addressing high-priority gaps in cruise-missile and counter-unmanned-aircraft defense and emphasizes its proven record against real-world threats. Israel is therefore not simply the recipient of American missile-defense technology; Israeli-developed technology has been acquired to protect American forces.¹⁶

Operational learning extends beyond hardware. In 2025 the U.S. Army Center for Army Lessons Learned published a study of Israeli subterranean operations in Gaza because the scale and complexity of underground warfare there presented lessons relevant to future American operations against adversaries that may use tunnel networks to offset U.S. technological superiority.¹⁷

This relationship is likely to become more rather than less important. Cheap drones, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, artificial intelligence, autonomous targeting, cyber operations, and low-cost saturation attacks increasingly challenge expensive traditional defenses. Israel’s small geography and persistent exposure force rapid cycles of development and adaptation. American access to those cycles has strategic value even when Washington disagrees with the political decisions that produced a particular operation.

VII. Test Four: Does a Strong Israel Improve or Worsen the Regional Balance?

This is the most consequential and the most contested test. Israel can deter adversaries, but it can also escalate conflicts. American support can reassure Israel, but it can also reduce the cost of Israeli risk-taking. A serious defense of the alliance should concede both mechanisms.

The positive strategic case begins with deterrence. A state that possesses overwhelming incentives to defend itself and substantial indigenous capacity to do so complicates the calculations of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and other armed actors. That military strength also reduces the likelihood that the United States must itself become the principal conventional defender of Israel. Israel may require weapons, intelligence, resupply, and at times direct American defensive or offensive support, but it contributes the overwhelming majority of the manpower and military infrastructure devoted to its own territorial defense.

The regional effect extends beyond bilateral U.S.-Israel cooperation. The Abraham Accords demonstrated that several Arab governments were willing to normalize relations with Israel while pursuing trade, technology, security cooperation, and responses to shared regional concerns. The Accords’ declaration explicitly linked normalization to cooperation, human dignity, religious freedom, science, medicine, commerce, peace, security, and prosperity. CRS has subsequently described expanding possibilities for intelligence sharing, air and missile defense, maritime security, and other forms of cooperation among Israel, the United States, and Arab states that have normalized relations with Israel.¹⁸¹⁹

This creates an important strategic possibility: Israel can function not merely as a bilateral American client but as one node in a regional security architecture. Integrated early warning, missile defense, maritime surveillance, cyber defense, and intelligence cooperation allow several states facing similar threats to share burdens. For the United States, a network of capable regional partners is generally preferable to a system in which Washington must provide every layer of deterrence directly.

The danger is that Israeli power can also frighten neighboring governments, especially when Israeli operations appear unconstrained or when Washington and Jerusalem have divergent objectives. CRS noted this tension explicitly during the 2026 conflict with Iran. The American objective should be a strong Israel integrated into a regional system, not an Israel so dependent that it cannot act and not an Israel so strategically isolated that it has no reason to consider American or Arab interests.

The most durable equilibrium is neither weakness nor blank-check support. Israel should be strong enough that adversaries cannot plausibly expect to destroy it, while the United States retains sufficient influence to discourage unnecessary escalation. That combination is more likely to produce normalization than either an embattled Israel fearing abandonment or an unconstrained Israel believing American support is automatic.

VIII. Test Five: Is the Economic and Technological Relationship Reciprocal?

Military aid dominates public discussion because it is visible and appropriated by Congress. The private and technological relationship is less politically dramatic but increasingly important.

The United States Trade Representative reports that U.S. goods and services trade with Israel totaled approximately $54.2 billion in 2025. The U.S.–Israel Free Trade Agreement, which entered into force in 1985, was the first free-trade agreement signed by the United States and remains the institutional foundation for bilateral trade and investment. Israel is not among America’s largest trading partners, so trade volume alone cannot justify a special strategic relationship. The more significant feature is the concentration of research-intensive industries within a relatively small economy.²⁰

OECD data published in 2026 show Israel with the highest research-and-development intensity in the OECD area, at approximately 6.8 percent of GDP in 2024. That exceptional concentration of R&D creates opportunities in precisely the fields likely to shape future economic and military power: cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, semiconductors, biotechnology, autonomous systems, energy, water, medicine, sensors, and advanced defense technology.²¹

The BIRD Foundation offers a measurable example of how this cooperation produces reciprocal commercial value. Established by the two governments in 1977, BIRD pairs American and Israeli companies for joint product development. By 2026 it had supported more than 1,200 collaborations; BIRD reports that approximately $465 million invested in joint projects helped generate more than $10 billion in direct and indirect revenues. In May 2026 alone, newly approved partnerships joined Israeli firms with American companies in cybersecurity for critical infrastructure, agricultural artificial intelligence, medical diagnostics, genetics, cell therapy, and precision mental-health treatment.²²²³

These programs matter strategically because innovation is not a zero-sum transfer from Washington to Jerusalem. American firms obtain technology, partners, product opportunities, and access to a dense R&D ecosystem; Israeli firms obtain access to the much larger American market, capital base, manufacturing capacity, and research infrastructure. The resulting products can be sold and used globally. In this dimension, the relationship is plainly good for both countries and can create benefits for third countries that buy or adopt the resulting technologies.

The long-term significance may be larger than the current trade numbers suggest. If economic power over the next fifty years depends increasingly on computation, autonomy, biotechnology, cyber resilience, water, energy efficiency, and precision defense, then access to an allied innovation ecosystem with unusually high R&D intensity becomes a strategic asset rather than merely a commercial convenience.

IX. Test Six: Do the Costs of the Alliance Outweigh the Benefits?

Any convincing argument must count the costs rather than dismiss them.

Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of American foreign assistance since World War II. Under the current 2019–2028 memorandum, the United States committed, subject to congressional appropriation, to $3.3 billion annually in Foreign Military Financing and $500 million annually for cooperative missile defense. Recent wars have produced additional emergency expenditures and have consumed scarce American interceptors and munitions. CRS has specifically noted concerns about the availability of high-end missile-defense interceptors after intense regional fighting.²⁴

There are also diplomatic costs. American association with Israeli policies can damage Washington’s standing among Arab and Muslim publics and provide propaganda to extremist movements. The 9/11 Commission identified Palestine and U.S. support for Israel among several grievances exploited by Osama bin Laden, alongside the American military presence in the region, Iraq, support for regional governments, and a much broader ideological hostility to Western political and social order. The relationship therefore carries a real reputational and security cost, even though it would be a mistake to reduce jihadist hostility to a single cause.²⁵

Finally, alliances create entanglement risk. Israel’s assessment of an Iranian missile or nuclear threat may rationally be more urgent than Washington’s because Israel is smaller, closer, and more vulnerable. The United States must consider global energy markets, forces throughout the region, European and Asian allies, great-power competition, and worldwide munitions requirements. The countries can share adversaries without having identical thresholds for war.

These costs are substantial enough to justify limits and reform. They are not sufficient to establish that the alliance is a net liability. The correct comparison is the cost of the existing relationship against the cost of replacing the capabilities it supplies or accepting the risks that would emerge if those capabilities were detached from the United States.

The aid structure itself is already moving toward a test of that proposition. CRS reported in June 2026 that American and Israeli officials were discussing a successor arrangement for the period after the current MOU expires in FY2028. Prime Minister Netanyahu and some Members of Congress have proposed phasing out direct Foreign Military Financing and shifting the emphasis toward joint programs, research and development, and co-production. The current MOU also phases out Israel’s historic privilege to spend a portion of Foreign Military Financing (FMF) on domestic procurement, meaning regular American military financing is increasingly tied to purchases from the U.S. defense sector.²⁶²⁷

That transition is desirable. Israel is now wealthy and technologically sophisticated enough that permanent grant dependence is increasingly difficult to defend. The future relationship should be judged by reciprocal output: intelligence gained, systems developed, production shared, threats deterred, American forces protected, trade generated, and private innovation accelerated. A partnership that becomes less subsidy-dependent and more jointly productive answers one of the strongest criticisms in the lobby literature without sacrificing the underlying strategic relationship.

X. Test Seven: What Would Substantial American Disengagement Actually Produce?

The lobby thesis is incomplete unless the alternative policy is tested against the same standard as the existing one. It is easy to list the costs America would avoid by disengaging. The harder task is to identify the costs that would replace them.

A useful counterfactual does not assume diplomatic rupture. Suppose instead that over the next decade the United States allows direct military grants to expire, sharply reduces preferential arms and intelligence arrangements, ends routine participation in Israeli missile-defense development, withdraws from regional security integration centered on Israel, and makes clear that Israel should henceforth be treated as an ordinary friendly state rather than a special strategic partner.

1. Israel would survive, but become more strategically autonomous.

This is the first point that both supporters and critics should recognize. Israel has a large advanced economy, a mature defense industry, high R&D intensity, a substantial reserve military, and an undeclared nuclear deterrent. SIPRI continues to count Israel among the world’s nuclear-armed states and estimates that it is modernizing elements of that force. American disengagement would therefore be unlikely to make Israel helpless. It would likely make Israel more self-reliant.²⁸

Defense spending would likely rise. Domestic munitions and interceptor production would likely expand. Israel would likely seek more freedom to export technology and deepen relationships with Europe, India, and Asian powers. The United States might reduce its obligations, but it would likely also reduce its ability to influence the strategic choices of a still-powerful state.

2. Reduced subsidy could produce restraint; reduced assurance could produce preemption.

This is the key ambiguity in the disengagement case. Critics are right that American support can lower the cost of Israeli military action. If Israel had to finance every operation and replenish every weapon without privileged American help, Israeli voters and leaders might become more cautious.

But reassurance works in the opposite direction. A state confident that a powerful ally will help deter existential threats can afford to wait longer, share intelligence, accept negotiations, and coordinate responses. A state convinced that it will be alone in a future emergency has stronger incentives to strike threatening capabilities before they mature. Disengagement therefore could produce either more restraint or more preemption. Any analysis that assumes only the first mechanism is incomplete.

3. American leverage would likely decline with American support.

Washington cannot simultaneously eliminate the instruments of influence and assume that its influence will remain unchanged. Arms supply, intelligence cooperation, joint planning, diplomatic support, technology integration, and access to American decision makers all give the United States leverage. If those relationships shrink substantially, Israeli leaders have fewer reasons to defer to American preferences when the two governments disagree.

The United States will continue to have Middle Eastern interests even if it downgrades Israel. The safety of American forces, freedom of navigation, nuclear proliferation, global energy markets, terrorism, and competition with China and Russia will not disappear with an aid agreement. A future crisis could therefore leave Washington with the same regional interests but less influence over one of the region’s strongest militaries.

4. Nuclear deterrence would likely become relatively more important.

A less assured Israel would likely have stronger reasons to emphasize its independent ultimate deterrent. Even without a change in formal nuclear policy, greater reliance on survivable strategic forces could affect calculations in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, and elsewhere. The result need not be immediate proliferation, but it could increase incentives for regional governments to reassess their own strategic options. In a period when SIPRI already warns that nuclear-armed states are modernizing and arms-control constraints are weakening, deliberately increasing the relative importance of nuclear self-help would be a serious long-term risk.²⁹

5. Competitors would likely seek the strategic and technological space vacated by the United States.

A technologically capable country does not become geopolitically unattached simply because Washington chooses distance. Israel would likely diversify partnerships. Some of that diversification would likely involve friendly states; some could create new Chinese or other access to infrastructure, research, capital, or dual-use technology that Washington currently has influence to limit. The United States would gain distance from Israeli policy but could lose access to Israeli technology and lose leverage over who else obtains it.

6. Regional partners would likely have to rebuild security arrangements without the same American-Israeli core.

The Abraham Accords and subsequent security discussions have created possibilities for integrating Israeli early warning, air defense, cyber capability, and intelligence with Arab partners under an American umbrella. Those arrangements remain politically fragile, and Israel’s own conduct can weaken them. But dismantling the American-Israeli core would not automatically produce a superior regional architecture. It could instead force Arab partners either to spend more independently, seek other patrons, or accept greater vulnerability to missiles, drones, proxies, and maritime disruption.

7. The United States could end up returning with fewer advantages.

The Middle East has repeatedly frustrated American attempts to treat it as strategically optional. Even if direct U.S. dependence on imported Middle Eastern oil declines, global energy prices, the Strait of Hormuz, maritime trade, proliferation, terrorism, and great-power competition remain capable of pulling Washington back into regional crises. The danger of disengagement is therefore not simply abandonment of Israel. It is that the United States might relinquish intelligence, technological access, regional integration, and political leverage only to discover later that its underlying interests never disappeared.

The counterfactual does not prove that every existing element of the alliance should be preserved, but it does illustrate something more important: the realistic alternative is not the present relationship minus its costs. It is a different regional system with different costs, some of which could be larger, harder to control, and more dangerous over time.

XI. Why the Relationship Is Good for Israel, the United States, and the Wider World

The affirmative case can now be stated without romanticizing either country.

The relationship is good for Israel because American partnership improves deterrence, gives Israel access to advanced weapons and intelligence, supports joint defense development, enlarges its commercial and scientific opportunities, and embeds a small state in a much larger network of friendly military and economic relationships. American involvement also gives Israel incentives to coordinate rather than rely entirely on unilateral action.

The relationship is good for the United States because Israel supplies scarce regional capabilities: intelligence focused on overlapping threats; a technologically sophisticated indigenous military; operational experience against missiles, drones, cyber threats, terrorism, and subterranean warfare; an advanced R&D economy; and a partner capable of helping build regional security networks. American support is costly, but the United States purchases more than goodwill. It purchases access, interoperability, influence, technology, and the strategic advantage of having a capable local ally that has powerful independent reasons to resist several threats that also concern Washington.

The relationship can be good for the wider world when it reduces incentives for interstate war and converts regional relationships from rejection and military confrontation toward trade, recognition, shared defense, research, and investment. The Abraham Accords are not a complete peace settlement and have not eliminated regional conflict, but they demonstrate that normalization with a secure Israel can produce cooperation among states that once treated permanent hostility as inevitable. When adversaries conclude that a state cannot be destroyed at acceptable cost, diplomacy and commerce become relatively more attractive.

The technological effects also extend beyond national security. Joint American-Israeli programs in medicine, agriculture, water, energy, cybersecurity, biotechnology, and industrial research create products and knowledge that can be used outside both countries. BIRD’s commercial record illustrates how a strategic relationship can generate private benefits that diffuse through markets rather than remain confined to government.

Finally, Israel’s political character matters, though it should not be idealized. Freedom House continues to classify Israel itself as a free parliamentary democracy with competitive elections and generally functioning independent institutions, while also documenting serious pressures on judicial independence and significant inequalities affecting minorities. Those deficiencies deserve criticism. They do not erase the strategic significance of working with a society in which governments change through elections, courts constrain officials, private enterprise and research flourish, and public opposition can organize openly. Long-term cooperation with such a state is institutionally more predictable than dependence upon the preference of a single ruler.³⁰

A strong relationship therefore need not rest on the proposition that Israel is always right. It rests on a more defensible proposition: Israel is a durable, capable, innovative state whose security interests overlap substantially with those of the United States, whose capabilities can be integrated with American capabilities, and whose continued alignment with the United States is more valuable than strategic estrangement would be.

XII. The Post-2028 Relationship: From Assistance to Partnership

The most convincing future of the relationship is not an indefinite extension of the twentieth-century aid model. It is a deliberate transition from assistance toward reciprocal strategic integration.

Direct Foreign Military Financing should be reduced as Israel becomes able to bear more of its own defense costs. Joint missile and drone defense should expand where it improves American as well as Israeli capability. Intelligence sharing should remain intensive but subject to ordinary counterintelligence safeguards. Joint research should concentrate on technologies in which operational experience and private innovation produce measurable value. Co-production should increasingly occur in the United States where doing so strengthens American industrial capacity. Private investment is likely to become a larger component of the relationship relative to grants.

This model is already visible in current policy discussions. CRS reports proposals in the FY2027 defense legislation for a U.S.-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative that would accelerate joint research, testing, integration, industrial cooperation, licensing, joint ventures, and U.S.-based co-production. Proposed intelligence legislation similarly seeks deeper Israeli and regional intelligence integration. These proposals are important not because Congress is infallible, but because they reveal where policymakers who have access to classified and industrial information believe additional value may exist.³¹

A more reciprocal model would also answer the strongest political objection to the alliance. If Israel gradually ceases to be a large grant recipient while cooperation in intelligence, technology, co-production, trade, and regional security continues, the relationship becomes harder to explain as a subsidy maintained only by lobbying. Its value must then stand or fall on what the two societies actually produce together.

Conclusion

Mearsheimer and Walt were right to insist that the special relationship should be explained rather than assumed. Clifton and Lustick are right that modern campaign finance gives pro-Israel organizations extraordinary capacity to influence American politics. That influence is a fact about American government. It deserves the same scrutiny applied to other concentrated political interests.

But influence is not distortion, and distortion is not foreign control. The lobby thesis stacks three claims of increasing rhetorical intensity: pro-Israel groups affect policy; that effect produces outcomes contrary to U.S. interests; and the United States is therefore under foreign direction. The first is easy to demonstrate. The second is an empirical question about the alliance’s net value. The third requires evidence of subordination, not merely of advocacy. Campaign spending can establish the first claim. It cannot, by itself, establish the second or the third.

The evidence reviewed here does not show that the United States would be better off treating Israel as an ordinary friendly state. Israel contributes intelligence, military capability, operational knowledge, missile-defense and counter-drone technology, research intensity, commercial innovation, regional deterrence, and a platform for broader security cooperation. Those benefits are not unlimited and do not justify every Israeli policy. They coexist with real costs: aid, munitions consumption, diplomatic friction, radicalization effects, and the danger that Israel and the United States may not share the same threshold for military action. The relationship is privileged. It is not a blank check, and it should not become one.

The rational response is therefore to improve the terms of the alliance rather than discard its strategic core. Israel should finance more of its own defense as its wealth and capabilities grow. American aid should give way to joint research, co-production, intelligence, trade, and private investment. Both countries should continue to facilitate direct private investment in Israel’s sophisticated technology sector.

A lobby can be powerful and still argue for a policy that survives an independent interest test. After 2028, that test should be what the two countries produce together, not the size of the grant.

For Israel, the United States supplies strategic depth, technology, markets, and an indispensable relationship with the world’s most powerful democratic state. For the United States, Israel supplies a rare combination of regional military power, intelligence, technological innovation, operational experience, and alignment against several common threats. For the wider world, the relationship is most valuable when military strength becomes deterrence, deterrence becomes normalization, and normalization becomes trade, scientific exchange, and a regional order in which war is less attractive than cooperation.

Clifton and Lustick’s subtitle, America in the Grip of a Foreign Power, names the strongest version of their thesis. Israeli officials advocate, and American organizations spend, to preserve the relationship. That is influence. It is not proof that the United States has lost the capacity to judge its own interests. The long-view test is whether those interests would be better served by distance. On the public record examined here, they would not.

References

1. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007); Eli Clifton and Ian S. Lustick, Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power (Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2026). Harvard describes the 2007 book as an expansion of the authors’ controversial 2006 argument; Simon & Schuster lists Clifton and Lustick’s publication date as August 11, 2026. ↩
2. Mearsheimer and Walt’s original Harvard working paper argues that the American commitment to Israel is due primarily to activities of the Israel lobby. Clifton and Lustick explicitly describe their work as an examination of the lobby’s contemporary influence on American national interests and domestic political freedom. ↩
3. Mearsheimer and Walt’s publisher and Harvard summaries emphasize their argument that American support cannot be adequately explained on strategic or moral grounds. ↩
4. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, “Is It Love or the Lobby? Explaining America’s Special Relationship with Israel,” Security Studies 18, no. 1 (2009), pp. 58–78. The authors explicitly defend the proposition that lobby influence better explains unusually extensive U.S. support than broad public affinity. ↩
5. Macmillan’s presentation of the 2007 book reproduces the authors’ argument that American reluctance to pressure Israel over settlements and the 2006 Lebanon war could ultimately harm Israel itself. ↩
6. Simon & Schuster, Israel’s Lobby, publisher description. The publisher characterizes the book as an argument that the lobby possesses “outsized influence” working against U.S. interests. This is the authors’ and publisher’s thesis, not an independently established conclusion. ↩
7. FactCheck.org reports $61.4 million in United Democracy Project spending during the 2024 cycle. Current FEC data show approximately $107.5 million in receipts and $77.2 million in disbursements from January 1, 2025 through July 31, 2026. ↩
8. Congressional Research Service, Israel: Background and U.S. Relations, RL33476, July 1, 2022, stating that Israel has provided benefits to the United States through intelligence sharing, military technology, and other innovations. https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL33476.html ↩
9. Congressional Research Service, Israel: Major Issues and U.S. Relations, R44245, updated July 2, 2026, describing decades of close cooperation based on assessments across several administrations and Congresses that the United States and Israel share strategic interests, including countering regional states and militant groups. https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R44245.html ↩
10. Congressional Research Service, Israel: Major Issues and U.S. Relations, R44245, July 2, 2026, discussing Israel's operational successes against Iran and Iran-supported groups as well as costs, escalation risks, and areas of U.S.-Israeli divergence. https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R44245.html ↩
11. U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2027, as reported May 20, 2026. The committee-reported text calls Israel a critical U.S. security partner, calls for expanded intelligence collaboration, and states as the sense of Congress that timely intelligence sharing has saved U.S. personnel and property in the region. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/2026/05/20/intelligence-authorization-act-for-fiscal-year-2027-as-reported-on-may-20-2026/ ↩
12. U.S. Department of State, U.S. Security Cooperation with Israel, describing the Joint Political-Military Group, Joint Counterterrorism Group, joint exercises, research, weapons development, and strategic dialogues. Archived 2021-2025 State Department material. https://2021-2025.state.gov/u-s-security-cooperation-with-israel/ ↩
13. Congressional Research Service, United States Foreign Intelligence Relationships: Background, Policy and Legal Authorities, Risks, Benefits, R45720, May 15, 2019, explaining that liaison relationships can provide access to otherwise inaccessible targets, source corroboration, linguistic and cultural expertise, warning, and joint operational capabilities. https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R45720.html ↩
14. U.S. Missile Defense Agency, Israel and U.S. Successfully Complete Series of David's Sling Tests, February 11, 2026; and Israel and U.S. Missile Defense Agency Successfully Complete Test of the Arrow Weapon System, August 6, 2026. The 2026 testing incorporated operational lessons and continued joint development and upgrade programs. https://www.mda.mil/news/26news0001.html ; https://www.mda.mil/news/26news0003.html ↩
15. U.S. Missile Defense Agency, International Cooperation, listing Israel as a partner in Arrow deployment and improvement, David's Sling development, and Iron Dome co-production. https://www.mda.mil/system/international_cooperation.html ↩
16. U.S. Army Acquisition Program Portfolio 2024, Iron Dome Defense System-Army (IDDS-A), describing the Israeli-developed system as an interim U.S. cruise-missile-defense capability addressing cruise-missile and counter-unmanned-aircraft gaps and noting its proven record against real-world threats. https://api.army.mil/e2/c/downloads/2024/07/19/ab2038a9/u-s-army-portfolio-2024.pdf ↩
17. U.S. Army Center for Army Lessons Learned, Subterranean Operations: Israeli Defense Force Lessons from Gaza, No. 25-1031, 2025, explaining the relevance of Israeli experience with large-scale tunnel networks to potential future U.S. operations. https://api.army.mil/e2/c/downloads/2025/09/09/303436de/subterranean-operations-israeli-defense-force-lessons-from-gaza.pdf ↩
18. Congressional Research Service, Israel: Major Issues and U.S. Relations, R44245, July 2, 2026, discussing the Abraham Accords, regional security implications, and proposed expansion of intelligence, air and missile defense, maritime, and technology cooperation among the United States, Israel, and willing regional partners. https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R44245.html ↩
19. U.S. Department of State, The Abraham Accords Declaration, emphasizing peace, coexistence, human dignity, religious freedom, science, medicine, commerce, security, and prosperity, and welcoming normalization between Israel and regional states. Archived State Department text. https://2021-2025.state.gov/the-abraham-accords/ ↩
20. Office of the United States Trade Representative, Israel Trade Summary, reporting estimated U.S.-Israel goods and services trade of $54.2 billion in 2025; USTR also notes that the U.S.-Israel Free Trade Agreement entered into force in 1985 as the United States' first FTA. https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/europe-middle-east/middle-eastnorth-africa/israel ; https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/israel-fta ↩
21. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD overall R&D growth stable; government R&D budgets decline and reorient towards defence, March 2026, reporting Israel's R&D intensity at approximately 6.8% of GDP in 2024, the highest among OECD countries. https://www.oecd.org/en/data/insights/statistical-releases/2026/03/oecd-overall-rd-growth-stable-government-rd-budgets-decline-and-reorient-towards-defence.html ↩
22. BIRD Foundation, New U.S.-Israel Projects Set to Receive $7.5 Million from the BIRD Foundation, May 26, 2026, reporting approximately $465 million invested in joint projects and more than $10 billion in direct and indirect revenues, and listing new collaborations in cybersecurity, agriculture, medical diagnostics, genetics, cell therapy, and precision treatment. https://www.birdf.com/new-u-s-israel-projects-set-to-receive-7-5million/ ↩
23. BIRD Foundation, About BIRD, reporting more than 1,200 approved U.S.-Israel projects since 1977 and more than $10 billion in direct and indirect revenues. https://www.birdf.com/what-is-bird/ ↩
24. Congressional Research Service, Israel: Major Issues and U.S. Relations, R44245, July 2, 2026, noting public concerns about scarcity and expenditure of U.S.-funded high-end missile-defense interceptors during recent regional conflicts. https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R44245.html ↩
25. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report, 2004, especially chapters 2 and 12, discussing Palestine and U.S. support for Israel among grievances exploited by al-Qaeda while placing them within a much broader ideological and geopolitical program. https://www.911commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf ↩
26. Congressional Research Service, Possible Changes in U.S. Military Aid to Israel: Considerations for Congress, IN12695, June 4, 2026. The report summarizes the 2016 MOU's $38 billion framework for FY2019-FY2028 and its phaseout of Off-Shore Procurement, which historically allowed a portion of U.S. military assistance to be spent on Israeli domestic armaments. https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/IN12695.html ↩
27. Congressional Research Service, Possible Changes in U.S. Military Aid to Israel: Considerations for Congress, IN12695, June 4, 2026, discussing negotiations over a post-2028 arrangement and proposals to phase out direct Foreign Military Financing in favor of joint programs, R&D, and co-production. https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/IN12695.html ↩
28. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Yearbook 2026, summary, listing Israel among the world's nine nuclear-armed states and estimating an Israeli arsenal of roughly 90 warheads while noting Israel's policy of nuclear opacity. https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2026-06/yb26_summary_en_1.pdf ↩
29. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Yearbook 2026, summary and related 2026 release, warning that nuclear-armed states continue modernization amid weakened arms-control constraints and heightened escalation risks. https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2026-06/yb26_summary_en_1.pdf ↩
30. Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2026: Israel, rating Israel 73/100 and Free and describing it as a parliamentary democracy with a multiparty system and independent institutions that generally guarantee political rights and civil liberties within Israel, while also identifying pressure on judicial independence and persistent minority disparities. Freedom House notes that the Israel score does not reflect actions of the Israeli military or Israeli settlers in the Gaza Strip or West Bank, which are assessed separately. https://freedomhouse.org/country/israel/freedom-world/2026 ↩
31. Congressional Research Service, Israel: Major Issues and U.S. Relations, R44245, July 2, 2026, summarizing proposed FY2027 provisions for a U.S.-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative, U.S.-based co-production and manufacturing partnerships, and expanded intelligence sharing with Israel and Abraham Accords partners. https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R44245.html ↩