Till Death Do Us Part: The Unholy Matrimony Between the US and Israel
The standard narrative of American foreign policy has long rested on the pillar of moral exceptionalism: the assertion that the United States acts as a global guardian of human rights, international law and democratic governance.
However, Washington’s support for the ongoing holocaust in the occupied Gaza Strip, West Bank and unlawful war on Iran have exposed glaring contradictions at the heart of this narrative. They reveal the true character of a political system defined not by its lofty noble declarations, but by its iniquitous decisions and actions.
These inequalities accentuate the true nature of U.S. geopolitics; essentially that human rights ideals are of little account to predatory imperial powers.
For over a century, the subjugation of Palestine and West Asia has been orchestrated through a legacy of colonial bigotry and pro-Zionist geopolitical engineering. The region has been treated not as home to sovereign peoples but as an imperial chessboard ripe for exploitation.
The wars throughout the region, particularly on Palestine and Iran, are the culmination of imperial agendas set in motion a century ago. The current geopolitical course began with the stroke of a pen set to the Balfour Declaration in 1917, in which a distant European empire casually bartered away a homeland that was not theirs to give. This colonizing scheme reached its peak in the 1996 “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” document – a stratagem advanced by American neoconservatives and Zionist hardliners to reshape West Asia in Israel’s image.
Together these imperial blueprints established frameworks for domination that have led the region and global community to the precipice of disaster.
Underpinning these policies is a deeply-rooted colonial chauvinism that views the indigenous people of the region as obstacles to be displaced, managed or crushed, rather than human beings with inalienable rights to freedom, self-determination and dignity.
When examined across a century, the trajectory from Balfour to “Clean Break” demonstrates a consistent structural logic. Whether foreign powers use imperial decrees, global mandates, diplomatic accords or military force, the goal is always the same: to secure and maintain control, fundamentally disregarding the rights of the native populations to govern themselves.
The bilateral partnership with Israel, originally formed to secure its existence, has now become a strategic liability. The Israel that once proved useful to Washington as its regional enforcer, now seems to be in the catbird seat.
The eventual subordination of American foreign policy to Israeli strategic ambitions is not a historic accident, but the predictable outcome of a powerful deeply-entrenched military-industrial-security nexus that long ago equated regional dominance with U.S. national interests.
What began as a Cold War strategy to project American power across West Asia without a large-scale troop presence, has evolved into an institutionalized, self-perpetuating deadly alliance, in which the balance of control has become blurred.
Decades of deeply-entrenched military, intelligence and industrial ties with Tel Aviv have created an institutional inertia so powerful that Washington now reflexively accepts global criticism, regional anger and multi-trillion-dollar detours into foreign interventions as a matter of course – as a worthy price to pay for their “special relationship.”
Instead of exerting its strategic agency over a client state, the United States has become captive to Israeli dogmatism, which asserts that anything less than unconditional support signals U.S. weakness and vulnerability. Consequently, this has fallen on American taxpayers to subsidize and service members to fight military campaigns that compromise the nation’s interests and long-term stability.
Adding to this geopolitical trap is a domestic political echo chamber engineered to penalize flexibility and alternative strategies, while rewarding absolute conformity and compliance with Israeli objectives.
The alliance with Israel is so thoroughly embedded in the American body politic that it functions as a “third rail” of U.S. foreign policy and public discourse. It remains above criticism through a combination of highly organized influential lobbying groups, massive political campaign financing schemes, a powerful evangelical voting bloc, and weaponization of the anti-Semitic label.
When paired with a deeply-ingrained pro-Israel media and cultural narrative that frames regional escalation as inevitable, rather than preventable, Washington’s political class most often chooses the safety of domestic capitulation over the discipline of sovereign statecraft, guaranteeing political submission to Israeli goading.
The result is a chronically unsettled America perpetually drawn into Israel’s expansionist wars. This involvement is driven not by clear strategic necessity, but by a systemic inability in Washington to break free from domestic pressures and external mandates.
From the colonial promises of the Balfour Declaration to the “Clean Break” document, Israel has consistently prioritized expansionism over international law, formal agreements and even the strategic interests of its closest ally and main benefactor, the United States.
A core folly in Washington’s Israel/West Asian policy has been in treating a strategic burden as an indispensable ally.
Prioritizing the regional ambitions of a hegemonic foreign “ally” over core U.S. interests have entangled America in Israel’s reckless wars and conflicts. Decades of blank-check diplomacy have inflamed anti-American sentiment, compromised its global credibility, strained vital alliances, and drained finite military and economic resources that would be better directed toward urgent domestic needs.
Paradoxically, the imperial strategies meant to safeguard Israel at the expense of West Asia are now taking a toll on America as well. The United States will not, and cannot, recover its strategic autonomy and moral leadership unless it makes a clean break from its damaging relationship with Israel.
© 2026, M. Reza Behnam, Ph.D.
Dr. Behnam is a political scientist who specializes in comparative politics with a focus on West Asia. His “Cultural Foundations of Iranian Politics,” published by University of Utah Press, and still in print, was recognized by Choice as Outstanding Academic Book for 1987–1988.
