Long has there been a debate over whether the United States controls the Israelis, or whether it is, in fact, the other way around. Under the current Trump administration, there can no longer be much doubt that the Israelis dictate US policy in West Asia, and in many instances, even take command domestically.

Under previous US governments, there had been a clear trend of prioritising Israeli interests; this much cannot be disputed. Yet, it could be demonstrated that some slight deviations existed between the Israeli and US positions on certain issues. Clearly, the United States possesses far greater power and influence than the Zionist entity, but the question that then presents itself is whether the tail has been wagging the dog.

Since the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson, Washington has backed its Israelis to the hilt, granting them more foreign aid handouts than any other ally and later following them into various conflicts in the region. Over time, it is fair to say that the power of the “Israel Lobby” had grown, and this led to even more hardline Zionist positions from successive administrations occupying the White House.

However, despite the clear bias and protection toward Israeli interests, there have been divergences between a range of US leaderships and their counterparts in Tel Aviv. Take, for example, the Obama administration, which had at the time pledged the largest foreign-aid handout to the Zionist regime in its history. When it came down to the Iran Nuclear Deal, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), it proved capable of defying AIPAC and the demands of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Under the Biden administration, although overtly Zionist by its own admission, the administration did continue to cling to a policy that sought to lead toward a so-called “two-state solution”, drawing the ire of the vast preponderance of Israelis and evidently the Netanyahu administration.

Does Tel Aviv control the White House?

The argument that the Israelis exert influence over US foreign policy is distinct from the claim that “Israel” completely runs the show. The former is not credibly disputed; it is more than clear that Israeli Lobbyists, think-tanks, and Zionist neo-Conservatives have pushed the United States government into various wars of aggression. 

Power wielded by these elements, as demonstrated in John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s book ‘The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy’, peaked during the Bush Jr. administration. However, it could plausibly be argued that the implemented and aggressive American foreign policy had served a US power agenda that involved the Israelis, but was not fully dictated by them.

Even the notion of a “two-state Solution” was a clear attempt to save the Zionist project and ensure its long-term existence, opposed to the ambitions within the Israeli leadership’s aiming to pursue what they call “Greater Israel”. 

On both sides of the coin are actually two pro-Israeli solutions to the regional question regarding the Zionist regime; one is a more pragmatic take that seeks to ensure the existence of the settler-colonial entity, the other is an aggressive solution that could very easily lead to the project's disintegration. 

The last serious foreign policy speech, made by former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, while in office, at an Atlantic Council think-tank conference, outlines the American “two-state” ideology perfectly. Although he spent most of his address espousing the typical Israeli propaganda points, he ended on a much more sober and serious note.

Blinken argued that the Israelis had reacted to the Hamas-led Al-Aqsa Flood attack of October 7, 2023, in a way that demonstrated power. This evidently aligned with what the US had sought to help the regime demonstrate. Yet, he then makes it clear that if Tel Aviv does not move toward a “two-state solution”, it will inevitably spell chaos and threaten the future of the Zionist Project, even potentially leading to the collapse of relations with Egypt and Jordan.

This argument is, of course, extremely pro-Israeli and effectively advocates integrating the settler-colonial regime into the region by adopting a more pragmatic approach. The same sentiments were expressed in the Saudi-French “New York Declaration” that was unanimously voted through the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) this September.

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However, since US President Donald Trump has taken office, he has not attempted to pursue a strategic policy agenda. Instead, he has followed his Israeli handlers around like a little puppy dog, bowing to their every wish.

Trump’s administration had worked alongside the Israelis to supervise a three-month-long siege on the population of Gaza, where no aid entered the territory and triggering a famine. He then used US taxpayer dollars to fund a privatised aid scheme, which functioned as a death trap that took the lives of around 2,600 Palestinian civilians.

He launched an embarrassing failure of a military campaign against Yemen, directly striking Iran after using diplomacy to lower its guard to an Israeli attack. The Trump administration has stationed more forces inside Syria, taking over two air bases there, while pushing for an Israeli-Syrian normalisation “security deal” and using American power in an attempt to disarm both Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Hashd al-Shaabi in Iraq.

Trump’s regime most recently bullied the UN’s Security Council into quickly accepting the most disgraceful resolution of the Palestine issue, authorising a regime change operation. He has stationed US boots on the ground, oversees daily Israeli war crimes that violate the Gaza ceasefire, and is attempting to follow through on his pledge from February to “own Gaza”.

Domestically, from day one, he pursued the implementation of ‘Project Esther’, a document published by the Heritage Foundation think-tank, that seeks to dismantle free speech about Israeli crimes in the United States. He also accelerated the worst crackdown on American academic freedom in US history.

Now he pivots to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a "terrorist organisation" at the behest of Israeli lobbying efforts, allowing for this designation to grant greater powers for a crackdown on pro-Palestinian non-profit groups, by claiming they are affiliated with a "terrorist organisation".

Despite the scandals, such as Trump’s ambassador to “Israel,” Mike Huckabee's meeting with infamous Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, Washington has done nothing. It also happens that the Trump campaign was financed by a who’s who of Zionist billionaires, with the largest contribution coming from “Israel’s” richest billionaire, Miriam Adelson.

When Donald Trump spoke in front of the Israeli Knesset, he even admitted that his top donor loves the Zionist Entity more than the United States and is even calling upon Israeli President Isaac Herzog to pardon Benjamin Netanyahu so that he can get out of his corruption trial.

It is hard to imagine anything close to this happening with any other foreign government. Just imagine for a moment that Russia’s richest billionaire had bankrolled the Trump campaign, then his ambassador to Moscow was found to have met with and advocated for pardoning a Russian spy. Just this alone would trigger around-the-clock coverage of the president as a traitor to his country.

The Trump administration weaponises ICE to go after foreign visitors with valid visas and even permanent residents like Mahmoud Khalil, for utilising their right to free speech. Social media pages belonging to the Trump administration even issue threats to people they accuse, without evidence, of being supportive of Hamas.

Nothing this administration does on the issue is independent of Benjamin Netanyahu’s regime in Tel Aviv, it is through and through a Likud Party administration ruling the US… The most extreme voices always prevail, as extremist Zionist influencers like Laura Loomer have access to the White House. When Republican elected officials who have long supported Trump dare to speak out against the Israelis, they come under blistering attacks.

While in the past it could be argued that the Israelis had influence over the US government’s West Asia policy, it has come to the point that there are serious questions to be asked about whether the Trump administration has any autonomy whatsoever on any question related to “Israel”.

Some would counter this argument by claiming that many of the Zionists who are responsible for such behaviour are, in fact, US citizens, which is true, and not all of them are dual citizens. But in the real world, even the hardline Christian Zionists in his administration are indistinguishable from their Israeli counterparts. Huckabee is a great example of this, a man who had long argued for Jonathan Pollard, guilty of espionage, to be freed.

Officials working for the Trump administration got fired for even slightly deviating from the staunchly pro-Israeli positions of the regime in power, including for simply mentioning human rights abuses in the occupied West Bank, which Washington now labels “Judea and Samaria."

Jared Kushner, who is helping US envoy Steve Witkoff direct the so-called “ceasefire” projects, has direct ties to funding the Israeli illegal settlement of Beit El. For people like this, their US passports mean little when they are implicated in war crimes or are willing to argue in favour of freeing an Israeli convicted of espionage.

It should not be controversial to say that the Trump administration is the weakest in American history on West Asia policy and completely bends the knee to a foreign government.