The pro-Israel lobby has swayed US presidents since Truman. It must end with Trump | US political lobbying | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/aug/02/pro-israel-lobby-presidents
Truman’s bind – caught between his sense of the national interest and the domestic political price of defying a powerful lobby – was something that, in the decades to come, president after president would experience.
To fast forward: Donald Trump’s decision to go to war on Iran earlier this year came after a sustained campaign by Israel to convince the US to join the disastrous operation. It also came in defiance of several of his top advisers, as well as the 45% of Republicans who hold an unfavorable view of Israel. That decision may be most quickly explained as yet another example of the erratic policymaking that define Trump’s two terms as president. But a closer examination of the experience of several of his predecessors reveals that this presidential decision is more the rule than the exception.
The fact is that from Truman to Trump, most American presidents have caved to the demands of Israel and its advocates. Driven by the fear of domestic political defeats, presidents have regularly rejected or abandoned foreign policies that both they and their most senior advisers believed were in the best interests of the US and at the expense of making meaningful progress in bringing a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.