It is axiomatic that Israel’s greatest diplomatic challenge rests on a single unavoidable truth. The Jewish state has only one real ally on which it can depend right now: the United States. Yet at the start of the sixth week of war against Iran, it’s becoming clear that the same may be true for Washington. It has formal alliances with many nations—notably, the 31 other members of NATO. But when push comes to shove, it turns out that the only truly reliable ally of the United States is the country with which it has no formal alliance: Israel.
Predictably, critics of President Donald Trump are blaming this state of affairs on him and his confrontational attitude toward NATO allies, particularly Western European nations like the United Kingdom, France and Spain.
They argue that he has launched an unnecessary and costly “war of choice” that the Europeans are wise to stay out of. Moreover, they also say that the diffidence, if not outright opposition, of NATO members to joining in the Iran war is due to Trump’s belligerent approach to them. He has badgered them to contribute more than token amounts to their own defense, which has been largely funded by the generosity of American taxpayers for the last 80 years, and threatened serious consequences if they refuse. Worse than that, his demands that Denmark, for instance, allow the United States to take over Greenland is considered nothing less than a threat that they say is analogous to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
NATO is the problem, not Trump
Still, the notion that it is Trump’s behavior or “America First” beliefs that are sinking NATO is to mistake a reaction to a dilemma for the problem itself.
NATO was vital to stopping a wave of postwar Soviet aggression from swallowing Western Europe into Moscow’s Communist empire in the years after the conclusion of the Second World War. It continued to deter the Russians for 40 years until their “evil empire” collapsed under the weight of its own failures and contradictions, as well as its inability to match former President Ronald Reagan’s strengthening of America’s strategic capabilities.
Since the end of the Cold War, it has struggled to find a way to remain relevant. Its major Western European elements aren’t just too militarily weak to help shoulder the burden of defending the West. The British, French, Italians and Spanish lack a credible defense deterrent, as is true of most of the other smaller countries. The only NATO allies who actually act like allies are in Eastern Europe, such as the Czechs and Hungarians, though they are too small to make a difference and have limited ability to help vis-à-vis Iran.
All of Trump’s predecessors in the last 30 years tried to get them to take defense seriously; however, due to their largely polite approach, which was all carrot and no stick, the Europeans ignored them. Their lack of defense spending helped them grow rich, though it also left them unable to do much other than to appeal to the United States when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
But the rot goes deeper than merely the finances of the alliance.
Western Europeans are alarmed by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s authoritarianism and his quest to reassemble the old tsarist and Soviet empire. They are right to despise him, even though his failure to conquer Ukraine means the fears about him swallowing up Eastern, Central or Western European nations (something that was a real possibility when the Soviets had a vast army in the middle of Germany during the Cold War) are more hysteria than a real possibility.
Appeasers, not allies
That said, the Europeans have no interest in containing, let alone confronting, the threat from Iran’s terrorism, missiles and nuclear ambitions. The Islamists hanging on to power in Tehran consider themselves at war with the entire West—not just the “Great Satan” (the United States) and the “Little Satan” (Israel). Though they’ve already proved that their terrorists and missiles can reach Europe’s capital cities, London, Paris, Madrid and Rome act as if the battle to remove this dead peril is someone else’s job.
These governments have been eager to appease Iran. Their policies on this question have been primarily driven by a desire to continue to do business with the ayatollahs over the years, rather than do something about the way the theocracy threatens Europe and the West. Cowed by antisemitic Muslim migrants-turned-voters they’ve imported from the Middle East and North Africa, their leaders behave as if they are innocent bystanders in a struggle that solely concerns Tehran’s quest to wipe out Israel or to make trouble for the United States.
Though their resentment against Washington can be at least partially explained by their antipathy to Trump, the foundation of their unwillingness to act on Iran predates even his first administration. And it has grown not so much because of their distaste for Trump, but because the constituency within these countries that backs the notion of them having a responsibility to defend the West against a militant Islam that has largely diminished to the point of irrelevance in the last two decades. Even worse, their hostility to Israel, which has become more overt due to the surge of Jew-hatred around the globe but particularly among their own populations, has fueled a reluctance to do anything about a country like Iran.
All of this adds up to a situation where—like many, if not most of Trump’s domestic critics—America’s European allies are rooting for defeat simply because it would harm the U.S. president and the Israeli prime minister. They equally view Benjamin Netanyahu as a thorn in their side because of their pro-Palestinian foreign-policy agendas.
That ought to lead serious American observers to stop reflexively speaking as if NATO is as important and functional as it was 40 years ago and to start questioning its future. Instead, the U.S. foreign-policy establishment and Democrats merely blame Trump for his justified suspicions about the continued utility of the world body and hostility to the multilateral organizations like the anti-Israel United Nations.
Weakness and betrayal
More to the point, their attitude toward the Iran war calls into question why NATO is still needed.
After all, the Europeans haven’t been asked to do much to help the military campaign to stop Iran that the United States and Israel are conducting. Even if they were willing, they couldn’t do much. For example, the mighty British Royal Navy that once ruled the waves now has more admirals than ships, with fewer than two dozen warships afloat.
The British initially refused to allow American ships and aircraft to use their bases, but have since relented. And other nations—like France, Spain and Italy—have refused even to allow American resupply efforts for the war to use their airspace, let alone contribute to the war.
Allowing American planes to fly over their airspace is not a big ask, nor would it mean that these nations are participating in the war. Nevertheless, these governments think it is more important to signal their opposition to Trump and Israel among their domestic electorates than to contribute in some small way in a war that, whether they are willing to admit it or not, is being fought to make them all safer. What does a country need allies for if they are going to behave like this?
It’s true that the war on Iran doesn’t come without a cost. The Iranian threat to shipping in the Gulf of Hormuz has raised the price of oil worldwide. But as Trump has made abundantly clear, that is going to hurt the Europeans more than the United States because they are dependent on the oil that is transported through it.
It’s not clear whether the president’s threats to let the Europeans suffer, rather than to act to secure the right of free navigation in a key international waterway, are real or are just another case of Trump trolling his opponents. Nor do we know what the next steps in the war will entail.
But the assumption that Iran is somehow winning a war in which their military assets and leaders are being systematically knocked off—and that the powerful militaries of the United States and Israel are losing—simply isn’t credible. The notion that a campaign in which the two allies have flown more than 5,000 sorties into Iran with the loss of only a handful of manned planes and unmanned drones (and has the ability to rescue downed pilots deep in enemy territory, as they did this past week) is floundering against Tehran is ludicrous. The reason why so many supposed foreign-policy “experts” say so is because they are so invested in an American defeat and Iranian victory that sowing belief in this dubious position has become their skewed priority.
There is a risk that Trump will cut and run or conclude a deal that will strengthen Iran, rather than persevere until the regime gives in or falls, and that possibility justifies Europe standing aloof from the fray. But so far, there is no real indication that he will do so. To the contrary, the idea that he would concede defeat at a time when the United States and Israel are in such a dominant military position seems rooted more in that same Trump derangement syndrome that motivates so much commentary about the conflict than in dispassionate analysis.
What we’re left with then is not so much another example of the complex relationship between America and Europe as it is compelling evidence that Western European nations stopped acting like U.S. allies long before the current war. It’s not just that these countries don’t believe in Trump. Their internal collapse in the face of a growing red-green alliance of Marxists and Islamists is a product of the fact that, unlike the founders of NATO in the 1940s, they no longer believe in themselves either. This moral failure on Iran should only accelerate the process by which the United States concludes that it should worry less about opinion in London, Paris, Madrid and Rome—and more about the countries helping to defend the West.
There all sorts of nations that claim to be allies—from the frenemies in Qatar to actual Gulf state allies like Saudi Arabia, to friendly but unhelpful countries like Canada, to supposed allies like France that consistently vote against Washington in the United Nations and to the many good friends of America around the globe that mean well but can do little to provide direct assistance in an armed conflict.
But there is only one nation that has stepped up and shown that it can fight side by side with the United States, even if that means its own population is directly and continuously subjected to missile attacks. And that nation is Israel.
Only Israel fights with America
Other countries will cheer or jeer from the sidelines, but Israel not only has a powerful military but is willing to use it, along with its unmatched intelligence capabilities and operations, to fight a war alongside America. And it is doing so with the knowledge that Trump could end the war before the Jewish state has achieved the domestic objectives that Netanyahu has set.
Contrary to the largely antisemitic myth that the world’s most powerful man in charge of a superpower was dragged into a war by the prime minister of a country the size of New Jersey with a mere 10 million people, this war was America’s idea. And it is being fought to protect America’s interests as well as Israel’s. Stopping nuclear and missile threats—and the world’s largest state sponsor of terror—isn’t a favor to Israel. It’s vital for the security of the Middle East, which affects the economies of all, as has been shown in Iran’s stranglehold of the Strait of Hormuz and international shipping.
A clear look at the events of the last two months doesn’t just show Israel’s value as an ally, even though there is no pact of alliance between Washington and Jerusalem as there is with America’s 31 NATO allies, which the United States is obligated to defend under that treaty’s Article V provision. It has also done invaluable damage to what remains of American support for the belief that the alliance is vital to the country’s defense.
Israel has friendly relations with other countries, including some in Europe. And it has strong security ties with key regional nations like Saudi Arabia, even though communications remain under the table rather than out in the open. But it has only one genuine ally. There are no plausible alternatives, even when Washington is run by those who are lukewarm or worse about the relationship, as under the administrations led by former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
NATO may yet be revived at some point in the future. Even now, it still serves some use, if only to help ensure that Russia’s troublemaking can be contained. But the stark truth of 2026 is that it has largely become a vestige of the past that has outlived much of its usefulness.
At the same time, the idea that Washington’s affection for Israel is a hindrance to the pursuit of U.S. national interests or makes it difficult for it to make friends in the Middle East has been conclusively exploded by recent events.
It is the alliance with Israel that is the one irreplaceable asset for American foreign policy and security needs in the region. And one is hard-pressed to think of another such reliable ally elsewhere with both the military assets—and the willingness to use them in a difficult fight— and common values of democracy. It’s high time that American pundits and politicians, whether seduced by antisemitic tropes and arguments or wallowing in hatred for Trump, stop speaking of Israel as an American problem and start acknowledging this reality.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.
