As White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan prepares to visit Israel this month, he will encounter unexpected areas of strategic convergence between Israeli and American concerns. With Tehran’s utter rejection of Biden administration efforts for conciliation and its wholehearted embrace of Moscow, US and Israeli views of Iran have become more aligned.
But even as the strategic gap has narrowed, the moral gap is widening. The new Israeli government’s positions—on settlements, the Palestinian Authority, secularism, amending the Law of Return and changing the balance of power between the Israeli Supreme Court and the Knesset—all run counter to Biden administration policy preferences as well as the deeply held social and cultural beliefs of many American liberals and Jews.