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‘Cutting Off Communications’: Did Trump Really Just Turn His Back On Israel?

  • May 10, 2025
US President Donald Trump. (Design: Palestine Chronicle)

By Robert Inlakesh

Israel is in a weak position and Netanyahu’s extremism knows no bounds. The only other way around an eventual regional war is the ousting of the Israeli prime minister.

US President Donald Trump has closed his line of communication with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to various reports citing officials. 

This comes amidst alleged growing pressure on Israel regarding Gaza and the abrupt halt to American operations against Ansarallah in Yemen. So, is this all an act or is the US finally pressuring Israel?

On May 1, news broke that Donald Trump had suddenly ousted his national security advisor Mike Waltz. According to a Washington Post article on the issue, the ouster was in part a response to Waltz’s undermining of the President, for having engaged in intense coordination with Israeli PM Netanyahu regarding the issue of attacking Iran; prior to the Israeli Premier’s visit to the Oval Office.

Some analysts, considering that Waltz has been pushing for a war on Iran, argued that his ouster was a signal that the Trump administration’s pro-diplomacy voices were pushing back against the hawks.

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 This shift also came at a time when Iran-US talks had stalled, largely thanks to a pressure campaign from the Israel Lobby, leading US think tanks and Israeli officials like Ron Dermer.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Trump publicly announced the end to a campaign designed to destroy/degrade Yemen’s Ansarallah-led government in Sana’a on May 6. 

According to Israeli media, citing government sources, the leadership in Tel Aviv was shocked by the move to end operations against Yemen, essentially leaving the Israelis to deal with Ansarallah alone.

After this, more information began to leak, originating from the Israeli Hebrew-language media, claiming that the Trump administration was demanding Israel reach an agreement for aid to be delivered to Gaza, in addition to signing a ceasefire agreement. 

The other major claim is that President Trump has grown so frustrated with Netanyahu that he has cut communication with him directly.

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Although neither side has officially clarified details on the reported rift between the two sides, a few days ago the Israeli prime minister released a social media video claiming that he would act alone to defend Israel. On Friday morning, another update came in that American Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth would be cancelling his planned visit to Tel Aviv.

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In order to assess this issue correctly, we have to place all of the above mentioned developments into their proper context. 

The issue must also be prefaced on the fact that every member of the Trump government is pro-Israeli to the hilt and has received significant backing from the Israel Lobby.

Mike Waltz was indeed fired and according to leaked AIPAC audio revealed by The Grayzone, he was somewhat groomed for a role in government by the pro-Israel Lobby for a long time. 

Another revelation regarding Waltz, aside from him allegedly coordinating with Netanyahu behind Trump’s back and adding journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to a private Signal group chat, was that he was storing his chats on an Israeli owned app.

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Yet, Waltz was not booted out of the government like John Bolton was during Trump’s first term in office, he has instead been designated as UN ambassador to the United Nations. 

The UN ambassador position was supposed to be handed to Elise Stefanik, a radically vocal supporter of Israel that helped lead the charge in cracking down on pro-Palestine free speech on University Campuses. Stefanik’s nomination was withdrawn in order to maintain the Republican majority in the House of Congress.

If Trump was truly seeking to push back against the Israel Lobby’s push to collapse negotiations with Iran, then why did Trump signal around a week ago that new sanctions packages were on the way? He announced on Friday that a 3rd independent Chinese refiner would be hit with secondary sanctions for receiving Iranian oil. 

The sanctions, on top of the fact that his negotiating team have continuously attempted to add conditions the the talks, viewed in Tehran as non-starters, indicates that precisely what pro-Israel think tanks like WINEP and FDD have been demanding is working its way into not only the negotiating team, but coming out in Trump’s own rhetoric.

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There is certainly an argument to make here, that there is a significant split within the pro-Israel Lobby in the US, which is now working its way into the Trump administration, yet it is important to note that the Trump campaign itself was bankrolled by Zionist billionaires and tech moguls. Miriam Adelson, Israel’s richest billionaire, was his largest donor. 

Adelson also happens to own Israel Hayom, the most widely distributed newspaper in Israel that has historically been pro-Netanyahu, it is now also reporting on the Trump-Netanyahu split and feeding into the speculations.

As for the US operations against Yemen, the US has used the attack on Ansarallah as the perfect excuse to move a large number of military assets to the region. 

This has included air defense systems to the Gulf States and most importantly to Israel. After claiming back in March to have already “decimated” Ansarallah, the Trump administration spent way in excess of a billion dollars (more accurately over 2 billion) and understood that the only way forward was a ground operation.

Meanwhile, the US has also moved military assets to the Mediterranean and is directly involved in intensive reconnaissance over Lebanese airspace, attempting to collect information on Hezbollah. 

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An Iran Attack Imminent?

While it is almost impossible to know whether the media theatrics regarding the reported Trump-Netanyahu split are entirely true, or if it is simply a good-cop bad-cop strategy, it appears that some kind of assault on Iran could be imminent. 

Whether Benjamin Netanyahu is going to order an attack on Iran out of desperation or as part of a carefully choreographed plan, the US will certainly involve itself in any such assault on one level or another.

The Israeli prime minister has painted himself into a corner. In order to save his political coalition, he collapsed the Gaza ceasefire during March and managed to bring back his Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir to his coalition. 

This enabled him to successfully take on his own Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, in an ongoing purge of his opposition.

However, due to a lack of manpower and inability to launch any major ground operation against Gaza, without severely undermining Israeli security on other fronts, Netanyahu decided to adopt a strategy of starving the people of Gaza instead. He now threatens a major ground offensive, yet it is hard to see what impact it would have beyond an accelerated mass murder of civilians.

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The Israeli prime minister’s mistake was choosing the blocking of all aid into Gaza as the right wing hill to die on, which has been deeply internalized by his extreme Religious Zionism coalition partners, who now threaten his governments stability if any aid enters the besieged territory. 

This has put Netanyahu in a very difficult position, as the European Union, UK and US are all fearing the backlash that mass famine will bring and are now pushing Tel Aviv to allow in some aid.

Amidst this, Netanyahu made another commitment to the Druze community that he would intervene on their behalf in Syria. While Syria’s leadership are signaling their intent to normalise ties and according to a recent report by Yedioth Ahronoth, participated in “direct” negotiations with Israel regarding “security issues”, there is no current threat from Damascus. 

However, if tensions escalate in Syria with the Druze minority in the south, failure to fulfill pledges could cause major issues with Israeli Druze, who perform crucial roles in the Israeli military. 

Internally, Israel is deeply divided, economically under great pressure and the overall instability could quickly translate to a larger range of issues.

Then we have the Lebanon front, where Hezbollah sits poised to pounce on an opportunity to land a blow in order to expel Israel from their country and avenge the killing of its Secretary General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah. 

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Meanwhile in Gaza, if Israel is going to try and starve everyone to death, this could easily trigger what can only be called the “doomsday option” from Hamas and other groups there. Nobody is about to sit around and watch their people starve to death.

As for Yemen’s Ansarallah, it is clear that there was no way without a massive ground offensive that the movement was going to stop firing missiles and drones at Israel. 

What we have here is a situation in which Israel finds itself incapable of defeating any of its enemies, as all of them have now been radicalized due to the mass murder inflicted upon their populations.

In other words, Israel is not capable of victory on any front and needs a way out. 

The leader of the opposition to Israel in the region is perceived to be Iran, as it is the most powerful, which is why a conflict with it is so desired. Yet, Tehran is incredibly powerful and the US is incapable of defeating it with conventional weapons, therefore, a full-scale war is the equivalent to committing regional suicide.

Donald Trump had previously stated that any attack on Iran would be led by Israel and that the US would join in, which is good to keep in mind here because it indicates that the idea of a limited conflict is being considered in Washington.

The current predicament of Netanyahu, whether his split from Trump is genuine or not, indicates that the Iran attack option could be imminent. 

It would serve as a massive distraction to all other issues, it would at least temporarily put a spearhead in the Iran-US negotiations and could lead to closing the regional war on multiple fronts.

If such an attack occurs, likely targeting Iranian nuclear sites as the primary focus, it could end up setting back Tehran’s nuclear program a few years – assuming conventional weapons are used. 

There could be other strategies employed too, such as assassinations of senior Iranian leaders and hybrid warfare tactics, both of which would inflict symbolic blows – as a primary purpose – that Iran could still deal with.

Then, the US would have to get involved as Iranian missiles would be launched against Israeli military sites, perhaps even other targets such as the electrical grid and/or ports. The waves of missiles would largely ground the Israeli air force, forcing them to use alternative bases, such as in Cyprus. 

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Then the question becomes: What does Hezbollah do? If the Lebanese group decides to launch an offensive it will bewilder the Israeli military, therefore necessitating airstrikes that could even end up being launched by the US at that point. As I have written in the past, the wildcard here is Hamas in such a situation, for which little can be done to predict what may happen given the genocide inflicted on its people.

If the US and Israel assume that Iran, which has proven itself to be pragmatic and restrained in past confrontations, will behave in a manner that avoids an all out end war in the event that the American assault is limited, then it may see an attack as advantageous. It could provide the grounds to force a solution to the ongoing multi-front war in US eyes. 

Some may ask why Iran would not immediately use all its power to completely eliminate Israel, to which the obvious answer is nuclear weapons. Without going through every single detail, it does appear as if Netanyahu is in a position where an attack on Iran is more likely to be in the books for him. If the US appears to be in opposition to him also, it could help de-escalate tensions between Tehran and Washington.

Another interpretation of the Trump-Netanyahu split, is that this is largely theatre to convince the Israeli Premiers hardline coalition partners that he has to allow aid into Gaza. If Netanyahu is seen standing up to Trump on the issue of a ceasefire, but allows aid into the Gaza Strip, it could be enough to convince the likes of Ben Gvir that he has done all he can and managed to win on the ceasefire issue, but sacrificed withholding aid.

The reason why the more extreme explanation is so important to consider, is because there are now grounds to believe it could occur very suddenly. Israel is in a weak position and Netanyahu’s extremism knows no bounds. The only other way around an eventual regional war is the ousting of the Israeli prime minister.

(The Palestine Chronicle)

– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.

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