School of War - Ep 211: Daniel Samet on the Origins of the U.S.-Israel Relationship

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

Daniel Samet, the George P. Shultz Fellow at the Ronald Reagan Institute and author of U.S. Defense Policy toward Israel: A Cold War History, joins the show to breakdown the origins of the important, if at times contentious, U.S.-Israel relationship. ▪️ Times      •      01:30 Introduction     •      02:28 1948     •      05:44 Arabist strategy       •      08:13 11 minutes     •      10:37 Looking for friends           •      15:40 Soviet-Arab relations     •      19:25 Republicans         •      25:16 Kennedy      •      29:29 Strong friends     •      32:02 Nuclear program      •      37:33 6 Day War     •      43:19 Mistake?     •      47:41 Kissinger Follow along on Instagram, X @schoolofwarpod, and YouTube @SchoolofWarPodcast Find a transcripts of episodes on our School of War Substack

The close relationship between the United States in Israel is proverbial these days. Indeed, we just conducted a major joint offensive operation in Iran only a week ago, but notably, that was only the first such operation ever. What is the nature of this close relationship between the two countries? What are its sources, what have been its ups and downs? These are big questions, and we are going to take on the military side of them with our guest today. Let's get into it. 1941, a date which will live in infantry.

A bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a state. We continue to face the great situation in the ground. We'll fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender. For more, follow School of War on YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and Twitter.

And feel free to follow me on Twitter, Follow me on Twitter at Aaron B. McLean. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I am delighted to welcome to the show today. Daniel Samet, the George P. Schultz fellow at the Ronald Reagan Institute. He's going to be a Gene Kirkpatrick Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, starting here shortly. And he is the author of a new book, U.S. defense policy towards Israel, a Cold War history.

Daniel, thank you so much for joining the show. It's a treat to be on with you, Aaron. So I should say we're recording this here on the afternoon of Thursday, June the 12th, where for about 24 hours now, we'll just say tensions are high in the Middle East. There's a chance it seems that Israel may go after the Iranian nuclear program. There are sort of open questions about the American attitude towards that and the U.S. Israel relationship in light of that themes, all of which you kind of cover in your book, though, through a historical lens. So maybe something we talk about today will kind of shed light on. the present. Let me ask you this. I mean, you you kick your book off really in the 60s, but let's, if you don't mind, let's kind of go back to the start. Give us a sketch of the U.S.

attitude towards, you know, the Zionism and the state of Israel as the state becomes a thing at independence. What is what what is the American attitude? Truman obviously famously recognizes Israel, but what's the state of the debate in the range of attitudes? He does. Truman does. recognize Israel 11 minutes into its existence. This is a commonly cited fact. When it comes to Truman's relationship with Israel, the story often ends there, at least the way it's, we're told in the popular imagination. Perhaps your viewers know this. Perhaps they don't. Israel in 1948 is a very different place than it is in, say, 2025. It's a very poor country. It is a country that is quasi-socialist in orientation. Its founding generation very much was a product of the European Enlightenment

and European Social Democratic movements. It is not the capitalist, innovative place that it is today. It was a very different place. And as such, the U.S. had, I'm not going to say, a hostile outlook toward Israel, but it was a skeptical outlook toward Israel. Even though he did recognize the state of Israel, Harry Truman, was not entirely sure how the state of Israel was going to be on the international scene. There was a cadre in the Department of State, known as the Arabist, who were pretty hostile to the idea of a Jewish state in the Middle East. This group did not want Truman to recognize Israel when he did.

They lost that debate. They remained influential throughout President Truman's tenure in office. They saw Israel as an irritant in their grand strategy. They were very much set on curing favor with the Arab states, in particular Egypt, which was the most powerful and most influential state in the Arab world. They saw Israel as this good-for-nothing pest that didn't have a lot to offer the United States. And we can dismiss their arguments today with the benefit of hindsight, but I think to be fair to them, you have to see where they were coming from. Israel, as I said, was a small weak power. It had hardly any natural resources of significance.

It had practically no energy reserves. And the Arab world was a lot larger, had a lot more oil, and it was more powerful, at least it seemed that way, to officials in the U.S. government. It was not an easy call necessarily to recognize Israel or to offer it support. Truman, it should be noted, sold no weapons of significance to the Israelis, and that remained true under Truman's successor, President Eisenhower.

I don't know if you want me to get straight into the Eisenhower years, Aaron O'Fer's with Truman for the time being. Yeah, let's stick with the 40s. I want you to say more about Truman's own attitudes and his reasons, you know, personally for driving that decision so swiftly. But actually, before that, you made a really interesting sort of remark in passing that there was an Arabist grand strategy. I want you to talk about that.

You know, this is the late 1940s. This is the dawn of the Cold War. It's clear that the world is moving in the direction of an American-Soviet rivalry by this point. And the dimensions of that are just starting to become clear. What is the pre-Israel existence grand strategy that this group prefers? And then once Israel is a state, how does that begin to affect America's strategic considerations in the region? As you say, Aaron, all this was conceptualized through the lens of U.S.-S.-S.-Soviet rivalry. It was clear to officials in Washington that the Middle East was going to be a theater of geopolitical rivalry,

not the main theater of geopolitical rivalry, which was Europe or even the secondary theater, which was the Far East. But nonetheless, they recognized that there was immense strategic significance in the Middle East to be had. According to this group, there were a number of geopolitical priorities in the region. First and foremost, they wanted to deny the Soviet Union access to the region. like any other region on Earth. The idea was any gains the Soviet Union makes will be gains to their benefit

and at our expense. It was a zero-sum game. What's good for them is not good for us, and what's good for us is accordingly bad for them. That was the first priority. Another priority was making sure the region's energy reserves, principally its oil supplies

to not fall into the hands of the Soviets or allies of the Soviet Union, Union. And conversely, the United States wanted these reserves to be accessible, both to United States and also to allies of the United States. And all these priorities really made it so that the Middle East was seen as was an area of geopolitical competition. And if you look at a map, mandatory Palestine and then the eventual state of Israel occupies just spec on that map, whereas the Arab world is this vast sway of territory. and if you're over this, if you're someone who approaches foreign policy from the real's perspective, you're going to say, all right, are we going to choose this tiny country of microscopic size in this region, or are we going to choose the Arab world, which is much larger, much more powerful, and much more economically significant?

Well, this is a great way to ask the Truman question then. Okay, so as you just laid it out, it seems like there can hardly be a debate. There's Soviet expansionism. This is getting serious. There are major energy resources. It's clear these resources are going to be even more significant as time goes on than even they are in the late 40s. And all of the countries whose assistance you're going to need to keep the Soviets boxed out and keep access to those resources are pissed off about the appearance of this new political entity. 11 minutes.

Truman recognizes it in 11 minutes. Why? We have a really good idea from this memorandum. summarizing conversation Truman had with Secretary of Story George C. Marshall, among other people, I don't remember the exact date, but it's a few days, as I recall, before Israel's independence was declared. The main official in the government who was advocating for recognition was a man named Clark Clifford. Here at the Reagan Institute were not huge fans of Clark Clifford because he became known for saying that Ronald Reagan was, quote, an amiable dunce. Nonetheless, on this question, Clifford was in the right. He argued to Truman and in front of these other officials that Israel would be a friendly country in the Middle East in a region in which there weren't that many friendly countries to the United States to begin with.

It made sense to develop a partnership with this new state. There was also an argument that the Arabs needed the United States a lot more than the United States needed the Arabs. And even if the United States did recognize Israel, there would not be serious repercussions in the United States. Arab world. I think that argument was salient in Truman's view. And I'm not sure if Clifford ever made this argument, but there was also an argument of morality and of whether this was just the right thing to do for the United States, a country which had expended a lot of blood and treasure in the Second World War and which had witnessed firsthand in 44 or 45s, the horrors of the Holocaust up close in Europe. There was also, I think, a strong argument to recognize the state of Israel

on those grounds, on the grounds of morality, on the grounds that the United States, the world's most powerful country, should at least recognize this new Jewish state. And Truman, he had his reasons. He decided to recognize Israel, as I said, just 11 minutes into his existence. And he lived with that decision. He was criticized for it at the time. But here we are, however many years later, it's pretty clear he made the right call. Well, you know, the situation we're in these days, where generally speaking, though obviously it waxes and wanes and has its high points and low points, generally speaking, the U.S.-Israel partnership is pretty strong. That was, as you've already alluded to, that did not come into focus immediately.

That's really a creature sort of of the 60s onward. What is the rest of the 40s and the 50s like? What are the major dynamics at work in the relationship? In terms of a strategic partnership or security partnership, there really wasn't much of one to speak of, at least until a Kennedy and Johnson. years in the 1960s. The Israelis, for their part, came calling almost incessantly with requests for American weapons. They wanted the United States to be their main security patron. They were looking for friends in the international system. They found friends, so to speak,

in the form of the French. But more than anything, they wanted American weapons. They wanted American technology, and they wanted the best arms from the United States. The United States did not provide these weapons, at least no weapons of significance, because they feared alienating the Arabs, as it was alluded to earlier in our conversation, and they also did not want to fuel an arms race in the Middle East, thereby making the region more unstable and perhaps precipitating a state of war. They really feared this above all else. They did not want the Arabs and the Israelis fighting each other, at least any more than they already were, because they were fighting nearly incessantly in the region at this time. And the idea was in Washington, and this view was shared by many, many officials, not only in the Department of State, but also elsewhere in the administration. The view there was, if we sell the Israeli arms, that's going to be bad, the Arabs will feel a need to seek weapons from the Soviets, perhaps. And if we sell the Arabs weapons, it's going to be bad, too.

We'll sit on the sidelines. We'll sit this out. We'll let other powers do what they will. We're not going to sell the Israelis weapons, even though they say they need them, even though they want weapons from us. We're not going to do it. We'll sit in the sidelines. The region will be more secure this way. That'll be better for our geopolitical aims.

We'll sit this one out. And that's what they did. Eisenhower accused to a similar line as Truman. Eisenhower did not share any of Trump. Truman's sympathy for the state of Israel, really. Truman, I think, can be accurately characterized as a true Zionist. Eisenhower, but I wouldn't say he was an anti-subite, did not see Israel on the same terms. His approach was much more cold and pragmatic and realist.

He pretty much agreed with the Arabist line when it came to the Middle East. He really wanted to develop strong relations with Egypt, which was led by a man and Gamal Abdul-Nasso. or at least it was in the middle of the 1950s onward, and he accordingly kept Israel very much at arm's length. He saw them as trouble makers, he saw them as an impediment to his regional aims, and he did not want to sell them any weapons of significance. He did sell them recoilless rifles, insignificant weapons like that,

but he rebuffed their desires for major weapons sales. And of course, the main incident that arose to, during Eisenhower's tenure, at least, when it came to Arab-Israeli relations, was 1956 in the Suez crisis. As your viewers probably know, the British, Israelis, and French colluded to invade Nassar's Egypt. The invasion was actually a success in tactical terms. Politically, it was a disaster. Eisenhower ended up backing Egypt and opposing the French, British, and Israelis, who were all forced to withdraw in humiliating fashion.

the strategic calculus behind this was we really need the Egyptians. We need them. If we don't back them, they're going to go to the Soviets. This will be very bad. We need the Egyptians on our side. And the British, French, and Israelis are double-crossing us. This is very bad. We're not going to go along with our machinations in Middle East.

We're going to back the Egyptians. Well, that worked out. Yes, it didn't work out. Nonetheless, I think we should be fair to the administration and see what the reasoning was behind that decision. But for those of us, well, maybe not for those us, for those people who say, well, the United States is always back to Israel, it's always done whatever Israel's wrong. This is patently untrue. There are many, many examples, some of which I describe in the book of the United States not doing what Israel wanted and actually exerting a lot of pressure on Israel to do what the United States wanted it to do and to stop with its alleged misdeeds and misbehavior. Well, to stick with Suez then and, you know, the trajectory of NASA into the Soviet orbit, you know, along with the Syrians and I guess sort of bathism generally, you know, why does that dynamic develop?

Why are the Soviets successful in building up this sort of partnership structure in the Middle East, which seriously threatens our interests? Despite, you know, in this one instance, Eisenhower sort of going out of his way actually to back an Arab power in its war. against Israel and Europeans, and otherwise attempting to balance and not favor Israel at all. It's a good question. I can answer this only partly, and I would encourage you and your viewers who are interested in this question to consult some of the literature on Arab-Soviet relations. The Soviets did, for all of communism's faults, have a pretty compelling ideology, at least in the minds of many third world leaders. Nasser, for his part, hated the British. He didn't like the Europeans. He remembered the time when the British

occupied Egypt, when the British were in control of things, and he really resented the Europeans. And he did associate the United States with the Western colonial world, whereas the Soviet Union was not in that mold. It was a new power. It was a power that was trying to ally itself with a lot of these third world nationalist movements, and it was offering, in his minds, a compelling ideology, that of international socialist liberation. Nasser, as I understand him,

was influenced by a lot of these radical leftist thinkers. He bought into their ideology of worldwide liberation, and he wanted to hitch his wagon to the Soviets train, so to speak. I think that had something to do with it. A lot of it was just the strategic, situation, the Soviets decided pretty early on that Zionism was incompatible with international socialism. It wasn't entirely clear at the outset whether the Soviets were going to be receptive to the Israelis or not. The Israelis, actually for their part, probably would have welcomed

Soviet support because, as I said earlier, a lot of them were sympathetic to leftism and sympathetic to Marxism, and they probably would have welcomed support the Kremlin. But Stalin and then his predecessor, Khrushchev, successor Khrushchev, I should say, decided that Israelis and Zionisms were threats to Soviet aims around the world, and they were not going to ally themselves with the Israelis, and they were going to pursue the radical Arab states instead. That was the calculus in Moscow. I'm curious about that Soviet decision, which is sort of a mirror image of the Truman decision because yeah, I mean, you've pointed this out, but, you know, early 20th century Zionism,

you know, is very comfortable on the left, mid-20th century Zionism, for that matter. Is it, in the Soviets reject that, I mean, there's obviously a nationalist element, but the Soviets are hardly, you know, they're perfectly willing to stomach nationalism in other contexts. Indeed, the Arab context has plenty of, has an Arab nationalist element to it that's very strong. Is it just picking the stronger horse that's the, in their estimate, that's the more important factor? That would probably be my reading, and I confess I have not read too deeply into this question. That would be my sense at this juncture.

No, no words, no words. So, well, okay, so another question that stems from the Suez thing. I mean, there's an interesting partisan dimension here, which is, you know, Democrats with Truman and then, you know, as you write about extensively in the book, Kennedy and Johnson, generally being pretty friendly to Israel and the Zionist project, Republicans being colder, more realists, more skeptical. If anything, it sort of throws into sharp relief, Nixon as a kind of a unique figure who, you know, I mean, the U.S. Israel relationship is a hardly, you know, no limits partnership to quote to Chairman Xi, I think, talking about Putin.

But, you know, the United States is really there for Israel in 73 in a complicated way, but nevertheless. So speak to this partisan dimension of things. You know, it's consistent there for a while and then it begins to flip, I guess, in the 70s, that the Democratic Party is the party of Israel in the United States. Yes, in this case, we need to disabuse ourselves of any presentist notions we may have and anything we may be reading about in the news, about Republican support for Israel, and Democratic antipathy toward Israel. If we rewind back to the 50s and 60s, as you say, Aaron, it was the Democrats who

overall were much more supportive, at least in an emotional sense and a strategic sense. I would submit as well to Israel than the Republicans were. There were for sure. There were some Zionist Republicans and some Republicans who wanted a security partnership with the Israelis. There were Republicans who wanted to sell them arms and Republicans who were critical of the Eisenhower administration for not selling those significant arms. But nonetheless, I think the center of gravity in the Republican Party was not as favorable

to Israel as a center of gravity in the Democratic Party. On one hand, this, I think, had to do with ideology. Democrats, as they are now, even then, they tended to be more social democratic in orientation. They sympathized with Israel's strong labor movement. They really admired its democratic character. They knew about the Kibbutzim, and they knew about the labor movement, and they admired leaders like Ben-Gurian, Goldemayir. They saw the Israelis as plucky underdogs who deserved American admiration, if not support. The Republicans were really not susceptible to those arguments.

If anything, they saw the Israelis as regional impediments, as troublemakers, as pests, and many of them wanted to curry favor with the Arab states instead. But as I said, there were some Republicans who wanted a strong security partnership with the Israelis, but it was just a different time. The real change comes about, as you say, under Nixon, who was no bleeding heart. He was not an emotional president, at least when it came to foreign policy. Maybe he was when it came to his personal life. He made his decisions in a very cold, calculated way.

But when the chips were down and when Nixon really needed to decide whether he was going to come to Israel's aid, wouldn't look like Israel, in his own words, very much could go down on the tube. he decided to orchestrate this massive resupply to the Israelis in October of 73, which really bailed them out. So in a trying time, he made a very pro-Israel decision, even if his instincts were less pro-Israel than, say, a democratic president's were. Yeah. I want to go back to the 60s, but just to stick with Nixon for a second, you know, when Kissinger was decided later in his career to make a point of praising Nixon, one of his key pieces of evidence, one of the one of the stories he wrote, you know, about many times and would say in various fora is the conversation he had upstairs in the residence with Nixon, and this is in his memoirs, during the sort of debate over the

structure of aid to Israel during the 73 war. And sort of the Americans already decided that they were going to send aid, but Kissinger acting on, well, by his own account, acting on a sense that, you know, this needs to be bearded to an extent. We don't want to cause more problems than we absolutely have to. So we're going to, there was some sort of ruby, Goldbergian scheme were like the stuff was going to be, you know all this, the stuff was going to be flown to, I think the Azores, you can correct me on the details here and then put on LL planes. Kissinger's laying all this out for Nixon in the residence and Nixon stops him cold and says something to you, you'll know the exact words, but my recollection says something

to the effect of, look, Henry, you're going to get in just as much trouble doing a thing halfway as doing it all the way, just do it all the way and essentially orders the U.S. military's airlift capacity to be put in service of the lift, which proves. to be critical. I mean, it obviously makes it possible to transfer the stuff much, much more quickly, which in an emergency mattered a lot. Yes, another quote of Nixon's, when something long lines of, send everything that can fly. He saw an administration that was paralyzed, and he really wanted the Pentagon and the rest of his administration to really get the job done and just bail the Israelis out and send them whatever they needed. And this was, you know, it was always interesting to hear

or read Kissinger talk about this because, you know, he's not a man who is shy about taking credit or suggesting that, you know, many of the Nixon successes were Kissinger's successes. In this case, he was quite explicit, you know, to the extent where he would say, you know, I was not capable of that kind of decision. You know, it didn't, it actually hardly occurred to me that course of action. And that it took a Nixon to just sort of pierce through the fog of war and the complexity of the moment and not only realize, but then demand that maximal action is actually what was required. Yes, that statement said a lot, Aaron, and you were lucky enough to have worked with Kissinger, and I never met Kissinger, but I've read White House years, years of fuel and years of renewal,

and I would recommend all those volumes to your listeners because they're filled with a wealth of insights, and they really tell a story they can't be gleaned from watching videos, documentaries, or even looking through the government documents. So we shouldn't pass over the 60s so lightly because they are this sort of pivotal, literally, decade. So we have, you know, Arab nationalism and sort of, well, Arab nationalism, those, the states associated with that ideology trending towards the Soviets. You have an ambiguous U.S. Israel relationship as Kennedy comes into office. You have also a complicated but friendlier situation with the sort of royal Arab states, the non-revolutionary, will say, Arab states.

Yes. What is the grand strategy dominated by the Democratic Party through 69 that a emerges in this environment. How does Israel fit into the conception of how to play the game with the Soviets during this period? My chapter on Kennedy tries to get at this point. It's not so much that the strategic environment changed, or that American interests change, it's a Washington's perceptions of the strategic environment and its interests changed. Kennedy comes into office, as you say, in January of 61. The State Department is filled with some of those same officials who were in charge in the Eisenhower and Truman years. They're still skeptical, if not hostile, to Israel. They want to keep trying to get the radical Arab states on

Washington side, even though it's pretty clear by this time that they're in the Soviet camp, at least Egypt and Syria are the two main adversaries of Israel. Israel is still seen as a strange pest in the region. There is very little desire to sell them weapons, at least when Kennedy first takes office. But over the course of his presidency, which was very short, as your listeners know, there emerges this consensus within the United States government. There is new intelligence that the Soviets have sold advanced aircraft to the Egyptians and the Syrians, top of the lines, top of the line stuff, bombers, fighters, and

there is a new view that the aerial balance of power has so shifted against the Israelis that actually American intervention is needed. American weapons are needed so that the Israelis can deter attacks by the Soviets. This is a big change. Initially, it's thought that any American weapons, especially to the Israelis, would actually inflame tensions and perhaps contribute to war by destabilizing the region by making the Israelis too powerful. Now, the view of very much as the Israelis are too weak, they're too vulnerable to Arab air strikes, we've got to sell them defensive weapons. And that's critical. The weapon in question that was being considered for the sale was the Hawk's surface to air missile, which was a top of line American defensive

weapon. It was an air and aircraft system, as your listeners may know. And Kennedy decided to provide that weapon in late 1962, I believe. His reasoning was, my administration has determined that the Israelis actually need these weapons. I have no ideological opposition to selling the Israelis weapons, certainly, and given that they really require this weapon to deter Arab attacks, I'm going to provide it. If there is a reaction in the Arab world, it may be rhetorically harsh, but it's not going to irreparably irreparably damage our regional standing. It's not going to grievously harm our relations with the Arab world. They'll go over it.

They recognize that we need to do this. They recognize that it's going to happen. They're not going to be able to change the decision. We're not going to reverse it. We'll give the Arabs, we'll give the Israelis, excuse me, the Hawks surface air missile. We hope this will reduce the chances of an Arab-Israeli conflagration and all be well.

That was the main decision Kennedy made on the weapons front. And it's set, as I say in the book, an important precedent because the moratorium on significant arms sales to the Israelis was broken, which allowed subsequent presidents, not least Kennedy's immediate successor, Johnson, to sell more and more weapons as the years went by to the extent that by 2025 it would be, I think, near impossible to list every single weapon that the United States has ever sold to Israel. There have been many, many examples since then, since 1962. And fit the thinking, again, into sort of the regional strategic calculus. So you, you know,

there's there's an affection for the jewish state there's a desire to see it not overwhelmed there's also a sense that you know these the soviet arms sales in and of themselves signal the hostility to american interests of these other parties yeah so so the arm sales to israel are are both obviously for israel's interest that's why israel's buying them but then you know the implication is that it's coming into focus really for the first time that this is a a partner state of the United States. Yes, as has been discussed, the radical Arab states are pretty firmly in the Soviet camp by this point.

There are certainly attempts to win them back, but Washington is having to come to terms with the fact that they are pretty firmly in the Soviet camp. Israel, on the other hand, is seen very much the state that wants to be America's friend, that could actually be a good friend if the United States are willing to extend its hand to Jerusalem. That, I think, is Kennedy's mindset going in. He likes the Israelis personally. There's no doubt about that.

He had a very productive meeting with Golda Mier, who was then Foreign Minister at the end of December 1962. It was a very friendly meeting, a very productive meeting, a cordial meeting. It wasn't so much about that. It was the Kennedy said, all right, this is best for American interests. We need all the friends we can get in the Middle East. We've got friends and, I don't know, friends. We've got partners in Saudi Arabia. We've got partners in Iran.

We've got partners in Turkey. If we can bring the Israelis on board, that would be great too. They're going to be mostly aligned with us. That's good. We want friends who are strong. We don't want to have vulnerable friends. And given that they are vulnerable to Arab aerial attacks, we've got to sell them the hawk's surface to air missile.

As you say, Soviet sales to the Arab states were not seen positively in Washington. This was seen as evidence of further Soviet inroads in the region. That was not good. from the perspective of the Kennedy administration, they wanted to keep the Soviets out, they wanted to keep Soviet influence to a minimum in the Middle East. And they also believe that if a war broke out, but that would present the Soviets an opportunity to be further involved in the region, perhaps intervening on the side of the Arab states, that was seen as a nightmare scenario for strategists in Washington.

They did not want that. They wanted the Soviets out, out as much as possible. and even if they are involved, in some degree, we can't have them coming in on the sides of the Arabs in a war. That would be disastrous. Amidst all of this and not for the last time, nuclear politics began to come into play in the region. The Israelis pursue a nuclear program. Talk about that. Talk about Israeli thinking about it, you know, beyond the obvious.

Give us some texture on that and American reactions. Let me clarify that I have gone through all of the. using declassified documents. I'm privy to know special information on this subject. This topic, as far as I can tell, first emerged really at the end of the Eisenhower administration. There was intelligence in Washington that there was something fishy going on in the Negev desert, in southern Israel at a place called Imona. The Americans weren't really quite sure what was going on. Kennedy, during the presidential transition period, I think this was in early 61, perhaps in late 60. is briefed by Eisenhower's people about these developments, and there were concerns that the Israelis were pursuing nuclear program.

The United States, as is known, was then as now committed to a policy of nonproliferation around the world. The only nuclear states around the world at the time, I think, were the United States, Soviet Union, France, the United Kingdom. They did not want another power to join the club. Kennedy in his first inaugural address, and his only inaugural address, decried the spread of the deadly atom, something along those lines. He was deeply concerned with nuclear proliferation. He feared nuclear war. He feared a nuclear holocaust. And he did not want any more powers join the nuclear club than those powers that were already in it. That was one of his main priorities. He had some pretty testy exchanges with the Israelis before he died in November of 63. He and Ben-Gurian would go back and forth about what was going on, Demona.

Ben-Gurian would deny, of course, that there was anything, a foul going on. Kennedy would press him for more information. I think it was pretty clear on the American side, at least, that they suspected the Israelis were up to no good. In their view, they suspected that they were trying to get nuclear weapons. Even so, they were willing to entertain Israel's diplomatic charade, and they called their bluff because they had a bunch of inspectors go. There were inspections up through the Johnson. in years, I believe, I forget how many they were, but at least six, if not seven or eight.

Each time the inspectors came back and said, you're shown what they wanted us to see. We see really no evidence of nuclear weapons production, but we can't be sure. We clearly weren't shown everything. And as I recall, one of the inspectors was later asked about the inspections, and he said, it was pretty clear to us that they were lying, but we had no firm evidence of the contrary. The grand bargain, so to speak, happens under President Johnson. There is this fascinating conversation between Paul Warnke and Yitzhak Rabin, I believe, on the Israeli side, who was a bastard at the time to United States. There was this roundabout exchange in which the Americans, having heard from the Israelis, that they will, quote, not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into Middle East.

The Americans are obsessed about that phrasing. they're thinking to themselves, what the hell do they mean? We're not going to be the first to introduce nuclear weapons. Does that mean they won't possess nuclear weapons? Does that mean they won't use nuclear weapons? What on earth does that mean? The discussion was not particularly productive, but as far as I can tell, the Johnson administration said, all right, we know the Israelis have nuclear weapons,

but they've assured us they will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East. We're going to assume that they will not use nuclear weapons. That's good enough for us. We can't do anything about it now. They have nuclear weapons. We're not going to create a big fuss about it. We're not going to let nuclear program get in the way of progress on much more important issues. We accept that the Israelis have nuclear weapons.

We trust that they will not use them, and we don't really see a need for them to use them. It is what it is. It's not ideal. But what's been done has been done. And we're going to move ahead with the relationship. And how would you characterize, again, based on the unclassified materials that you've reviewed and your following of the situation today, the evolution of Israeli nuclear thinking

from this moment through the rest of the Cold War, maybe even a bit beyond, this sort of undeclared but apparently real capability, was the basic logic of it as it was first introduced in the 60s unchanged? Have there been evolutions? That seems to be the case from my understanding. The Israelis indirectly, if not directly,

have made clear that they will not tolerate nuclear weapons in the hands of an enemy nation, especially in the hands of a nation that has pledged to annihilate Israel, a nation that has pledged to wipe Israel off the face of the map. There are examples of Israelis actually taking out adversarial states as nuclear programs in 1981 and again in 2007. And of course, as we record this today on June 12th, 2025, it's unclear what they're going to do as regards Iran's nuclear program, but there are reports that the Israelis are readying a strike.

Iran will have to see what comes of that. And if there is an Israeli strike, all said, it's pretty clear that the Israelis are not going to tolerate any hostile state, have nuclear weapons. They have never used their own nuclear arsenal. And I think they have no tensions of using their own nuclear arsenal. But it's been a pretty strong deterrent over the years. And just to close out the 60s, you know, the structure of what sort of becomes, the modern U.S.-Israel relationship has really developed during this period. There is a test of Israel's strength and really a threat to its existence in 67.

Israel comes out on top by a wider margin, actually, than in 73. Or it's probably the wrong way to put it. It has a easier pursuit of success than it does in 73 when things are substantially more harrowing. What is the American role in that? What is the attitude of Johnson towards it? Just talk a bit about that. In contrast to 73, the Americans played a small role in the 67 war. There was no resupply.

There was no military aid to Israel during this period, in part because the war was so short. It was six days after all. In the lead-up to the war, there were diplomatic attempts by the United States to avert war. There were signs that Egypt in particular was being incredibly bellicose toward Israel, Nasr was threatening war. He was saying the Israelis would regret the day that they owe to war with Egypt and that they would be held to pay if war broke out. He closed the straits of Tehran to Israeli shipping,

which could have been seen as an active war in the lead up to the outbreak of six-day war. He was being very aggressive. The United States feared another Arab-Israeli war. There had been multiple until June of 67. for June of 67, and they did not want yet another war in the Middle East. The actual war is, as I said, done without much of any American assistance. The Israelis destroy the Egyptian Air Force pretty early on. They take care of the Egyptians in the Sinai.

They take care of the Syrians and the Golan. They take Judean Samaria, the West Bank from the Jordanians. It's a rousing, resounding success for the Israelis. And also lets Washington know that the Israelis are for real. They took on all these air powers. They crushed him. It was a blowout, much like the Republicans crushed the Democrats in the congressional baseball game yesterday. It was not much of a ball game.

The Israelis really routed them. That made, I think, a very salient impression on Johnson. Johnson was not a bleeding heart. He respected power, much like Nixon did. And he wanted powerful friends, whether in Asia, Europe, the Middle East didn't matter. And the fact that Israel proved itself, the fact that Israel acquitted its, itself so very well in the six-day war was a left a lasting impact on Nixon, on Johnson, excuse me. He saw them as strong, capable allies that really should be in the American camp,

and that, I think, really solidified the strategic partnership. Every president since then, even presidents who were ill-disposed toward Israel have had to acknowledge, well, the Israelis are pretty good to what they do. They're pretty strong militarily. They're a small country, but yet they can hold their own pretty well, and we've got to acknowledge that. Not everything was smooth in the 67 war. There's the famous or infamous incident of the attack on the USS Liberty by Israeli aircraft and naval assets. You talk about it in the book. You take the position that it was intentional on Israel's part.

I'm curious to hear your case for that. As you know, a lot of people who are very opposed to a good U.S.-Israel relationship today sort of obsess over this incident. There's a lot in the podcast sphere. You can go to find discussions of this. I don't take you to be coming from a similar political place, but I am curious to know your analysis in the case you make. It's true. It has been fodder for lots of anti-Israel,

if not anti-Semitic conspiracy theories over the years. I'll lay out the details quickly for listeners who may not know. In June of 67, there is a spy ship, USS Liberty, that's operating in the Mediterranean, off the Egyptian coast, I believe. It's a clear day. It's flying the stars and stripes, at least according to the reporting that I've read. On the subject, there is an Israeli attack on this ship, both by air and by sea, from warplane and from missile boat from torpedo boat.

The ship is pretty badly damaged. There are 34 Americans who are killed. I might be wrong on that number and more who are wounded. The ship is not entirely destroyed, but it's badly damaged. It isn't entirely clear what happened. The Israelis said it was an error. We thought the ship was Egyptian. We're very sorry.

And what they resolved to do over the years was pay reparations to the survivors and to the families of those who were killed. That was the Israeli line. And there are memoirs that I've read. I think of Rabin's memoir, he recounts having heard that the ship was American, even though they thought it was Egyptian and being horrified and being very, very sorry. I have not come across an Israeli account that says this really was purposeful and it was intentional. On the American side, however, there are people who have looked at details, perhaps details to which I don't have access,

and have determined this was most likely a purposeful, deliberate attack. John Lehman, who was Ronald Reagan's secretary of the Navy, told me that he thinks it was intentional. And Lehman has a reputation of being very, very pro-Israel. And I would argue, given the evidence I've looked at, he was during his time as Secretary of the Navy. Dennis Prager, who's a famous conservative commentator in the U.S., very much pro-Israel, he's on the record in something he wrote saying he also believes the attack was purposeful. Now, some of your listeners may be asking themselves, why on earth would the Israelis attack an American ship that sounds insane? It does. It does sort of naturally raise that question. It does. One explanation is this was incompetence. They were stupid. They thought the ship very much was Egyptian, that it was not American, and they attacked it, and it was an error.

And sorry, just to interject quickly, I mean, I have to say, as somebody who's not been in the weeds of this issue, as you have, and so I've not been through the evidence, I find that account superficially quite plausible. You can fly a flag. I mean, these are jet aircraft and ships find torpedoes from pretty far away in a theater of war. You know, worst mistakes have in fact been made. That is one reading. It is plausible. I will grant you that point. Another plausible explanation in my view was, and I write about it. this in my book was that the Israelis did not want a repeat of 1956. Memories of Suez were fresh in their minds. They remembered when the Americans did not back their side in another war, when the Americans actually backed the Egyptians, and they did not want to repeat of that. They knew the Israelis knew that the ship was a spy ship. It was collecting information. It was collecting intelligence on what was going on on the battlefield.

They saw perhaps an opportunity to take it out. One explanation is that a mid-level Israeli commander, ordered this attack. It wasn't approved by the higher-ups. When the higher-ups realized what was going on, they ordered that the attack be stopped. That's one explanation. My view, and again, I'm looking only at declassified evidence. Much of the details, much of the, I think, juiciest details still are classified and probably will be for the perceivable future. Based on my reading, I think that this is personal reasoning that really is the only reading that really does make sense. And Secretary of State Dean Rusk, who was not an anti-Semite, in my view, and wasn't even necessarily

that anti-Israel, writes in his memoir, I didn't believe the Israeli denials, the attack was purposeful, it was outrageous, that's my read on it. And he writes that in his memoir. Well, just to stick with sort of the basic strategic logic of it, if you have a basically friendly administration in the Johnson administration, certainly friendlier than, you know, a decade prior. And your big concern is the Americans are going to pull another Suez on you and come in against you in some way, even if a little. only diplomatically. Explain to me, and this is a real question.

Like, I'm not in the weeds of this. I'm genuinely curious. Explain to me why deciding to attack American ship is more likely to produce a good rather than actually the exact opposite result of what you seek. Actually, Aaron, I don't think it was clear to them that the administration was entirely friendly.

I think there were people in Israel who thought that the Americans couldn't be trusted, that jury was still out on Johnson. It wasn't clear whether he would really back Israel when they only got tough. And look, they had an opportunity to take out a ship. They thought they could destroy it, kill everyone on board. They didn't want to repeat a 56. They didn't want the Americans to come in and say, stop in your tracks. Don't take all the West Bank. Don't consolidate your gains in the Sinai. Don't take the go on. You've got to stop. You can't win this war fully.

Got to stop now. I think there were Israelis who are very concerned about that. And if that's true, I think it's understandable why they decided to attack USS Liberty when they did. You may be right. And you're sort of alluding to people like Lehman, for example, be a great example, who has no ideological reason to take this case and who presumably has access to all kinds of information that certainly I don't. I guess I'm just being a little obstinate in that I don't get it. I don't get why sinking an American ship helps you keep America on your side or at least

out of the war. I think they thought perhaps they could do it without the Americans' knowing it was them. Okay. Plausible. Again, I can't say, I do not say this with certainty and I have no, for sure, I have no ideological aversion to Israel by any means. No, no.

That's actually why I'm so interested. I wouldn't, I wouldn't have this debate, I think, with somebody who clearly had an ax to grind. It would just be tiresome, but this is why I'm interested. It's not a debate either. These are real questions. Fascinating questions. I don't think we're going to have iron-clad answers. My attempt in the book is to make sense of something seemingly incomprehensible and to recount the facts

best I can, given the sources I have in my disposal. Well, suffice it to say the United States does not intervene against Israel in the war. So, and then we move into the period of the 70s where, you know, the partnership under a Republican president, if anything, grows closer. We're low on time here. But, you know, I actually do think it's important because it's, it's in some ways, more happens, obviously, later in the 70s and the 80s. But the 73 war and the diplomatic process that it inaugurates is kind of the climax.

to me, at least, of U.S.-S.-Soviet competition in the Middle East, because Kissinger, and here I think he does deserve some credit, is instrumental in using the war, essentially to reduce Soviet influence, particularly in Egypt. Can you speak to how that process works and how that game has played? It was a master stroke. Before October 73, there were really two opposing camps in the Middle East. There was Israel, which was the American proxy, And there were the Egyptians and the Syrians and some other radical Arab states in the Soviet camp. They were the Soviet proxies. Things came to a head in October of 73 when the Egyptians and Syrians invade Israeli-held territory, not Israel proper, but Israeli territory in the Sinai and the Golan Heights.

At the same time, I think it was at 2 p.m. 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Unlike in June of 67, this war starts catastrophically for the Israelis. happens on Yom Kippur, which is the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. The Israelis, even though they eventually figure out the attack is coming, they are ill-prepared to deal with this Arab onslaught. The Arabs, for their part, are much better repair. They have better weapons. They are tactically in a much better position.

They have better commanders. They execute their war aims much more effectively than the Israelis do. A few days into the war, there's a fascinating conversation between Kissinger and Sima Dinnets, I think it is who was the Israeli ambassador in which Kissinger is asking for an honest recounting of how the war is going. And didn't say something to the effect of, well, we've lost X number of planes and something like 500 tanks, 200 tanks. I can't remember the exact number. And Kissinger in response says, 200 tanks? You know, this is a, oh my gosh, we expected a quick victory.

What is going on here? The Americans are really caught flat-footed because they thought the Israelis, like in 67, we're going to win this war very quickly. But it's clear within a few days that this very much is not the case. There is a question of whether to resupply the Israelis because things have gotten so dire. As we discussed earlier, Nixon ultimately, over the objections of many officials and his administration, decides to greenlights and aerial resupply, which was called Operation Nickelgrass. It was this massive undertaking using C-5 transport airplanes and this really herculane task of getting all this material to Israel. And then to the front lines, I talked to an airman who was on a C-5.

crew during Operation Nicolgrass, and he had a lot of fascinating recollections of this period. And concurrently, there's a diplomatic attempt by Kissinger to work with the Soviets to iron out a ceasefire, but importantly, a ceasefire on terms favorable to the Israelis and by extension favorable to the United States. He wanted it to be pretty clear that Israel was winning this war, but he didn't want the gains so great that the Soviets wouldn't negotiate with the Americans. Kessner dispatched in Moscow. They work out in terms of ceasefire pretty quickly, and there is one that is adopted by the UN Security Council toward the end of October. Israel's gains are frozen. They had encircled the Egyptian Third Army. They were preparing to neutralize it pretty thoroughly, but a ceasefire is worked out before that happens.

And like in 67, the Israelis come out on top. From the American perspective, this is a long-term, strategic win. Not only have the Israelis been saved from supposed annihilation, they've come out stronger, and also, the United States comes out stronger diplomatically because in the years after 73, Egypt goes from being a Soviet ally to an American partner. That was a big win from the American perspective. They wanted a man named Anwar Sadat, who was Gamal Abdinasser's successor, to come on board to join the American camp. They thought he He was a much better prospective partner than Nasser was, and he was amenable to American overtures.

He wanted American aid, economic aid, and then military aid. He wanted to be an American partner. That was a big win and really a no-brainer from Washington perspective. We've got to have the Egyptians on board, and if we can have both the Israelis and the Egyptians in our camp, that's all the better for us. Because if Egyptians come into our camp from the Soviet camp, that's going to be a big loss from Moscow and what's bad for them is good for us. Yeah, and the sort of pivotal incident in all this, which is the preservation of this Egyptian division out in the desert, sort of speaks to all the

complexities and, you know, tensions in the broadly speaking partner, you know, partner-like relationship of the United States and Israel. That is to say, you know, there are plenty of Israelis who would have liked to have destroyed that division and plenty of Israelis who believe not without some justice that sure, while the United States helped it kind of doled that help out, you know, in a deliberate fashion. That is to say Kissinger and Nixon seemed to want Israel to win, but not too much. They wanted them to win by just the right amount. Yes. So as to preserve space for, you know, essentially American strategic diplomatic pursuits in the aftermath of the war, which as you just laid out is exactly what happens. And this, this is just an ongoing theme,

this tension between American interests, Israeli interests, partnership on the one hand, aggravation on the other. I suppose in a way, it's no different than dealings with any other ally, but it always seems acute for some reason in our conversations about Israel. Precisely. U.S. Israel relations were not made a vacuum. Yeah. Daniel, this is a fascinating conversation. Let's leave it here for now, but maybe you'll come back some time and we'll talk about other things that happened in the Cold War. Maybe we'll find out what's going to happen here with Israel around right now. But you are the author and folks who are interested in this stuff should check this out of U.S. defense policy towards Israel, a Cold War history. Daniel Samit, it's been a

I'd like to have you on the show. It's been a delight to be on air, and thank you very much. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.