The aftermath of Israeli airstrikes in Syria earlier this week are shining a light on the growing divide between the United States and Israel over how to approach Damascus’ government and its relationship with Turkey.

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Jonathan Ruhe, a fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, told Jewish Insider, “The United States and Israel haven’t seen eye-to-eye on Syria since the fall of the Assad regime, both in terms of what al-Sharaa’s government represents and how to approach Syria’s new leadership.”

For Israel, Ruhe said, the removal of Assad and the weakening of Iran’s position in Syria did not eliminate the threat from the country. Instead, Jerusalem increasingly sees Turkey — a major backer of al-Sharaa — as a potential replacement for Iran as the dominant outside power in Syria.

“From Day One, Israel has worried that al-Sharaa simply replaces the Iranian threat in Syria with a Turkish one,” Ruhe said. “For the Trump administration, Syria and Turkey represent diplomatic and investment opportunities, not military problems.”

Israel, Ruhe said, has pursued a “proactive military approach,” including strikes aimed at preventing weapons and military infrastructure from falling into the hands of Islamist actors and Ankara.

“This explains Israel’s proactive military approach to Syria, starting with its decision to eliminate Assad’s arsenals as al-Sharaa took power in late 2024,” Ruhe said. “After targeting potential Turkish bases in central Syria last year, the latest airstrikes show Israel is willing to preempt Turkey’s military presence in northern Syria, farther from Israel’s borders.”

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Read the full piece in Jewish Insider.

The post Israel’s Syria Strikes Shine Light on Growing Divide With U.S. Over Middle East Policy appeared first on JINSA.

After the reign of Mayor Eric “I would marry Israel” Adams, the firm stance that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani took against Israel’s violence in Gaza was refreshing to some of his voters. But whatever Mamdani’s personal views on Israel, not much has changed when it comes to the institutional relationship between New York City and the Jewish state, particularly when it comes to the New York City Police Department’s work with Israeli law enforcement. In fact, the NYPD liaison stationed in Israel, whom the New York Post reported had left the job a week before Mamdani was elected, is now back on the job, a spokesperson for the police department told City & State.

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After 9/11, the NYPD looked to Israel to learn best practices for counterterrorism and intelligence gathering, sending officers to a law enforcement exchange program in 2002, initiated by the retired police chief Louis Anemone. The NYPD continued to observe and learn the methods and techniques of the Israeli police and border guard operations in the West Bank. The Jewish Institute for National Security of America, which organizes these officer exchange programs, “maintains that its trips focus on management and policy issues, and that officials do not learn about physical tactics,” as reported by The Forward. (The Israeli government has not responded to requests for comment on their relationship with the NYPD.)

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Read the full piece in City & State New York.

The post Mamdani’s NYPD is Still Working with Israel appeared first on JINSA.

Nearly 5,000 sailors and Marines aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln went without basic supplies — including toothpaste, deodorant and soap — at points during the ship’s grueling nine-month deployment. The shortages have been the subject of weeks of reporting and family accounts.

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Retired Vice Adm. Robert Harward, now executive vice president at Shield AI, said that part of the supply problem stems from not having allocated enough resources to the Middle East, since previous national security and defense strategies prioritized the Pacific theater.

“We need to shift gears and recognize that this is a long-term commitment,” Harward said. “We need to rebalance our global force posture to prepare for this long-term presence in CENTCOM — which we should have been doing for the last 40 years.”

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Read the full piece in MS Now.

The post ‘We Didn’t Plan for This’: How the Iran War Left the USS Abraham Lincoln Short on Supplies appeared first on JINSA.

As Israel and the Trump administration negotiate the next U.S.-Israel memorandum of understanding, a new report from the Jewish Institute for National Security of America demonstrates how even among hawkish experts in Washington, the question is increasingly not how to preserve the traditional military aid model, but what should replace it.

The report, titled “Shifting the Center of Gravity: Transforming the U.S.-Israel Security Partnership,” recommends that the two countries sign one final 10-year MOU — a sea change for Israel supporters who previously wouldn’t have dreamt to advocate for the end of these kinds of agreements between Jerusalem and Washington, though they largely hope for it to be replaced with cooperative and enduring programs.

The report comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has himself championed the eventual end of direct U.S. aid to Israel and as elements of both parties become resistant to defense spending overseas, a new reality that is forcing a reassessment of how Washington can sustain its commitment to Israel without relying on the traditional aid model.

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Read the full piece in Jewish Insider.

The post Daily Kickoff: One Last MOU for the Road appeared first on JINSA.

As Israel and the Trump administration negotiate the next U.S.-Israel memorandum of understanding, a new report from the Jewish Institute for National Security of America demonstrates how even among hawkish experts in Washington, the question is increasingly not how to preserve the traditional military aid model, but what should replace it.

The report, titled “Shifting the Center of Gravity: Transforming the U.S.-Israel Security Partnership,” recommends that the two countries sign one final 10-year MOU — a sea change for Israel supporters who previously wouldn’t have dreamt to advocate for the end of these kinds of agreements between Jerusalem and Washington, though they largely hope for it to be replaced with cooperative and enduring programs.

The report comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has himself championed the eventual end of direct U.S. aid to Israel and as elements of both parties become resistant to defense spending overseas, a new reality that is forcing a reassessment of how Washington can sustain its commitment to Israel without relying on the traditional aid model.

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Read the full piece in Jewish Insider.

The post JINSA Calls for Change in U.S.-Israel Military Alliance appeared first on JINSA.

The Trump administration is examining whether to pull troops out of the Gulf as a result of the US-Israeli war on Iran, with the Pentagon weighing the risks facing large US bases in the region that have come under Iranian drone and missile attack.

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Another former head of Centcom, General Frank McKenzie, said in July that the US needs to relocate its bases in the Gulf to Israel and neighbouring countries to better protect its assets from Iran’s missiles and drones.

“No one in their right mind would ever put the Centcom forward headquarters, you know, 100 miles away from Iran, [in Qatar], yet that’s where it is,” he told the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, referring to al-Udeid military base.

McKenzie said that the current US basing system in the Middle East has become an “artefact”, describing it as a legacy of the Cold War, when the US was concerned about a potential Soviet invasion of the oil-rich Arab Gulf states and later, the counter-insurgencies the US waged in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“[The US] strategy does not match the reality on the ground,” he added.

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Read the full piece in Middle East Eye.

The post US Mulls Shrinking Military Footprint in Gulf As a Result of War on Iran: Report appeared first on JINSA.

A diplomatic push by Jared Kushner to revive the stalled Gaza peace plan was met with widespread skepticism from Middle East analysts, who warned that the envoy’s timeline for Hamas disarmament is unrealistic as the group continues to hide behind a smokescreen of diplomacy rather than follow through on its commitments.

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“It may feign disarming and may turn in some guns, but full disarmament means they will lose power in Gaza,” said Elliott Abrams, who served as special envoy for Iran during the first Trump administration. “What Hamas wants is what Hezbollah has had in Lebanon: someone else runs schools and collects garbage, while they remain in charge behind the scenes. In my view, Kushner’s meeting with Hamas was a terrible mistake that helps to legitimize them.”

Daniel Shapiro, former U.S. ambassador to Israel under President Barack Obama and deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East under President Joe Biden, similarly questioned whether Hamas would genuinely comply with the roadmap, characterizing the talks as “a lot of misdirection, spinning, time-buying, and politics by all parties involved.”

“[Hamas’] ideology has not dimmed, and they have a long history of seeming to reach agreements, and then asserting caveats to wriggle out of them,” Shapiro said.

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Jonathan Ruhe, a fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said the timeline will have little meaning without a credible force on the ground capable of disarming Hamas if the group refuses to surrender its weapons voluntarily.

“By saying all the right things, Hamas hopes to aggravate existing tensions between Washington and Jerusalem,” Ruhe said, arguing that the group is playing for time as U.S. and Israeli attention is pulled toward upcoming elections in both countries and other regional flashpoints.

“It’s almost impossible to foresee real progress on the Gaza peace plan until there’s a viable and ready option to forcibly disarm Hamas, since Hamas is not going to voluntarily surrender control over its part of the Strip,” Ruhe said. “The agreed timeline doesn’t mean much in the absence of any viable disarmament option.”

Ruhe added that Hamas could “play for time” and “hope Gaza continues to fall down the list of U.S. and Israeli priorities as tensions flare in [the Strait of] Hormuz, the West Bank and Syria, and as Trump and Netanyahu focus on upcoming elections.”

“Israel may have the U.S. blessing to finish the job, and ultimately it is willing to do so, but that doesn’t mean it’s ready or eager to resume intensive and draining ground operations in the near future,” he said.

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Read the full piece in Jewish Insider.

The post Foreign Policy Experts Wary of Trump Administration’s Gaza Diplomacy appeared first on JINSA.

The Pentagon is evaluating its military footprint in the Middle East in an early sign of the Iran war’s potential to transform the U.S. presence in the region, according to eight people, including officials and others familiar with the matter.

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More hawkish voices in Washington have sought to influence the Pentagon’s planning by proposing the movement of U.S. troops in the region to Israel. A report by the pro-Israel group Jewish Institute for National Security of America in March called for more U.S. military assets to be moved to Israel’s Ovda Airbase.

This winter, in the run-up to Operation Epic Fury, Washington sent F-22 Raptor fighter jets to the base in a sign of deepening U.S.-Israel military relations.

There is disagreement within the Trump administration over that recommendation given concerns that an expanded U.S. presence there could pose a counterintelligence vulnerability amid the Pentagon’s growing concern about Israeli espionage.

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Read the full piece in The Washington Post.

The post Pentagon Weighing Smaller U.S. Military Presence in Gulf Once Iran War Ends appeared first on JINSA.

The post Iran’s Other Nuclear Weapons Option: Plutonium Bombs appeared first on JINSA.

President Trump’s efforts to bring the Iran war to an end have faltered several times.

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Jonathan Ruhe, a Jewish Institute for National Security of America’s (JINSA) fellow for American Strategy, argued the U.S. is going with the strategy to strangle the Iranian economy, depriving it of funds to pay soldiers and keeping the repressive apparatus of the regime alive, because the administration has “run out of other options” and it marks “an admission of failure” that does not have “any real prospects for success.”

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Read the full piece in The Hill.

The post Trump Snaps Back to Economic Warfare in Struggle to Make Iran Tap Out appeared first on JINSA.