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In Israel’s political turmoil, the Biden administration eyes a threat to US security interests
WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Joe Biden has not hidden his disdain of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned rehaul of Israel’s courts.
But bubbling beneath the surface of Israel’s political crisis is another concern: shared U.S.-Israel security interests.
As Israeli reservists pledge to boycott call-ups in protest of the controversial judicial reform legislation, experts say Israel’s enemies could see opportunity — and that the Biden administration is worried. Gen. Mark Milley, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is headed to Israel next week to check in on the Israeli military, reports claimed on Wednesday.
“The United States has lots of partners in the Middle East, but Israel is by far its closest and strongest partner in the Middle East,” said Shira Efron, the senior director of policy research at the Israel Policy Forum, a group that advocates for a two-state outcome to the conflict. “If Israel’s capabilities and its readiness is affected, the United States loses capabilities in the Middle East.”
Biden has cast his concerns about Netanyahu’s planned judicial overhaul by emphasizing the democratic values the countries share and that he has extolled for his entire political life. “They cannot continue down this road,” Biden said on March 28.
But just two days earlier, on March 26, a White House communications glitch revealed that military readiness was also front of mind. That was the day Neyanyahu fired his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, for calling for a suspension of the legislation, in part because of the harm the political tensions were causing the military.
The Biden administration said it was “deeply concerned” by the firing. An early version of the National Security Council statement, released to the Times of Israel, read: “We are deeply concerned by the ongoing developments in Israel, including the potential impact on military readiness raised by Minister Gallant.”
The NSC removed the phrase about military readiness from later versions of the statement — NSC spokesmen never answered questions as to why — and Netanyahu rescinded his firing of Gallant.
But even as Gallant remains in place, deep questions remain about the degree to which Israel’s searing political divide have weakened its vaunted military and intelligence apparatuses. Netanyahu — and even his son Yair, on social media — has clashed with top military brass, and reports claim the prime minister aims to shake up parts of the army’s chain of command.
Netanyahu has batted down concerns, saying that the changes to the courts that have passed are minor and that he is no longer committed to other parts of the proposed rehaul his government rolled out in January. His opponents don’t believe him and continue to flood the streets at least once a week in massive protests.
He also remains bullish on U.S.-Israel relations, talking up cybersecurity cooperation and artificial intelligence research this month to a delegation of U.S. congressional Democrats who toured Israel on a mission sponsored by an affiliate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
“The future belongs to those who innovate but the future also belongs to the free societies who cooperate with each other to assure that our people, our citizens, get the benefits of AI and not its curses,” he said. “I think in this regard, and in many other regards, Israel has no better ally than the United States and the United States has no better ally than Israel.”
Security cooperation very much underpins the U.S.-Israel relationship, said Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, an influential think tank that has as its main focus the threat posed by Iran.
“The bilateral relationship on the military and security level is as strong as ever,” Dubowitz said in an interview. “I think the concern is what” the political turmoil will do “specifically to Israeli military preparedness and security with Iran on the cusp of nuclear weapons.”
U.N. inspectors say Iran is closer than ever to enriching uranium at a weaponization level. But even absent a nuclear weapon, Iran poses multiple threats to U.S. interests in the region, ranging from its arming of Hezbollah in Lebanon to its upholding the Assad regime in Syria.
Israel has been key to keeping Iran off balance while the United States deals with other regional threats, Efron said. She cited U.S.-Israel coordination in Syria in the late 2010s, when the country was wracked by civil war, as an example.
“You have a partner with mutual goals,” Efron said. “If one of the partners, the IDF, can’t do one of the tasks, it’s suboptimal.”
The threat to IDF readiness stems from thousands of military reservists who have sworn to stop volunteering if Netanyahu advances his overhaul of the courts, which opponents say would sap the judiciary of much of its independence.
Israelis protest against the Israeli government’s planned judicial overhaul, near the prime minister’s official residence in Jerusalem, March 23, 2023. (Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash90)
Most reserve duty in Israel is mandatory, but a subset of volunteers for elite service in commando units, the air force and intelligence are exempt. Reservists in each of those disciplines are prominent among the dissenters.
The greatest threat is to the airforce, where reserve pilots take weekly training flights in order to qualify as ready for combat.
“You know, 60% to 70% of missions by the Israeli Air Force are done by reservists and some of them are going on strike,” said David Makovsky, a distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank with ties to the U.S. and Israeli governments. “If you don’t train, you can’t fly.”
Natan Sachs, the director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, said reservist defections would have an effect at least in the short term.
“In the short term, there could be operational issues, especially if particular units are not up to up to Israeli standards, which are pretty high standards,” he said. “The numbers are considerable, especially in some of the squadrons.
That lack of readiness could undercut the high-profile joint exercises the United States and Israel periodically stage as a show of unity and force, and as a signal that the United States is ready to keep Iran’s ambitions contained. The most recent exercise was one called Juniper Oak, in January.
Dubowitz said the political tensions are distracting Israel from other pressing diplomatic and security matters, including intensifying Israeli-Palestinian violence in the West Bank, heightened tensions with Hezbollah on the Lebanese border and the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which both Netanyahu and Biden see as a priority.
“There’s a growing possibility we’ll have war with Hezbollah, the West Bank is on fire,” he said. “Judicial reform has eclipsed all other compelling national security priorities, and then also opportunities, there’s a 50-50 possibility of a deal with the Saudis by the end of the year.”
Another reason Biden does not need Israeli instability is his focus on other regions. Like his two predecessors, Donald Trump and Barack Obama, Biden sees the preeminent long term threat in Chinese ambitions. Short term, he wants Ukraine to roust Russia from its invasion of the country.
Israel’s preoccupation with its domestic turmoil “could mean that the U.S. needs to do more in this region,” Efron said. “The U.S. doesn’t want to do more in this region. They want to focus on Russia. They want to focus on China.”
Sachs noted that Israel’s enemies, including leaders of Hezbollah and the Iranian regime, have indicated that they see an opportunity in Israel’s crisis, depicting it as accelerating Israel’s demise.
Israel’s enemies would be wise to be wary, Sachs said. Israel’s military remains formidable, and its reduced readiness poses a threat to its enemies: With fewer soldiers on duty, Israel would use blunter means of retaliation than the highly targeted systems usually available, causing greater damage.
Efron identified a longer-term concern in the presence in Netanyahu’s government of far right extremists. That could affect intelligence sharing, which has remained intensely close whatever other tensions have afflicted U.S.-Israel relations. Spies are less naturally inclined to share information with regimes that have radically different cultures, she said.
“You do this with partners you see eye to eye with,” she said of intelligence sharing. “The lack of shared values creates a challenge for the United States.”
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Irish Rap Trio Kneecap Sees More Concerts Canceled as British Artists Express Solidarity With Anti-Israel Remarks
Members of Kneecap pose on the red carpet at the Irish Film and Television Academy (IFTA) Awards in Dublin, Ireland, Feb. 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne
A slew of British musicians spoke out on Wednesday in defense of the Northern Irish rap group Kneecap, who are facing widespread criticism and the cancellation of several scheduled performances after making antisemitic, anti-Israel, and other offensive comments.
In a statement posted on Instagram, the trip-hop collective Massive Attack claimed politicians and “right-wing journalists” are “strategically concocting moral outrage over the stage utterings of a young punk band.” The collective added that these critics have no right “to intimidate festival events into acts of political censorship” while “simultaneously obfuscating or even ignoring the genocide” of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Massive Attack said emphasis should be put more on the alleged persecution of Palestinians, and less on the Irish band.
“Kneecap are not the story. Gaza is the story. Genocide is the story,” the collective added. “And the silence, acquiescence, and support of those crimes against humanity by the elected British government is the real story.” Massive Attack concluded by expressing solidarity with “all artists with the moral courage to speak out against Israeli war crimes, and the ongoing persecution and slaughter of the Palestinian people.”
Massive Attack has voiced support for “Palestine” for more than 30 years, and accuses Israel of “occupation” and “apartheid.” The collective has boycotted performances in Israel since 1999.
Dozens of other major acts and artists signed a statement from the London-based independent record label Heavenly Recordings in support of Kneecap, who is signed to the label. Musicians including Fontaines DC, IDLES, Primal Scream,Pulp, Enter Shikari, English Teacher, and Sleaford Mods added their signatures to a statement titled: “We stand for freedom of expression.”
“As artists, we feel the need to register our opposition to any political repression of artistic freedom,” the statement read in part.
“The question of agreeing with Kneecap’s political views is irrelevant: it is in the key interests of every artist that all creative expression be protected in a society that values culture, and that this interference campaign is condemned and ridiculed,” the statement continued. “Furthermore, it also the duty of key leadership figures in the music industry to actively defend artistic freedom of expression – rather than seek to silence views which oppose their own.”
These artists have come out to defend Kneecap after the band’s performance in April at the Coachella festival, where they projected an anti-Israel message that said: “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. It is being enabled by the US government who arm and fund Israel despite their war crimes. F–k Israel. Free Palestine.”
Two concerts in the United Kingdom by the Northern Irish rap group Kneecap scheduled for this summer have been cancelled in light of the trio’s offensive comments.
The Eden Sessions are a series of live outdoor music concerts held in the summer in the Eden Project, a large botanical garden-like visitor attraction located in Cornwall, England. Eden Sessions Limited, which organizes the concert series as a joint venture between the Eden Project and global live events company AEG Presents, announced on Tuesday that the Kneecap show with Mike Skinner at Eden Project scheduled for July 4 has been canceled. Ticket purchasers will be contacted and fully refunded. A specific reason for the show’s cancellation was not given.
Shortly afterward, Kneecap announced on Facebook that it would instead be performing at the multi-purpose complex Plymouth Pavilions in Devon on the same date. However, organizers of the concert have since canceled that show as well, due to safety concerns.
“Having taken advice from relevant authorities and agencies, it has been agreed that Kneecap’s performance at our venue will no longer go ahead,” organizers announced in a statement, which was posted on the homepage of the venue’s website. “The safety of our valued visitors is always our primary concern and as such we feel confident in this decision – no further communications will be entered into.”
Last week, two Kneecap concerts in Germany scheduled for this summer were also canceled.
After the Coachella scandal, the UK’s Metropolitan Police said late last week that its counter-terrorism unit would be investigating videos from the band’s past concerts where they made other offensive remarks. Police are assessing footage from a London gig in November 2023 where a Kneecap band member said, “The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP [member of Parliament].” Police are also assessing videos from a November 2024 concert in London during which one member of the group shouted “Free Palestine … up Hamas, up Hezbollah.” The Kneecap member had a Hezbollah flag draped over his shoulder when he made the remarks.
Both Hamas and Hezbollah are designated by the UK as terrorist organizations. It is a criminal offense under the UK’s Terrorism Act of 2000 to “invite support for a proscribed organization.” The UK’s Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch demanded that Kneecap be prosecuted for allegedly calling for the death of Tory MPs.
Kneecap claimed in a statement on Monday that “we do not, and have never, supported Hamas or Hezbollah.” The Belfast-based group also rejected “any suggestion that we would seek to incite violence against any MP or individual. Ever.” They additionally apologized to the families of murdered British MPs Sir David Amess and Jo Cox for the “Kill your local MP” comment.
The official spokesperson for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer rejected Kneecap’s statement, calling it “half-hearted” and saying that the trio “should apologize.”
“We completely reject in the strongest possible terms the comments that they’ve made, particularly in relation to MPs and intimidation as well as obviously the situation in the Middle East,” the spokesperson added, according to LBC. “It’s right that the police are looking into these videos.”
Kneecap’s manager Daniel Lambert defended the band during an appearance on RTÉ’s “Prime Time” on Tuesday night. “What they said at Coachella was the right thing to say,” he said in part. “It’s a message aimed at governments who are enabling a genocide in Gaza.”
A number of politicians in the UK – including Labour MP for Hemel Hempstead David Taylor, UK Secretary of State for Science Peter Kyle, and Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney – as well as other pro-Israel supporters have publicly called for Kneecap to be removed from several festival performances because of their hateful remarks. UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) said on Wednesday it wrote to “all the venues and festivals” set to host performances by Kneecap this summer, “pointing out the band’s history of abusive and unlawful behavior and the legal issues that the venue may face if it hosts the band.” UKLFI sent letters to festivals including Glastonbury, the Green Man in Wales, 2000 Trees, TRNSMT in Scotland, Finsbury Park, Wythenshawe Park, and the Wide Awake Festival.
“It is not acceptable to parade the support of evil, genocidal groups as terrorist chic in an effort to appear radical onstage. Nor is it legal in the United Kingdom,” said a spokesperson for UKLFI. “It is particularly egregious to glorify terrorists at music festivals, given that innocent young people at the Nova festival in Israel were slaughtered by these very terrorist groups. We are pleased that having been alerted to this issue, concert venues are taking action against the risk of this happening again.”
In wake of the Coachella incident, Kneecap lost its US work visas, even though they have a North American tour set for later this year, and partied ways with their American booking agency, Independent Artist Group.
The post Irish Rap Trio Kneecap Sees More Concerts Canceled as British Artists Express Solidarity With Anti-Israel Remarks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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White House National Security Adviser Waltz Being Forced Out, Sources Say
US President Donald Trump, right, and his White House national security adviser, Mike Waltz. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
US President Donald Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz is being forced out of his job, four people briefed on the matter said on Thursday, in the first major shakeup of Trump’s inner circle since he took office in January.
Waltz‘s deputy, Alex Wong, an Asia expert who was a State Department official focused on North Korea during Trump’s first term, is also leaving his post, two people told Reuters.
Waltz, a 51-year-old former Republican lawmaker from Florida, faced criticism inside the White House when he was caught up in a March scandal involving a Signal chat among top Trump national security aides.
The national security adviser is a powerful role that does not require Senate confirmation. It was not immediately clear who would take over from Waltz. The National Security Council did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Sources said the options included US special envoy Steve Witkoff, who has been involved in Russia-Ukraine diplomacy as well as the Middle East, and Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio could assume the position on a temporary basis while a permanent selection is settled upon, sources said.
The Waltz ouster caps a month of personnel turmoil within Trump’s national security establishment. Since April 1, at least 20 NSC staffers have been fired, the director of the National Security Agency has been dismissed, and three high-ranking Pentagon political appointees have been shown the door.
The purges have seriously hurt morale in some areas of the national security establishment, according to several officials within or close to the administration. Some elements of the government are low on relevant national security expertise, and in some cases, it has proven difficult to attract high-level talent, the officials added.
The NSC is the main body used by presidents to coordinate security strategy, and its staff often make key decisions regarding America’s approach to the world’s most volatile conflicts.
Waltz was blamed for accidentally adding the editor of The Atlantic magazine to a private thread describing details of an imminent US bombing campaign against Iran-backed Houthi terrorists in Yemen. The Atlantic reported on the mishap.
At a subsequent Cabinet meeting with Waltz in the room, Trump expressed his preference for holding such conversations in a secure setting, a clear sign of his displeasure. But he and others in the White House publicly expressed confidence in Waltz at the time. Waltz also attended Trump’s televised Cabinet meeting on Wednesday.
WAVE OF FIRINGS
The NSC that Waltz will leave behind has been thinned by dismissals in recent weeks.
The bloodletting began a month ago, when Laura Loomer, a right-wing conspiracy theorist, handed Trump a list of individuals in the NSC she deemed to be disloyal during a meeting at the White House. Following that meeting, four senior directors were released.
Those four senior directors – who oversaw intelligence, technology, international organizations, and legislative affairs, respectively – had a long history in conservative policymaking and no apparent animosity toward Trump, leaving colleagues puzzled by their dismissals, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.
Some NSC staffers were upset that Waltz did not more forcefully defend his staff, those people said.
Since then, more than 20 additional NSC staffers of various profiles have been let go, typically with no notice, the people said.
In recent weeks, multiple officials have declined positions at the NSC amid the ongoing personnel upheaval, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Some areas of the council are now lightly staffed, with both the Latin America and Africa sections lacking permanent senior directors as of last week.
The Signal controversy was not the only mark against Waltz in Trump’s eyes, sources said.
A person familiar with the Cabinet’s internal dynamics said Waltz was too hawkish for the war-averse Trump and was seen as not effectively coordinating foreign policy among a variety of agencies, a key role for the national security adviser.
Another source said Trump wanted to get to the 100-day mark in his term before firing a cabinet-level official.
Waltz‘s ouster could be of concern to US partners in Europe and Asia who have seen him as supportive of traditional alliances such as NATO and tempering more antagonistic views toward them from some other Trump aides, according to one foreign diplomat in Washington who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Democrats who were outraged about the Signal scandal welcomed the news about Waltz.
“About time,” said Democratic Senator Adam Schiff.
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Trump Should Oppose an Interim Nuclear Deal That Lets Iran Off the Hook
Iran’s Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad met with Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak in Moscow on April 24, 2025. Photo: Screenshot
“We’ll have something without having to start dropping bombs all over the place,” President Donald Trump declared on Monday.
The United States and Iran are set to meet for a fourth round of nuclear talks on Saturday, where the Trump administration aims to reach a deal to dismantle Tehran’s nuclear weapons program. The Islamic Republic will surely try tempting Washington to reach a so-called “interim” agreement, which could see Tehran cap its nuclear threat — albeit temporarily and superficially. The president should reject such a proposal.
Tehran might offer to limit its enriched uranium stockpile and reduce the purity level of this stock, while accepting some additional international monitoring. This would fundamentally leave intact the regime’s nuclear weapons capabilities — including advanced centrifuge-powered nuclear fuel production assets, covert efforts to construct nuclear devices, and intercontinental, nuclear-tipped ballistic missile delivery efforts.
Thus, an interim deal would fail to fulfill Trump’s, and his administration’s, repeated demands that Tehran dismantle its nuclear weapons capabilities. Much like the 2015 Obama nuclear accord with Iran — which Trump previously opposed due to its failure to block all the regime’s pathways to atomic weapons — an interim deal would also relieve pressure on Tehran just as President Trump has started rebuilding it.
In February, Trump reimposed maximum US pressure against Iran, which was in place during his first term. In March, he demanded Tehran negotiate restrictions over its nuclear program within 60 days, or face US and Israeli military strikes against its nuclear facilities. Those actions, as well as the president’s credible military build-up in the region and campaign to degrade Iran’s key proxies like the Houthis in Yemen, succeeded in bringing Iran to the negotiating table. In April, after initially refusing, Tehran participated in the first direct talks between the countries in years.
What could an interim deal that derails the president’s goals look like? The 2013 interim nuclear deal with Iran, known as the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA), preceded the fuller 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and provides insight into what such an accord could entail.
While the JPOA required Tehran refrained from new advancements at its three uranium enrichment facilities and heavy water nuclear reactor, which provides a plutonium pathway to the bomb, those facilities remained intact. Although the regime permitted the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to enhance its monitoring and inspections, Tehran was not required to explain its past and possibly ongoing atomic weapons work.
Under the JPOA, Iran halted enrichment of uranium over five percent purity but retained its stockpile of the material, while diluting half its stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium. Retaining the ability to enrich uranium to five percent purity meant Tehran was still more than 70 percent of the way to making weapons-grade uranium.
Troublingly, Iran also showed it could succeed in extorting the West for massive sanctions relief. The JPOA provided the regime with the repatriation of $4.2 billion in assets seized abroad for its malign activities, as well as the ability to export precious metals, petrochemicals, and automotive goods. Before the JPOA, Tehran’s economy was reeling under Western economic pressure, but the deal, and then the 2015 JCPOA, provided more relief in return for limited and easily reversible Iranian concessions.
Today, Iran seeks similar relief as breathing room against growing domestic and economic pressure and possible US-Israeli military strikes against its nuclear facilities. The regime’s endgame has not changed: deflect pressure, buy time, and refine and maintain destructive nuclear and military capabilities.
In addition, an interim deal today would make a mere dent in Tehran’s nuclear weapons capabilities, which advanced precipitously under President Biden’s policy of maximum deference to the regime.
Iran has now enriched uranium to 60 percent — putting it days from 90 percent purity, which is weapons-grade — and can fuel more than 17 nuclear weapons. It has installed more than 13,000 advanced centrifuges and secreted away numerous machines. Only a few hundred of these fast-enriching centrifuges are needed to make weapons-grade uranium at a secret site. The regime also restricted IAEA monitoring and ejected inspectors from key nuclear sites.
Tehran is reportedly carrying out weaponization-related work and has a team looking to short-cut the regime’s route to nuclear weapons. It has dramatically advanced its nuclear missile-delivery program, nearing the capability to make long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles that could strike the United States.
To be sure, not all is lost — Iran is not yet nuclear weapons-armed — but Washington must bring much more to bear than a temporary fix.
Iran’s aging supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his regime are under severe pressure at home, facing droughts, water shortages, social and political unrest, inflation, and currency devaluation. Trump’s team must seize this opportunity to achieve a maximalist accord that permanently removes Iran’s nuclear threat.
To do so, Washington must insist on nothing less than the full, verifiable, and permanent dismantlement of all three pillars of Iran’s nuclear program — including its nuclear fuel production and assets, weaponization, and missile-delivery work. If Tehran refuses, the president should consider following through on his threat of military strikes, double down on sanctions, and support the Iranian people in their quest for freedom.
Short-term fixes to address Iran’s enduring nuclear threat have failed — it’s time for the president to deliver a lasting solution.
Andrea Stricker is a research fellow and deputy director of the Nonproliferation and Biodefense Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Follow her on X @StrickerNonpro. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focused on national security and foreign policy.
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