Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited US President Donald Trump in Florida yesterday, in what is being seen as a further consolidation of relations between the two countries. As expected, the leaders lavished each other with praise: Netanyahu was a “hero”, while the Israeli premier announced that Trump would be awarded the “Israel Prize”. However, this mutual enthusiasm hides a looming uncertainty in the future of US support for its closest ally in the Middle East.

In America, support for Israel is nowhere near as ironclad as it once was. Scepticism is growing, particularly within the MAGA movement, as fear of US entanglement in foreign wars breeds resentment against Israel. At a conference earlier this month for Turning Point USA, Tucker Carlson highlighted the “killing tens of thousands of children” during the Israel-Hamas war, and Megyn Kelly mentioned the rift on the American Right over Israel.

There are early signs that these sentiments are having an effect on foreign policy in Washington. In August, Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene posted on X: “I don’t want to pay for genocide in a foreign country against a foreign people for a foreign war that I had nothing to do with.” The previous month, the Financial Times reported that Trump had told a Republican donor: “My people are starting to hate Israel.”

Moral and humanitarian arguments about the war in Gaza mask a deeper geostrategic discomfort with the alliance. The Middle East’s importance to America is diminishing, as is that of investing in a quasi-proxy state there. The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, published this month, states that “the days when the Middle East dominated American foreign policy in both long-term planning and day-to-day execution are thankfully over.”

The reasons for this shift are twofold. Firstly, the region no longer holds the same monopoly on global energy supplies. This is due to both the fracking revolution, which has made America largely energy-independent, and more recently, the diversification towards alternative sources of energy such as nuclear and renewables, which is likely to persist. Secondly, the security threat of radical Islamic terrorism — coming mainly from the Middle East — has declined in the US, and been replaced by the risk of state-led geopolitical conflict and nuclear escalation. As much as Netanyahu tries to frame his country’s battles as the front line of a civilisational struggle against radical Islam, many Americans are more convinced by Greene’s characterisation of a “foreign war”.

This isn’t to say that the US will suddenly pull the rug from underneath Israel. But the countries’ relationship is likely to become more transactional and support more conditional. The Memorandum of Understanding agreed in 2016, under which Israel receives $3.8 billion annually in military aid, expires in 2028 and could be renegotiated to be more beneficial to Washington. Crucially, the de facto US security guarantee that Israel has hitherto enjoyed may slowly fizzle out. In a hypothetical future war involving Israel, American aid packages — not to mention the threat of intervention — would not be so forthcoming.

In the short term, this will not be a huge concern, given Israel’s regional dominance. However, much — though not all — of the country’s deterrence posture has depended on US security guarantees and military resources. In the long term, if these resources dry up, it may come to rely more on its regional alliances.

That the Abraham Accords have survived perhaps the biggest PR crisis Israel has faced in its existence testifies to the durability of these alliances. Major Israeli defence companies are opening subsidiaries in Morocco and the UAE, and the latter has reportedly signed a $2.3 billion deal with Israeli defence company Elbit for strategic security systems. Regional security cooperation between Israel and its Arab neighbours — including Saudi Arabia and Qatar — has also been expanded during the war in Gaza.

Despite this, while Israel is tied to its Arab allies through a shared loathing for Iran, these countries do not share Israel’s “existential” concerns and are more willing to engage with Tehran. Israel will be able to work with its neighbours to prevent Iran’s goals of regional hegemony. However, the Jewish state may need to prepare for eventually facing its most pressing security concerns largely, if not entirely, alone.