On March 3, 2015, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress. On the surface, this was far from an extraordinary event; more Israeli heads of state have addressed the U.S. Congress than those of any other foreign nation.¹ However, the circumstan­ces surrounding the speech, and its purpose, proved unprecedented. Netanyahu had not been invited by President Barack Obama to address the U.S. Congress, nor was the president consulted about his visit beforehand.² Netanyahu sought to use Congress to undermine the president's foreign policy.³ Specifically, he was attempting to stop the United States from negotiating an end to economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for that country's halting its nuclear program. David Axelrod, senior adviser to the president from 2009 to 2011, remarked that it was "extraordinary for a foreign leader to try and use Congress to undermine U.S. foreign policy," describing the move as "audacious."⁴ David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, described President Obama as "furious; this is an absolute humiliation for him in the midst of a very delicate negotiation with Iran."⁵

Although it may have escalated to a new level, this tension points to an underlying issue that has been present since the beginning of America's relationship with Israel: how to achieve U.S. economic and security objectives in the Middle East while maintaining a relationship with a locally unpopular state. Assessing the policies of previous administrations might yield valuable insight into the current dilemmas. The Eisenhower administration had to formulate a policy aligned with Cold War containment. Attempting to balance America's relationship with Israel against its interests in the region, it initially pursued conflict resolution; however, seeing limited results and facing a very real crisis, it ultimately resorted to the checkbook diplomacy manifest in the Eisenhower Doctrine.

President Eisenhower's secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, blamed the previous administration's approach to the region. "We are in the present jam," Dulles argued, "because the past administration had always dealt with the area from a political standpoint and had tried to meet the wishes of the Zionists in this country, and that had created a basic antagonism with the Arabs."⁶ Others in the administration echoed similar concerns. Henry Byroade, U.S. ambassador to Egypt, believed U.S.-Israeli relations alienated nationalist leaders like Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, driving them to look towards the Soviet Union for support.⁷ From the perspective of senior Eisenhower administration officials, President Truman could not have chosen a more unpopular bedfellow for the United States. Now they were stuck with navigating the complex world of Middle East affairs with the specter of Israel tied to their every move.

Over the course of his first term, Eisenhower's problem escalated in three distinct phases: from the intangible loss of prestige, to a tangible arms race, then, finally, to an outright attack on U.S. interests. First, a reported decline in prestige and influence sent worries through the State Department and prompted Dulles to spend three weeks visiting the region in May 1953.⁸ Months later, a State Department report identified the source of that decline: U.S. support for Israel.⁹ The State Department viewed the instability caused by ethnoreligious conflicts like the one between Arabs and Jews as providing fertile ground for communist advances.¹⁰ Soon, their worst fears seemed to be coming true.