The strategic partnership between the United States (U.S.) and Israel, which deepened after the Cold War, is not merely a traditional alliance based on military cooperation but constitutes a multi-layered and long-term geopolitical engineering project. At the core of this relationship lie shared threat perceptions, strategies of intervention in regional power balances, energy security policies, economic development corridors, and the production of international norms. While the U.S. adopts controlled instability across different geographies as a strategic tool in its pursuit of global hegemony, Israel is positioned as both a forward operating base and a key “stability engineer” in the Middle East within this strategy.
In this context, the Greater Middle East Project (GMEP), introduced in the early 2000s, became one of the first structural pillars of U.S.-Israel strategic cooperation, aiming at the restructuring of political regimes and the promotion of regional economic integration. The transformations envisioned under this project align directly with both Israel’s security perspective and the geopolitical and energy objectives of the U.S. This strategic trajectory has recently been reinforced by the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), which envisions repositioning Israel as a regional hub for logistics, energy, and trade. Consequently, Israel is no longer solely a security-centric actor but has also emerged as a central component of economic development corridors, thereby enabling the commercial and strategic map of the Middle East to be redrawn in accordance with U.S.-Israeli common interests.
The U.S.’s global role as an “order-establishing power” frequently manifests in the Middle East through regime changes, the provocation of civil wars, and the exacerbation of ethnic and sectarian fault lines. The ultimate aim of this strategy is not merely to ensure regional stability but also to restructure the global balance of power. Israel, situated at the heart of this process, has developed a security vision that seeks the weakening, fragmentation, or integration of neighboring states into Western-oriented political systems. Iran’s regional influence, driven by the so-called “Shiite axis,” is viewed as a primary threat by both the U.S. and Israel, and containing this influence is considered a strategic necessity for Israel’s long-term security.
Accordingly, the proxy wars in countries such as Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen should be interpreted not only as the result of local dynamics but also as reflections of the strategic coordination between the U.S. and Israel. The U.S. military interventions, legitimized under the guise of universal values such as “democracy,” “human rights,” and “the fight against terrorism,” are essentially geopolitical instruments designed to reconstruct regional structures in line with its own interests. A systematic alignment exists between Israel’s security-driven strategies and the U.S.’s value-based intervention policies. Indeed, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s statement at the G7 Summit—“Israel does the dirty work for all of us in Iran”—openly reflects the Western perception of Israel as a proxy power conducting covert operations in regional conflicts.
Another defining dimension of the U.S.-Israel strategic partnership is energy geopolitics. This cooperation, centered on natural gas reserves in the Eastern Mediterranean, constitutes a direct intersection of the U.S.’s interest in regional energy resources and Israel’s ambition to become an energy hub. The extraction of gas from fields such as Leviathan and Tamar and its integration into international markets is being carried out through the U.S.- and EU-supported Greece-Cyprus-Israel energy axis. This collaboration not only excludes Turkey from the regional energy equation but also serves three strategic purposes: undermining Turkey’s potential as an energy hub, maintaining the status quo regarding the Cyprus issue, and restructuring the balance of power on NATO’s southern flank.
In this regard, the EastMed Pipeline Project stands as a concrete manifestation of this geopolitical engineering. It represents a multidimensional strategic tool with not only economic but also political and military implications. The U.S. employs energy routes to build regional dependency networks and reestablish strategic equilibrium, while Israel assumes a central role in energy security through its technical capacity, diplomatic leverage, and military deterrence. Turkey’s systematic exclusion from these projects has critical consequences in the context of intra-NATO power struggles, maritime jurisdiction disputes, and the broader geopolitical competition in the Eastern Mediterranean. In response, Turkey’s actions under the “Blue Homeland” doctrine and its maritime boundary agreement with Libya have created a new arena of strategic rivalry. The struggle in the Eastern Mediterranean now symbolizes not only the sharing of energy resources but also a broader contest for regional leadership.
Another crucial aspect of the strategic partnership lies in shaping international public opinion and constructing legitimacy. Discourses such as “Western values,” “freedom,” “democracy,” and “the fight against terrorism” are instrumentalized to garner global support for Israel’s actions in the Middle East, while the U.S. employs these discourses as part of its normative hegemony-building strategy. In this framework, Israel’s military interventions and security policies are implicitly legitimized in the international arena, and regional transformation processes are shaped not by societal demands but by geopolitical objectives. Tools such as media engineering, information warfare, and psychological operations are used to manage these perceptions; among the key targets is the removal of the Palestinian issue from the global agenda. The normalization processes with Arab states and the anti-Iran alliances have relegated the Palestinian question to a secondary issue in regional politics.
Taking all these dynamics into account, the strategic partnership between the U.S. and Israel is far from being a passive alliance aimed merely at preserving the regional status quo. On the contrary, it represents an active and deliberate reconstruction process intended to radically transform the political, social, and economic fabric of the Middle East. The main orientation of this partnership goes beyond the traditional understanding of the balance of power, aiming to institutionalize a new order in the region and render long-term interests permanent. In this respect, strategies targeting the weakening of nation-states are not limited to the toppling of regimes or the collapse of central authorities, but also involve the creation of deep-rooted fault lines along ethnic, sectarian, and religious identities, thereby condemning societies to prolonged conflict dynamics.
The empowerment of non-state armed actors in Iraq and Syria, the growing fragility of Lebanon’s sectarian-based political system, and the ongoing civil war in Yemen are all reflections of this strategy on the ground. While the U.S. legitimizes this process through normative discourses (democracy, human rights, counter-terrorism), Israel is placed in a position to maximally benefit from these structural disintegrations both in terms of security and diplomacy.
At the heart of this new status quo-building process lie not only military superiority but also geo-economic elements such as control over energy resources, trade corridors, and information flows. The envisioned new order stretching from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean redefines energy supply chains and transforms alliance relationships. Within this framework, Israel is projected not only as a security actor but also as a central figure in economic development and strategic logistics.
Moreover, this new order envisages a multi-layered and flexible structure that revises the classical alliance architecture. Initiatives such as the normalization processes with Arab states, the Abraham Accords, the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), and EastMed reveal the expansive nature of this alliance strategy, extending beyond diplomacy into energy, trade, and technology. A common feature of these initiatives is to position Israel as an indispensable component of both the regional and global system, while simultaneously marginalizing historical issues such as the Palestinian question and establishing a new hierarchy of priorities.
In conclusion, the U.S.-Israel cooperation is not a conventional alliance based on temporary common interests, but rather a long-term strategic transformation project, executed systematically on a global scale, supported by normative frameworks, and structured around the principles of geopolitical engineering. This project is implemented through military interventions, energy-centered investments, media power, diplomatic engagements, and international norm production. As the architects of the new Middle East order, the U.S. and Israel aspire not only to preserve the current structure but also to establish themselves as the founding forces of a future geopolitical status quo.
