“President [Joe] Biden recently achieved a historic first for which he has received no credit. He is the first president to form an interagency team dedicated to imposing sanctions on an ally, namely, Israel.” Michael Doran, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, made this allegation in an August 12 Tablet article.

It’s not new for the United States to sanction countries considered friends. Within the Middle East, examples include Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

Israel, unlike the above-listed countries, is a functioning democracy. And according to Doran, “the sanctions against Israel are of a qualitatively different kind.” Doran claims sanctions against Israel come from what he calls “an interagency team of targeteers” whose main purpose is to attack the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

According to Doran’s U.S. government contacts, this is how the “interagency team” functions:

The White House has established an interagency initiative to produce sanctions against Israeli entities and individuals. The International Economics Directorate at the National Security Council (ncs) leads the effort. Ilan Goldenberg, who until April worked for Vice President Kamala Harris and has now moved to the Strategic Planning Directorate in the ncs, also plays a very enthusiastic role. In the State Department, the Office of Economic Sanctions Policy has the lead. It works closely with the Office of Foreign Assets Control at Treasury. Together they prepare evidentiary packages.

The team convenes frequently, to meet the goal, set by the president and his top advisers, of rolling out packages of sanctions with regularity. By my count, six tranches have been rolled out so far. The next tranche, I have learned, is already prepared, waiting for release after Iran attacks Israel, so that the administration can dodge the accusation of weakening Israel in time of war.

Apparently, the team, per Biden’s directive, tries to launch a new set of sanctions roughly once a month. The actual target of the sanctions isn’t as important as their regularity. This is because, per Doran’s sources, the sanctions’ purpose isn’t to put pressure on one specific policy but “to create a climate of controversy around Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition partners.”

Netanyahu is no stranger to U.S presidents trying to oust him. Democratic administrations especially have been trying to oust Netanyahu for decades. They don’t like his conservative direction both for Israeli society and the Palestinian peace process. After his first election victory in 1996, Netanyahu received a phone call he recalled in his autobiography from President Bill Clinton: “Bibi, I’ve got to hand it to you. We did everything we could to bring you down [in the election], but you beat us fair and square.”

But if Doran’s allegations are true, this would be a major escalation. It would amount to the leader of America actively and continuously trying to oust Netanyahu during Israel’s greatest crisis in decades. It suggests the U.S. government’s response to the Israel-Hamas war has less to do with geopolitical realities or even criticisms of policy. It’s more about trying to get rid of Benjamin Netanyahu.

We wrote in the September 2024 Trumpet issue:

As Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, strives to prosecute this war, he is facing battles of his own. International courts are attacking him, threatening him with international arrest warrants. At home, an extremely disruptive Israeli minority take to the streets daily, shutting down highways and calling for Netanyahu’s ouster. And within his fragile government, he struggles to keep unity as political parties to his right threaten to leave the coalition.

Behind the scenes is an enemy that Netanyahu and Israel face who has empowered opposing forces and played a role in all these battles.

This enemy has everything to do with what is going on in Washington. If the allegations are true, this suggests the attack on Netanyahu is more coordinated within the government than meets the eye. It also suggests the U.S. government is getting desperate.

To learn more, read “Who Is Behind the War on Netanyahu.”