This Pro-Israel Group Paved the Way for Trump’s War in Iran

The United States President Donald Trump holds a Press Conference in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on April 6, 2026, in Washington DC, United States. (Celal Güneş – Anadolu Agency)

Foundation for the Defense of Democracies is now apparently helping write the script for a fusion of the U.S. and Israeli militaries.

By Prem Thakker, reposted from Zeteo, June 3, 2026

Last June, Tzvi Kahn published a list of 44 reported Iranian attacks against Americans. Kahn, a former employee of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, had written the list to illustrate that “Tehran continues to pose a threat to U.S. forces in the Middle East, the American homeland, and Americans residing across the globe.”

Eight months later, the White House published the exact same list, almost word for word, using it to justify President Donald Trump’s new joint war with Israel on Iran.

Kahn’s list was originally published by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), a pro-Israel think tank funded by some of the same billionaires who have dumped millions into U.S. elections to keep pro-peace candidates out of Congress.

The White House’s apparent copy-and-pasting of the FDD list is a symbol for how intertwined the tenaciously pro-Israel FDD is with the Trump administration – and consequently how pro-war the administration really is.

A closer look inside FDD shows how it has served as a revolving door between the U.S. and Israeli government. It also reveals how it has long planted the seeds for Trump’s disastrous regime-change war with Iran – which has killed thousands, including U.S. troops, is and throttling the global economy, with no end in sight.

And a paper trail suggests that FDD may even have something to do with developments as recently as this week to fuse the Israeli and U.S. militaries.

Creating ‘Truth’

FDD was founded originally by a New York Times journalist-turned-Republican staffer in April 2001, and originally known as EMET (the Hebrew word for “truth”). At the time, the organization’s stated purpose was “to provide education to enhance Israel’s image in North America.”

After 9/11, the group changed its name to FDD, expanding its stated focus; since then, FDD and its allies have insisted it is a nonpartisan policy institute focused on security combating extremism.

Early on, it was a bipartisan affair. The organization’s top advisors ranged from then-leading neoconservative Bill Kristol and former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former directors of the FBI and CIA, to Democratic Senators Chuck Schumer and Joe Lieberman and future DNC chair Donna Brazile (who famously leaked debate topics to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 Democratic primary).

As the organization became increasingly more partisan, the Democrats would eventually leave their leadership roles.

Right off the bat, the group benefited from massive inflows of cash from prominent right-wing donors including Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus; right-wing hedge fund manager Paul Singer; casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who was a personal friend of Benjamin Netanyahu, and whose Trump megadonor wife, Miriam, has continued dumping millions into pro-Israel efforts; and Democratic donor Haim Saban (who would later attack the Biden administration for even considering blocking a weapons shipment to Israel amid its genocide in Gaza).

‘Maximum Pressure’

FDD has been jockeying for years to get what Trump has given them: an outright regime-change war with Iran.

The group also staunchly opposed the nuclear agreement during the Obama administration, and has worked to ensure Iran faces the most stringent sanctions possible.

During the first Trump administration, FDD CEO Mark Dubowitz sent a memo to Trump’s national security council, exploring how to incite unrest in Iran with the goal of “coerced democratization,” as the memo put it. “The very structure of the regime invites instability, crisis and possibly collapse,” it argued.

After Trump ripped up Obama’s nuclear deal and enacted a policy of “maximum pressure,” FDD celebrated: “Two Years On, the Trump Administration’s Iran Policy Continues to Make Sense.”

Of course, Trump wasn’t solely “dragged” into his illegal war in Iran by an outside force, let alone one single think tank. Trump’s threats against Iran span back to his first term, and it’s not as if the upper echelons of Republican politics are in wanting of war hawks or pro-Israel predilection. Still, FDD has unusually strong influence.

“FDD is one of the most active think tanks in DC in terms of its engagement with the Executive Branch in my experience,” says Josh Paul, who resigned from the State Department in 2023 in protest over Israel’s genocide in Gaza. He adds that FDD “has played a role for both Republican and Democratic administrations both as a contributor to foreign policy and as a means of communicating policy to the American people.”

Along with taking credit for Trump’s “maximum pressure” posture toward Iran, and his shredding of Obama’s nuclear deal, FDD has helped lead the fight to protect Israel by placing sanctions on its enemies.

At a 2019 AIPAC conference, FDD CEO Mark Dubowitz thanked the pro-Israel lobby for helping pass a bill enacting sanctions against Hamas and Hezbollah for supposedly using civilians as human shields. In effect, the law is meant to punish those groups when Israel kills civilians. And it doesn’t apply to Israel, which has been documented as actively using Palestinians as human shields.

Speaking on a panel, Dubowitz said the bill is designed to, in part, boost Israeli PR. “This legislation, its most important effect, again, is from a strategic and communications point of view,” he said. “It is to shift the focus from Israel, which the international community believes is responsible for war crimes, to those who are really responsible for the war crimes. That’s Hezbollah, Hamas, and other terrorist organizations using civilians as human shields.”

Even a 2019 Atlantic piece arguing the focus on FDD’s influence is overblown admits: “no place else has made an institutional specialty of recommending hard-line Iran policies and offering detailed proposals for how to implement them the way the FDD has done.”

That same year, when Iran blacklisted FDD – putting it on its own sanctions list and accusing it of economic terrorism for its role in designing and advocating sanctions against Iran – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ran to its defense.

“Continuing attempts by the regime in Iran to intimidate @FDD, an American think tank – a THINK TANK – must be condemned by all freedom-loving people around the world,” Pompeo tweeted. “The U.S. does not take these threats lightly, and will hold the regime and its “apparatuses” to account.”

The administration’s copy-and-pasting of Kahn’s list is not an isolated incident; the administration has been accused of publishing materials closely mirroring FDD messaging in years past. This included the first Trump administration issuing statements that had notable overlap with FDD messaging.

Cavan Kharrazian, international program researcher for the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told In These Times: “If you read the statements coming from Trump’s State Department on Iran and the ‘maximum pressure’ campaign, they appear almost completely ideologically aligned with these think tanks’ own positions and talking points, especially during the Covid-19 crisis.”

And along with Kahn’s list of 44 Iranian attacks, last month, the White House used an FDD graphic to support Trump’s justifications for his war.

Some bristled at the use of the graphic, like Joe Kent, who resigned as Trump’s top counterterrorism official in protest of Trump’s war in Iran.

“The U.S. IC assessed that Iran was not seeking a nuclear weapon, yet unverified information from pro-Israel groups dominated the intelligence reaching POTUS in the lead-up to the war,” Kent tweeted in response to the White House’s use of the graphic. “Groups like FDD, members of the media, donors, and key Israeli officials played a key role in convincing Trump that his policy should shift to zero enrichment and that the Iranian regime would quickly crumble if he struck now.”

Revolving Door

There’s also the matter of the revolving door. Bonnie Glick, a FDD adjunct senior fellow, served as Trump’s deputy administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development.

FDD senior advisor Richard Goldberg held a litany of government roles – including director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction for the White House National Security Council. His FDD profile notes that, in Trump’s first term, Goldberg “helped coordinate key elements of President Trump’s maximum pressure campaign against Iran.”

FDD advisor Charles Kupperman was Trump’s deputy national security advisor. H.R. McMaster, who was Trump’s national security advisor, is chairman of the board at FDD’s center on military and political power.

And just last month, as Trump’s “negotiations” with Iran continued to falter, he recruited Nick Stewart, the managing director of advocacy at FDD’s lobbying arm to join Steve Witkoff’s diplomatic team. FDD Action, which has spent $1.1 million on lobbying efforts since last year, says it provides private briefings, trainings, and assistance drafting bills free of charge to government staffers and officials.

The revolving door in Washington is not novel, but the closeness between the Trump administration and FDD is notable. It’s all the more important, given that there is another concurrent funnel: Israeli officials to FDD.

There’s FDD senior fellow Jonathan Conricus, a former Israeli military commander and Israeli spokesperson. Conricus served as an Israeli spokesperson at the start of Israel’s last genocidal war in Gaza; his tenure included hand-holding journalists through al-Shifa Hospital, purporting to show materials that justified Israel’s bombing of it (a practice FDD has similarly pursued).

FDD senior fellow Jacob Nagel served as head of Israel’s national security council and as Netanyahu’s national security advisor. “He led the negotiations and signed the agreement for 38 billion dollar military aid to Israel from 2018 to 2027,” FDD’s website boasts. Prior to that, he led an Israel team working on negotiations for the Iran nuclear deal. And before that, Nagel led the “Nagel Committee,” which advanced the recommendation to develop the Iron Dome. Prior to that, he served in the Israeli military.

Last year, FDD welcomed to its ranks Tal Kelman, a retired Israeli general.

Among the more egregious examples is Merav Ceren, a former Israeli Ministry for Defense staffer who worked as a FDD fellow during Trump’s first administration. Last year, she took on a role as director for Israel and Iran at the U.S. National Security Council.

FDD has maintained open warm relations with Israel. In 2024, it hosted internationally wanted war criminal and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

The porousness between the Trump-Vance administration, the Israeli government, and FDD altogether lead to a closed loop of militant individuals – backed by the same prominent pro-Israel funders – hyper-focused on goals attuned more to Israeli interests than American ones.

Andrew Cockburn, a national security author and Washington Editor of Harper’s Magazine recounted this week: “A former CIA director described FDD to me as the ‘special forces of the DC think tank community.’ Horrifyingly effective.”

The U.S.-Israeli Future

Alongside its possible influence on Trump’s joint war on Iran with Israel, FDD has wider aims.

Last year, FDD published a memo calling for a “United States-Israel Strategic Partnership Agreement.” It’s framed as a successor to the current memorandum of understanding that sends $3.8 billion in U.S. tax dollars to Israel each year.

FDD frames this partnership agreement as mutually beneficial, a symbiotic path forward that would have Israel guaranteeing purchases from the U.S. – creating American jobs by “an injection of Israeli resources” – and supporting joint U.S.-Israeli defense research and development. A way to strengthen the U.S. defense base, ensure deep ties between the nations, and yes, continue arming Israel.

The roadmap is timely. As more and more Democrats catch up to public opinion and call for ending U.S. aid to Israel, Netanyahu and hawkish lawmakers like Senator Lindsey Graham are scrambling to get ahead of it, by themselves saying Israel should taper off U.S. military funding.

By doing so, they are attempting to steer a conversation that’s veering out of their control, taking it back toward an end that remains desirable for Israel.

The agreement, Eli Clifton – co-founder of the Quincy Institute and co-author of the forthcoming book, Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power – argues “would tie the U.S. defense industries and military to Israel in a manner that would be extremely difficult to separate as time passes.”

“In short, with 60% of Americans now holding unfavorable views toward Israel, Israel’s lobby, via FDD and other groups, is actively rushing to create institutional architecture tying the two countries together in ways that will be extremely difficult to undo,” Clifton told Zeteo.

And the 2025 memo is already maturating inside Congress. Buried in the Republican-led House version of the 2027 Pentagon budget is what’s called the “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative,” a measure that seeks to integrate U.S. and Israeli military sectors. The measure, section 224 of the NDAA, would have the U.S. and Israeli militaries co-produce weapons, expand coordination in the realms of AI and biotechnology, and share U.S. military data with Israel.

The fusing of the militaries would have cascading effects. As Ben Freeman of Responsible Statecraft writes: “It would give the Israeli government the opportunity to greatly expand one of the most powerful levers of influence in U.S. politics: jobs in the U.S. By expanding or starting new co-production facilities like it already has in Mississippi and Arkansas, the Israeli government could boast of providing jobs on U.S. soil, thereby securing allies among members of Congress who represent the districts where those jobs lie.”

Paul, formerly of the State Department and founder of A New Policy, said that he believes Israel probably preferred the framework of the 2025 FDD memo – which would have the US still provide $5 billion to Israel each year (all to be spent in the US). But, with how politics have shifted since, such a financial commitment doesn’t fly any more. “Peel that off, and what you’re left with is the concept that underlies NDAA Sec. 224, which is what they are now trying to codify in order to cut their losses,” Paul said.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu himself seems to indeed be actively championing such a shift. On Monday, he reportedly sent a note to Indiana Republican Rep. Marlin Stutzman, who introduced a resolution to end the $3.8 billion aid to Israel, and instead move towards “mutual defense cooperation and joint economic investment.”

“I was glad to receive your proposed congressional resolution endorsing my plan to shift the framework for U.S.-Israel defense cooperation from aid to partnership,” Netanyahu wrote.

“The time has now arrived for us to move from aid recipient to partner,” he continued. “I am heartened by your enthusiastic support for our plan to develop a new Memorandum of Understanding with the United States government that will draw down U.S. financial military assistance over the next decade and replace it with what you refer to as a “new framework of joint defense cooperation, codevelopment, coproduction and mutual investment in areas including advanced missile defense, artificial intelligence unmanned systems, cybersecurity and next generation military platforms.”

That’s almost exactly what FDD proposed last year – and now it has become both a Republican and Israeli policy proposal.

In the meantime, though, FDD remains focused on Iran. This week, Dubowitz, FDD’s CEO, insisted: “If the goal is to cripple the Iranian regime, we are closer today than at any point in 47 years. The opportunity is real, but so is the risk of squandering it.”

Speaking of an Iran war that the administration has long pledged would be brief, Dubowitz added: “President Trump will need the strategic patience and staying power to finish the job over the next two and a half years.”

Prem Thakker is a Zeteo Political Correspondent & Columnist

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