Faisal was focused instead on a pro-Nasser coup in Yemen and wanted American support, including F-5 sales.) (In reality, the Arabs largely ignored the sale-with Saudi Arabia’s putative leader at the time, Crown Prince Faisal, meeting Secretary of State Dean Rusk the same day the sale became known and never raising it with either Rusk or a week later in his meeting with the president. Kennedy had to overcome the determined opposition of the State Department and the intelligence community, each arguing that the US would see its relations with the Arabs collapse if we provided Hawk anti-aircraft missiles to Israel. Our relations were not special until Ronald Reagan’s presidency-even though John Kennedy broke the taboo on providing Israel arms in 1962 and Richard Nixon ordered a massive air and sealift of weapons to Israel during the 1973 war. The American-Israeli relationship was special, but it had not always been so. The sense of irony in the title grew out of the reality that had emerged in the relationship: regardless of the mistakes either or both of us might make, the fundamentals of shared values and shared interests had come to ensure we would always find a way to right the ship and manage our ties successfully. In Doomed, I analyzed and evaluated the key assumptions that drove policies in every American administration from Truman to Obama. Turmoil in Israel, the most right-wing, religious government in Israel’s history, and President Biden’s decision to hold off inviting Prime Minister Netanyahu to Washington led to concerns about where the relationship might be headed, and thus the suggestion to revise the book.

Recently, I was asked whether I might consider revising the book I wrote on the US-Israeli relationship entitled Doomed to Succeed.

Doomed to succeed by dennis ross