In early April 2026, conversations about America outside the United States again focused not on elections, not on culture wars and not even on China. The main prism through which Jerusalem, Riyadh and Berlin view Washington today is the US–Israel war against Iran, the fragile ceasefire, and the growing American maritime "semi‑blockade" regime around Iranian ports and the Strait of Hormuz. This combination — war, US–Iran negotiations, the oil market and America's debt burden — has become the subject of pointed columns and analysis in Israeli, Saudi and German media.
In Israel the focus is first and foremost on whether America can carry its military and diplomatic campaign against Iran to a "decisive point" and what that would cost Israel. In Saudi Arabia the question is how to use the moment to boost its own weight in the global financial architecture under US chairmanship at the G20 and IMF, without becoming hostage to escalation. In Germany the issue is how another Middle Eastern conflict involving the US and Israel undermines European energy security and pushes Berlin toward a more autonomous foreign and defense policy.
The first major story, read differently across all three countries, is the US–Iran negotiations themselves and the threat that the current "partial" US maritime control over Iranian ports could become a full blockade. Israeli press is setting the tone with pieces about a "dead end" in talks, arguing that the dispute over the status of the Strait of Hormuz and guarantees on the nuclear program became the key fracture point. An analysis in NTD in Hebrew lists in detail Iran's demands of the US: from recognition of the right to enrich uranium and lifting all sanctions to compensation for war damages and withdrawal of US forces from the region, up to obligations through the UN Security Council — a package the Israeli author presents as inherently unacceptable to Washington and even more so to Jerusalem. In that logic the US must either adopt a dangerous policy of "appeasement" toward Tehran or return to escalation, and Israel will effectively be drawn into either scenario.
Hence the dominant motif in Israeli commentary: criticism of the very architecture of the ceasefire as one that failed to create a clear moment of military "victory." In the major newspaper Israel Hayom an analyst writes that the ceasefire, which took effect on April 8 after forty days of war, was concluded "without a clear moment of conclusion," that it "erodes the deterrent effect" and allows Iran and its proxies — from Hezbollah to the Houthis — to treat it merely as a pause for regrouping rather than a defeat. From this perspective the US role is paradoxical: on one hand American support enabled inflicting serious military damage on Iran; on the other hand — according to some Israeli commentators — Washington is rushing toward diplomatic resolutions, not pressing the campaign to a level of pressure that would force Tehran to change its behavior.
Against this background, Washington's decision to sharply tighten the maritime regime around Iranian ports attracted special attention in Israeli discourse — in the Arab and Palestinian press this is called a "de facto naval blockade." In Al-Quds this step is described as a "virtually complete maritime screen" that threatens not only the Iranian economy but world trade, especially given that the ceasefire from the start was viewed as "fragile" and dependent on progress in talks. For Israeli military sources quoted by the religious portal JDN, the threat of a full-scale maritime blockade figures as the US's main "trump card" in case of dialogue failure: the ability to "almost completely cut off" vessel traffic to and from Iran is depicted as a lever that could break the regime's economic backbone without a formal declaration of total war. Israeli experts, however, clearly recognize that such a strategy automatically means higher oil prices and new rifts in US relations with China, India and several European countries dependent on Iranian oil.
The second transnational storyline is the impact of the American war and negotiations with Iran on the world economy and the dollar's role. In Arabic business and financial media, widely read in Saudi Arabia, the US–Israel war on Iran is presented not only as geopolitical but also as a currency‑oil shock. On the Arabic analytics site LiteFinance there is an explanation of how expectations of "de‑escalation in the Middle East," if Washington and Tehran reached a successful deal, prompted investors to sell dollars in anticipation of lower oil prices and easing inflation in the US, while failure of the talks and a hardening of the US stance instantly reversed the trend: the dollar strengthened again and market participants began pricing in the risk of further conflict. This perspective is interesting because it views US policy through the eyes of a private investor in Dubai or a Saudi financial center, for whom Washington is at once the issuer of a "safe haven" and the main source of turbulence.
The Saudi perspective is more complex and pragmatic. Saudi news and commentary call US moves in the Iran talks a risk factor for regional security and oil prices, but at the same time emphasize that the Kingdom knows how to convert this turbulence into higher oil revenues. The Egypto‑Arab outlet Almasdar, reviewing trading results on Persian Gulf exchanges after another talks breakdown, notes that despite falling equity indices, Saudi Arabia as an oil exporter benefits from higher commodity prices: Reuters calculations cited in the article show a noticeable year‑on‑year increase in the Kingdom's oil revenues. The economic calculation is clear: the more severely Washington squeezes Iranian exports, the higher the price per barrel and the more resilient Riyadh's budget becomes.
At the same time Saudi official and semi‑official media stress another side of America's role — its institutional dimension. Coverage of the spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Washington, where Saudi Arabia’s finance minister chairs a key committee of the International Monetary and Financial Committee, is built around the idea that under US chairmanship of the G20 and Washington's leading role in the Bretton Woods system the Kingdom is not just "reacting" to American decisions but is gradually entering the narrow circle of their co‑authors. The Saudi delegation's participation in this year's first meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors under US chairmanship is presented as a forum for discussing "global financial system stability" and coordinating responses to shocks — from budding recessions in America to the consequences of the Middle Eastern war. Thus Washington here is simultaneously a source of risk (through escalation in the Strait of Hormuz) and a guarantor of a system in which Saudi Arabia seeks to take a place among the "architects" of the rules.
Against this background another strand of discussion in the Arab press is telling — about America's internal vulnerability to a protracted war. In Hebrew, but via the Iranian agency Tasnim, a widely circulated Reuters report quotes ordinary Americans complaining about rising gasoline prices and fear of Iranian retaliatory strikes on civilian targets. A baker from Indiana quoted in the piece admits he never truly believed Donald Trump's promises to bring "peace to the whole world," and that today people's main question is not "will we defeat Iran" but "will the war continue and how long will we keep paying for it at the gas pump." In Arab and Israeli audiences such stories serve as a reminder: American society's capacity for foreign‑policy adventures is not infinite, and prolonged intervention in Iran could accelerate domestic political shifts in the US with direct consequences for Washington's allies and adversaries.
The third common theme for Israel, Saudi Arabia and Germany is the strategic redistribution of influence between the US and China amid the Iranian campaign. The Israeli financial outlet Walla Finance published a column with a telling title about a "Chinese victory," in which the author argues that the US–Israel war in Iran and Donald Trump's attempt to "control" the world oil market are more likely to accelerate than slow down Europe's and Asia's drift away from dependence on American oil and the dollar. The author reminds readers that Trump — a businessman with a long history of bankruptcies — "inflicts long‑term damage on America in Iran," because his strategy of choking off Iranian exports pushes Beijing and European capitals to speed up the search for alternatives: from green energy to payment schemes that bypass the dollar. Europe and China, in this logic, are interested not in one side's victory but in reducing the risk premium that the US effectively adds to every tanker shipment through Hormuz.
The German discussion, though less emotionally charged, echoes the Israeli view in another respect: the US–Iran war fits into a longer European reflection about how much they can rely on American power to ensure their security and energy stability. Articles and background pieces on the "Strait of Hormuz crisis of 2026" in German sources describe how US and Israeli strikes on Iranian infrastructure, including key facilities on Kharg Island, provoked Iranian retaliatory missile and drone attacks on US bases and targets on the territories of Washington's Gulf allies, as well as on Israel. The de facto American "insurance blockade" and direct warnings to commercial vessels to avoid the conflict area demonstrate to Europeans how dependent their energy supplies remain on freedom of navigation controlled not by Brussels but by Washington. It is in this context that German analysts write about the need for the EU and, in particular, Berlin to build their own capacity to act in zones where US and European interests may diverge, while remaining within NATO.
Both in Germany and Israel there is also interest in how the US is simultaneously using military power and financial‑insurance mechanisms. German overviews of the Strait of Hormuz crisis note that Washington activated measures to support insurers under the US terrorism insurance law to offset some navigation risks created by its own military actions and Iranian threats. For the European reader this is a vivid example of how the US turns its domestic financial architecture into a tool of geopolitics — and why the EU, lacking a comparable unified fiscal and insurance toolbox, remains structurally vulnerable.
The fourth thread connecting discussions of America in all three countries is the question of US political stability and Donald Trump's role. In Israel Trump still appears as the "greatest friend" of the Jewish state, and fresh public‑opinion research published by Israeli analytical centers records a high appreciation of his efforts against anti‑Semitism, recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and support in confronting Iran. At the same time the same Israeli discourse views his current decisions on Iran very soberly: political centers warn that Israel cannot build a long‑term strategy assuming endless and unconditional support from any American administration — the domestic divisions in the US are too deep and the economic costs of a new Middle Eastern war too high.
In Saudi Arabia the key lens is different: Trump and US leadership are discussed primarily as economic partners. Ahead of the current phase of the conflict there was widespread citation of Trump's Davos remarks that he would seek to increase Saudi investments in the US to "a trillion dollars" in exchange for strengthening economic partnership. For the Saudi elite this is an important marker: Washington is attractive and dangerous at once — a place to park capital under the protection of US jurisdiction and a capital whose decisions can at any moment redraw the regional map so that risks to those investments rise sharply.
In Germany the figure of Trump has long come to symbolize American unpredictability. German expert publications on US military buildup before the war with Iran and the subsequent escalation in the Strait of Hormuz consistently emphasize that European governments, including Germany's federal government, remain hostages to domestic US dynamics: today the White House is willing to spend resources projecting power in the Persian Gulf, tomorrow — under pressure from gasoline prices and voter protests — it might sharply change course, leaving allies to manage the consequences themselves.
Finally, Israeli and Palestinian outlets add an important detail often missing in English‑language coverage: the fear that America's rush to a quick "deal" with Iran in exchange for reopening the Strait of Hormuz and containing oil prices could push issues critical to Israeli and regional security onto the back burner. Commentators explicitly write that Washington might accept de facto recognition of Iranian influence in Lebanon and Syria in return for limited concessions on the nuclear program and oil, whereas for Israel and some Sunni Arab states (including Saudi Arabia) containing Iranian expansion in the Levant and Yemen is the top priority.
Thus, when gathering voices from Jerusalem, Riyadh and Berlin, a complex picture of America in spring 2026 emerges. It remains an indispensable military and financial superpower, capable of changing the balance of forces in the Persian Gulf with a Pentagon decision and redirecting global financial flows with a Treasury statement. But it is also a country whose domestic politics, sensitivity to gas prices and presidential approval ratings force allies and rivals to hedge for a high degree of unpredictability.
Israel sees the US as both a shield and a potential source of strategic illusions: American power enables strikes on Iran, but America's appetite for "quick deals" may leave the region with unfinished business and more armed Iranian proxies. Saudi Arabia views Washington as a partner with whom it must cautiously but persistently co‑author the rules of the global economy — so long as American warships keep oil prices high and thus provide resources for Saudi reforms. Germany regards the same America as a necessary ally but is accelerating talks on strategic autonomy: each new missile launched by or at the US in the Hormuz area reminds Berlin that "Atlantic dependence" has not only benefits but systemic risks.
What unites all three countries is this: no one any longer perceives the US as a monotonous, linearly predictable "hegemon." Washington today is a bundle of contradictions between military power and domestic war‑weariness, between the dollar as a "safe haven" and the dollar as a source of shocks, between alliance commitments and an eagerness to avoid new "endless conflicts" at almost any cost. It is precisely this tense mixture that shapes how America is written about and debated in Israel, Saudi Arabia and Germany in April 2026.
