Dick Cheney ‘just loved Israel,’ recalls former ambassador to Washington

By Lazar Berman

You will receive email alerts from this author. Manage alert preferences on your profile page

You will no longer receive email alerts from this author. Manage alert preferences on your profile page

4 November 2025, 4:08 pm

Edit

Lazar Berman is The Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter

Then-US vice president Dick Cheney (L) and prime minister Ehud Olmert shake hands after delivering statements on March 22, 2008, from inside the prime minister's residence in Jerusalem. (Paul J. Richards/AFP)

Former US Vice President Dick Cheney “just loved Israel,” recalls Michael Oren, past Israeli ambassador to Washington.

“He got it,” Oren continues. “He got what Israel is. He got that Israel is a bastion of freedom and the forward position of the defense of the West, of the United States. I can say, everybody who worked with him on the Israeli side appreciated, if not revered, him.”

Oren was in the room as an Israeli reservist in the 1991 Gulf War when Cheney, then defense secretary, and his counterpart Moshe Arens met to discuss the response to Iraqi Scud missile attacks on Israeli cities. He was the Israeli notetaker, as Cheney sought to convince Israel not to respond.

“The Israeli government was telling the administration that we couldn’t wait anymore, that the paratroopers were out on the runway ready to go to western Iraq,” says Oren.

Cheney feared that the US-backed coalition against Iraq would unravel as Israel joined the fight.

“He had to persuade Arens not to do this, to give them another night,” Oren recounts. “And they would bring in Patriot rocket missiles from Italy and set them up in the streets of Tel Aviv. We were just waiting. Arens was saying, Listen, we can’t sustain another night. Those Patriots have to be up and running by nightfall.”

Oren says that what stood out to him was the “genuine caring and affection and understanding that Cheney displayed in these conversations.”

“It wasn’t like he was ordering Arens around at all,” he continues. “‘I understand your plight. I understand where you are. Please, please just give us tonight.’ He wasn’t muscling him at all; on the contrary.”

“I think that’s what persuaded the Israeli government not to intervene.”

The two remained in touch, and Cheney hosted a dinner in Oren’s honor when he began teaching at Georgetown University in 2008.

Oren adds that Cheney “was hysterically funny. Very funny. He was very warm.”

Cheney died Monday night due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, according to a statement from his family. He was 84.