Trump’s Plan for Gaza: Reality or Drama?

October 06, 2025

Donald Trump proclaimed (https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-closest-weve-ever-come-full-text-of-trump-netanyahu-statements-on-deal-to-end-gaza-war/) that his Middle East peace plan marked “a big, big day, a beautiful day, potentially one of the great days ever in civilization.” Four days later, Hamas said it was prepared to release all remaining hostages to Israel.(https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/04/world/middleeast/hamas-trump-gaza-deal.html) Trump responded(https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/10/03/hamas-gaza-peace-ceasefire-deal/) that Hamas had shown “they are ready for a lasting peace,” adding “Israel must immediately stop the bombing of Gaza so that we can get the Hostages out safely and quickly!”

Now, reality sets in. First, the “plan” accepted by Arab leaders after meeting Trump in New York during the UN General Assembly was not the same as the plan Trump actually announced. Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu persuaded him to make several changes favorable to Israel(https://www.axios.com/2025/09/30/trump-gaza-peace-plan-israel-changes-hamas-response) before their joint White House appearance last week.

While Arab states were reportedly “infuriated” by the changes, they nonetheless publicly supported the plan to allow it to move forward. Nonetheless, weeks, even months, of negotiation will be necessary to advance the plan, even if the hostage exchanges happen quickly. At any point, these negotiations could deadlock, as so many before have. Even after key points have been agreed, they can quickly come apart, a repeated experience in Middle East peace efforts.

Second, the plan is long on aspirations, short on operations and implementation. For example, commentators have focused on what they call an Israeli concession in Point 19 on Palestinian statehood. The text itself, however, is so highly contingent and qualified that it is almost a parody. The plan states that “while Gaza development advances” and the Palestine Authority reform program “is faithfully executed,” then “the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.” Caveat emptor, as ancient Romans would say.

Third, and most importantly, Hamas’s announcement Friday was not an unqualified acceptance. It was a “yes, but,” with several potentially debilitating conditions, and implicit attempts to renegotiate the plan as presented. By contrast, it was relatively easy for Israel to accept Trump’s plan without comparable conditions not only because of the changes Trump conceded to Netanyahu, but because, as written, the plan has numerous “off ramps” Israelis can take advantage of when it suits them. Thus, Hamas and Iran, its principal terrorist supporter, are at a political disadvantage from the outset. Trump explicitly gave Neyanyahu his blessing “to do what you would have to do,” and his “full backing to finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas.”(https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/29/us/politics/trump-netanyahu-hamas-ultimatum.html) No wonder Jerusalem found it easy to accept the plan.

Finally, Trump has a penchant for declaring victory when the moment suits him, as it did when Hamas gave its initial reaction. He took partial agreement to the potential release of Israeli hostages as a fait accompli, and then proclaimed the entire deal a success. Trump did much the same thing in June after US B-2’s dropped bunker-buster bombs on Iran’s nuclear-weapons program. He declared victory in the “Twelve-Day War” Jerusalem had launched against Tehran, and called for an immediate cease fire. In fact, both America and Israel should have continued the strikes, which had significantly damaged, but certainly not destroyed Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The moments Trump chose to congratulate himself were indeed high points, but they were not final results. This is particularly true in hostage negotiations, which have obsessed Trump since his first term. At the very beginning of his second term, Trump obtained the release of several hostages (and the remains of those deceased) by forcing Israel and Hamas to accept a plan that had essentially been negotiated by the Biden Administration. But after the Biden deal’s hostage exchange had been carried out, the remainder of the deal (aimed at a full resolution of the Israel-Hamas conflict) collapsed. There is every reason to believe the same will happen here.

Hostages raise highly emotive images, but the hard disputes between Israel and Iran and its terrorist surrogates, especially Hamas, are far more difficult to address if the goal is finding a sustainable, long-term solution rather than just social-media excitement.

Obviously, in these early days after the Trump-Netanyahu announcement, neither Israel nor Hamas wants to be publicly shamed as “the obstacle to peace.” We have been through enough similar scenarios to know that much of what we are seeing and hearing is merely performance art. Most importantly, Iran’s silence this past week is deafening. Until Iran signals its support, if ever, the plan will be just words on paper.(https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/is-donald-trumps-sweeping-gaza-peace-plan-really-viable)

Trump’s twenty-point plan is vague, complex, and grandiloquent. It could well simply fall of its own weight. As World War I ended, Woodrow Wilson issued his famous “Fourteen Points” to establish conditions for world peace thereafter. In response, France’s Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau reportedly said, “Fourteen points; why, that’s a little strong! The good Lord had only ten.”(https://www.nytimes.com/1918/11/02/archives/wilsons-commandments-four-more-than-the-lord-laid-down-said.html) We will see whether Trump can do better than Wilson.

This article was originally published by Independent Arabia, on October 6, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

Trump is deluded if he thinks his meeting with Putin is cause for celebration

August 12, 2025

Friday’s Alaska summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin is not shaping up well for Ukraine. Every indication is that Trump believes he and his (once again) good friend Putin will conjure some land swaps and bring peace.

Of course, the land in question will be bits and pieces of Ukraine’s territory, not Russia’s, with Moscow probably ending this war controlling 20 per cent of Ukraine. If anyone needed proof that Trump acts in international affairs not like a strategist but like a free electron, this past week settles the matter.

Before the Alaska summit even begins, Putin has scored a major propaganda victory. An international pariah, leading a rogue state guilty of unprovoked aggression against its neighbour, is landing on American soil for pictures standing next to the president of the United States.

Trump has tariffed the entire world for the privilege of doing business in America, but asked and received exactly nothing from Putin. Inviting him to Alaska is not quite as offensive as inviting the Taliban to Camp David in 2019 to discuss the Afghanistan war, but it comes close. Most ironically, Alaska is former Russian America, purchased (thank God) by Washington in 1867, which some Russian ideologues wish to reclaim.

Putin almost certainly concluded from Trump’s recent pro-Ukrainian behaviour, such as allowing Patriot air-defence systems to be transferred indirectly to Kyiv, that he had pushed his “friendship” with Trump too far. With the August 8 deadline to have a Ukraine-Russia ceasefire looming, Putin was doubtless considering how to repair the damage and reel Trump back into line when Trump’s envoy-for-everything Steve Witkoff sought a Moscow meeting. We don’t know when Putin decided to propose a US-Russia summit, but that idea was certainly conveyed to Witkoff to bring back to Trump.

As before, Putin clearly hopes to work his KGB training on Trump, making the president his unwitting tool. Perhaps, Putin reasoned, he might even avoid pain for missing the August 8 deadline. He knew the lure of being the centre of massive press attention is a fatal attraction for Trump, who was almost instantaneously ready for a summit. Indeed, just before announcing that August 15 was the time and Alaska the place, Trump said he wished the summit could have been earlier.

Putin not only got his meeting, but TACO (“Trump always chickens out”) worked again; August 8 came and went with no new tariffs or sanctions imposed on Moscow, or China, the largest purchaser of Russian oil and gas. Only India was left in the lurch, facing a doubling of its Trump tariff rate to 50 per cent for purchasing Russian hydrocarbons.

The Alaska summit recalls Helsinki in 2018, when Trump sided with Putin’s denial of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, contrary to what America’s intelligence community concluded. Putin is doubtless looking for something analogous. Moscow has already achieved another success by ensuring that no pesky Europeans, especially Ukrainians, would be invited to Alaska, reminiscent of the Trump-Zelensky meeting at Pope Benedict’s funeral, where Trump all but pushed French President Macron out of the picture. While Trump simply enjoys getting more attention, the one-on-one format provides exactly the kind of playing field Putin needs.

Moreover, the Alaska meeting afforded Russia a first-mover advantage, which it seized immediately. Within 48 hours of Witkoff’s Moscow trip, the two sides built on earlier outlines of what Russia would deem an acceptable solution. Press reports indicated that Russia’s terms, which seemed acceptable to Trump, resembled vice presidential candidate J D Vance’s proposal in September, 2024: Russia would essentially keep Ukrainian lands it had conquered; an undefined peacekeeping force would police the current front lines; and Ukraine would be barred from joining Nato. As observers noted, Vance’s plan looked like Russia’s.

Seemingly, therefore, Trump and Putin are preparing to present Zelensky with a fait accompli after meeting in Alaska. Trump said on Friday that Zelensky would have to remove Ukraine’s constitutional prohibitions against ceding territory to another country, which is exactly what Trump is expecting to come. Thus, even before the summit, Putin exploited his first-mover advantage by bringing Trump back to his side.

With this disturbing prospect now explicit, Zelensky, in his first public response to news of the Alaska summit, rejected any surrender of Ukrainian lands. Zelensky’s response is fully justified and hardly surprising, but it plays into Putin’s hands: Russia, he will say, took the lead in seeking peace, and Ukraine is the obstructionist. While we are not yet back to the disastrous February 28 Oval Office encounter between Zelensky and Trump, Putin would obviously like to reprise Trump telling Zelensky “you don’t have the cards right now”.

As of today, Putin again has diplomatic momentum, and Zelensky is on the defensive. Time for the UK and Europe’s other Ukraine supporters to step in before it’s too late.

This article was first published in the Daily Telegraph on August 11, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

The far north has become NATO’s soft underbelly

August 12, 2025

ALTHOUGH LONG a factor in American strategic thinking, the Arctic now receives far more attention in Washington than in decades. Several forces are at play: increased use of Arctic maritime passages for military and commercial purposes; Russia’s historical focus on its northern territories, now magnified by its aggression against Ukraine; and, most salient geopolitically, China’s undisguised aim to be an Arctic power, using the developing Beijing-Moscow axis. America and its allies have yet to cope adequately with these challenges.

In the second world war, Greenland was critical to North Atlantic convoy routes, hosting significant American deployments. The Pentagon clearly understood the Arctic’s cold-war role, building the “DEW [distant-early-warning] Line” across Alaska, Canada and Greenland to detect nuclear-equipped Soviet bombers or ballistic missiles heading to the continental United States. Responding to the Sputnik satellite, in 1958 President Dwight Eisenhower sent the USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine, under the Arctic ice cap from the Bering Strait to the Atlantic, in the first submerged transit of the North Pole.

Unfortunately, cold-war victory led to geostrategic complacency, not just in Washington, but across NATO and bilateral American alliances with the likes of Japan and South Korea. This complacency is disappearing as the race for Arctic hegemony picks up, but the West has much to do, and quickly, to counter the rising threats from China and Russia.

The prize is potentially vast. Opportunities to exploit the fabled Northwest Passage across Canada, or its counterpart across Russia’s northern coast, are enormous. Greater access to Far North natural-resource deposits, both at sea and ashore, are also generating a lot of attention.

Updating the jocular insight of General Hastings Ismay, NATO’s first secretary-general, is a good starting point for the West’s Arctic grand strategy: “Keep the Chinese out, the Americans in, and the Russians down.” The alliance’s soft underbelly is now probably the Far North, not the Mediterranean. NATO has four front-line Arctic Ocean littoral states (Norway, Denmark, Canada and America) facing off with Russia, although the full mix of Arctic players and threats is far more extensive.

President Donald Trump remains sceptical of NATO and, indeed, the very concept of collective-defence alliances. Nonetheless, America is a front-line Arctic power, as Alaska’s congressional delegation relentlessly reminds Mr Trump, and the region’s importance to his presidency’s legacy should be obvious.

Unfortunately, American military resources are currently wholly inadequate to the task, with insufficient Navy and Coast Guard vessels worldwide, let alone those required for Arctic (and Antarctic) operations, such as specialised icebreakers. NATO’s admission of Finland in 2023 and Sweden in 2024 helped plug some of the gaps in the alliance’s Arctic naval capabilities.

William Seward, Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of state, looks ever more prescient. Had he not led the United States to purchase Alaska from Russia in 1867, and Russia had remained a North American power, the cold war might never have ended. He also tried to purchase Greenland from Denmark in 1868. Had he succeeded, today’s circumstances might have been easier.

Mr. Trump did not discover Greenland in 2019—when he first mooted buying it—but he has seriously complicated addressing how the huge island and its tiny population can once again be fully integrated into NATO defences. The 1951 US-Danish Defence of Greenland treaty is a workable basis for guarding against the thrusting Chinese and Russians, while allowing Greenland’s political status to evolve. America had as many as 17 military facilities there during the cold war, and today’s focus hopefully precludes China and Russia from acting covertly against NATO’s security interests.

Norway’s Svalbard islands graphically embody the alliance’s dilemmas. John Longyear, an American businessman, initially exploited their coal deposits in the early 20th century (more evidence of how ahistorical today’s American isolationists are). However, allowable under the 1925 treaty confirming Norwegian sovereignty, Svalbard also features Russian mining operations about 30 miles from its major habitation, appropriately named Longyearbyen.

A European intelligence official said recently that “Svalbard has to be near the top of a list of where Russia might try something.” This is not fantasy. China poses an analogous threat to Taiwanese islands like Kinmen and Matsu, just off the mainland, which it could readily seize without invading Taiwan outright. These are inviting targets, testing allied resolve in the Far East and the Far North. Can Svalbard’s treaty-based demilitarisation be preserved? As I discovered during my own visit there in April, the islands provide NATO’s adversaries excellent locations for naval or air bases.

Among NATO’s Arctic Ocean members, Canada is the hole in the doughnut. Persistent Canadian underspending on defence during Justin Trudeau’s several governments remains uncorrected. Helpfully, however, relations between America’s and Canada’s armed forces are otherwise quite good, including through long-term development of national missile defences for both countries. It is Canada’s politicians who have failed.

Moreover, disagreements between Canada and America over whether various aspects of the Northwest Passage are international waterways or Canadian territorial waters must also be resolved. One approach would be to agree that passage by NATO-member warships would be freely permitted in fulfilling their alliance obligations.

These are merely preliminary considerations. Formidable issues remain, including the need for massive increase in NATO defence expenditures, not just for the Arctic but worldwide. Cold-war victory didn’t “end history” in the Arctic any more than anywhere else. And, critically, isolationism can play no part in strategising about a region so close and vital to American national-security interests. Time to pick up the pace.

This article was first published in the Economist on August 11, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

Trump is favoring China over India on trade

August 06, 2025

As Donald Trump’s tariffs begin to bite more widely, considerable amounts of hard data on their actual consequences will soon arrive. Of course, the rationale for many of Trump’s tariffs remains opaque, and, despite the August 1 “deadline,” negotiations continue with several important trading partners.

The tariffs’ economic impact continues to emerge, but their international diplomatic and political effects remain hard to measure. From a geopolitical perspective, it is entirely logical to ask how tariffs fit into America’s grand strategy, although the Trump administration has not done so. Unfortunately, based on international reactions so far, the United States, by tariffing friend and foe alike, has likely suffered a considerable loss of trust and confidence, built up over decades of effort, in exchange for minimal economic gains, if any, and risk of formidable losses.

The central, still-unresolved issue is China, in recent years always among America’s top three trading partners (with Canada and Mexico), and especially how China fares compared to India. The White House seems headed toward more-lenient treatment for Beijing on tariff rates and other metrics than it imposed on New Delhi. If so, it will be a potentially enormous mistake. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent(https://apnews.com/article/us-china-trade-stockholm-tariffs-bessent-lifeng-2cffb7de31169afc8de0c02bedb4683a) has suggested that China’s August 12 deadline could be extended if negotiations looked promising.

Trump announced on July 30 that India’s tariff rate would be 26%, one percent lower than originally proposed on April 2(https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/trump-hits-india-25-tariff-rcna221907), but a major increase from the previous average rate of 2.4%. Moreover, Trump harshly criticized India’s acquisition of Russian military equipment, underlining a longstanding US-India disagreement, and Indian purchases of Russian oil and gas in violation of America’s Ukraine-related sanctions. (India is also one of the “BRICS” countries, which Trump separately singled out for a 10% tariff.) Indians were surprised and angered by the relative harshness of India’s treatment(https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-31/trump-blasts-india-over-russia-ties-pushing-modi-into-a-corner), and the threat of additional, unspecified penalties if Washington and New Delhi could not quickly strike a deal.

That anger could grow exponentially if China snagged a better agreement, especially if Trump is seen as sacrificing US strategic interests(https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/07/29/us-china-trade-war-talks-trump-xi-summit-partnership-cooperation/) in his “zeal for a deal” with Xi Jinping. China has a significantly higher trade deficit with the US than does India, and Washington has long complained about Chinese trade practices. These include stealing intellectual property, unfairly subsidizing their international companies, and denying access to China’s domestic market, contrary to repeated commitments.

Geopolitically, China (and its emerging Russia axis) is this century’s principle strategic threat to America and its allies. Many analysts believe Trump could offer significant concessions on key security issues, such as Taiwan, to get a China deal, citing the recent reversal of the long-standing practice(https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/world/asia/trump-taiwan-china.html) of allowing Taiwan’s president to make transit stops in America and not reaching a trade deal with Taipei(https://www.ft.com/content/3c48233d-dca6-4cd6-8ba9-c86fcfa853b0) before August 1. Graham Allison says “Trump’s view of Taiwan is more compatible with China’s than any U.S. president since World War II(https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/07/29/us-china-trade-war-talks-trump-xi-summit-partnership-cooperation/).” Further examples of Trump’s softness include allowing Nvidia(https://www.ft.com/content/ba0929bd-5912-44fb-9048-c143aced4c8a) to resume exports of sensitive information technology to China; and ignoring US statutory requirements(https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/us-attorney-general-cited-this-justification-for-trumps-power-to-ignore-tiktok-ban) to ban TikTok or divest Chinese ownership.

Critical for Washington is Beijing’s strengthening axis with Moscow. This “partnership without limits” as Xi and Vladimir Putin have described it, has already resulted in significantly increased Chinese purchases of hydrocarbons, and negotiations to build new oil and gas pipelines between the two, plus increased financial and military cooperation. This axis raises risks all along their peripheries, from Asia through the Middle East to Europe. Beijing’s hegemonic, threatening behavior against Taiwan and the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands, and against competing territorial claimants in the South China Sea, endanger key US allies and trading partners. China and India themselves face off across a long, much-disputed border. Moreover, China aids Pakistan, India’s intense rival, including militarily as demonstrated in the recent Pahalgam crisis. To make matters worse, Indians have noted that both Pakistan and Bangladesh scored lower tariff rates from Trump(https://indianexpress.com/article/business/us-tariffs-india-pakistan-bangladesh-50-countries-trump-market-10163029/).

Having China emerge better than India in their respective trade relations with America is entirely counterproductive. Instead of advancing cooperation within the Asian Security Quad (India, Japan, Australia and America), Trump could well push India into closer economic and political ties(https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/07/28/india-china-normalization-trump-second-term-geopolitics/) with Russia and China. Beijing would see Trump’s trade concessions as expressions of fundamental American weakness and dependence on trade with Beijing. At least Secretary Bessent did make clear(https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/bessent-warns-china-russian-oil-purchases-that-could-bring-100-tariffs-2025-07-29/) after the last round of US-China talks that China also risked heavy tariffs due to its purchases of Russian (and Iranian) oil and gas.

This reality, and Beijing’s intransigence on trade issues, could stem Trump’s lust for an agreement with Xi, but the outcome is uncertain. If the tariffs’ negative effects unfold as economics theory indicates, Trump’s domestic political support will weaken correspondingly. Giving China a sweetheart deal on trade will only worsen his problems. We may be saved, therefore, by Trump’s highest priority: his own well-being.

This article was originally published by The Hill, on August 6, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

What Next in Syria and Lebanon?

August 01, 2025

Last Thursday, America’s ambassador to Turkey was saying that sought “de-escalation and dialogue(https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/syrian-israeli-officials-discuss-de-escalation-paris-meeting-us-envoy-says-2025-07-24/)” in Syria’s ongoing conflict. On Friday, US special forces struck(https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/25/us/politics/us-raid-syria-isis.html) deep into Syria, near Aleppo, killing a senior ISIS leader. This vivid contrast exemplifies just how complicated Syria’s future is, and how high the regional and global stakes are. And, since Israel sees its northern border with Lebanon and Syria as a continuous frontier requiring integrated defenses, threats in Lebanon are hardly separate from threats in Syria or Iran’s broader malevolent role across the Middle East.

The Assad dictatorship’s collapse in December 24, combined with earlier heavy losses suffered by Hezbollah and Hamas, and underlined by the Israeli-US attacks on Iran’s nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs, have fundamentally changed what the Soviets once called “the correlation of forces” in the region. The dramatic reversals of fortune for Iran and its allies after the striking failure of their anti-Israel “ring of fire” strategy mean that serious threats no longer emanate from Tehran alone.

Today’s problems stem from the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and its diplomatic progeny carving up the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman governance structures were hardly ideal, but France and the United Kingdom were pursuing their own interests by converting Arab lands south of the newly created Turkey into League of Nations mandates. France further divided its mandate, Syria, into separate states: Greater Lebanon, Jabal al-Druze, Aleppo, Damascus and the Alawite state. After Assad’s fall, no one any longer expects Syria to annex Lebanon, but the harder question is how to manage relations between the Alawites, Druze, and various Christians with the new HTS government. Moreover, in Lebanon, the role of Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy, remains very much undecided, certainly in Tehran’s view.

While Iran is no longer a significant actor in Syria, Recep Erdogan’s Turkey has become increasingly assertive since the Arab Spring erupted and seriously threatened the Assad regime. During the post-Arab Spring civil war in Syria, Erdogan supported several rebel groups, hoping to install a Moslem Brotherhood regime in Damascus. He wanted a Syrian leader Ankara could control, not one under Tehran’s direction.

While Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (“HTS”), formerly known as the Nusrah Front, an offshoot of al Qaeda, was not Erdogan’s first choice, it was better than nothing. He and Abu Mohammad al-Jolani seized their chance in late 2024, ousting Assad remarkably quickly. The moment was opportune since Russia and Iran, essential earlier in protecting Assad against the Arab Spring, were preoccupied, respectively, in the Ukraine and Middle East wars. HTS could not have overthrown Assad’s regime without Turkish support. But, while reducing Russia’s influence and effectively eliminating Iran’s entirely is all to the good, there is no agreement about what an HTS regime portends. Will it do Erdogan’s bidding? Will it return entirely to its terrorist roots? We simply do not know. Watching foreign terrorist fighters allied with HTS transition into Syria’s army(https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/08/world/middleeast/syria-foreign-fighters.html) is not necessarily comforting. One point is certain: the last thing anyone needs is an Ottoman Empire 2.0, much less turning Syria into “Afghanistan on the Mediterranean.”

Erdogan’s recent truce with Turkey’s Kurdish rebels seems positive, but his motive may be primarily a desperate need for domestic support against increasingly united opposition from ethnic Turkish voters(https://www.fdd.org/analysis/op_eds/2025/03/26/turkeys-kurdish-peace-talks-a-genuine-effort-or-erdogans-power-play/). Kurds in northeastern Syria, especially Mazloum Abdi’s Syrian Democratic Forces, have been uneasily negotiating with the HTS regime. Erdogan’s hostility toward the SDF, and the presence of US miliary personnel east of the Euphrates River, has undeniably kept Turkey’s miliary from entering and seizing Syria’s northeast.

Accordingly, before overly obsessing on the conflict in southern Syria, in which Israel has intervened to protect Druze and Christian populations, it is critical first to know more about the HTS regime in Damascus. As I earlier explained in these pages, the now-renamed Ahmed al Sharaa and his HTS government(https://www.boltonpac.com/2025/05/what-is-required-of-sharia-to-obtain-full-american-recognition) have many tests to pass. These include fully opening the Assad regime’s files on foreign hostages and its weapons-of-mass-destruction programs. Additionally, revealing all of Assad’s dealings with Hezbollah and Iran would provide interesting reading.

Instead, while seeking information about Assad’s chemical- and biological-weapons efforts(https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/01/world/europe/syria-sanctions-trump.html) and missing American citizens(https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/03/world/middleeast/israel-syria-border-us-barrack.html), the White House seems more interested in pursuing Turkish and HTS priorities rather than US interests(https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/30/us/politics/trump-syria-sanctions.html). Ambassador Thomas Barrack, for example, criticized Israel for striking Syria’s military headquarters in Damascus(https://www.timesofisrael.com/top-netanyahu-adviser-expected-to-meet-syrian-foreign-minister-in-paris/). Were Barrack’s comments his own, or were they were authorized by Washington, which might be expected when criticizing a US ally?

Moreover, Barrack is publicly making excuses for al-Sharaa’s reluctance to open full diplomatic relations with Israel. It is not generally a US ambassador’s job to justify another country’s actions; indeed, this is the essence of “clientitis,” an institutional disease at the State Department, often referred to more disparagingly as “going native.” Ambassador Barrack should be warned about the symptoms he is displaying. He and the White House still have much to learn.

This article was first published in the Independent Arabia on July 29, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

How the West Can Ensure Iran Never Gets the Bomb

July 09, 2025

At the June Group of Seven meeting in Canada, Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, answered a reporter’s question about Israel’s attacks on Iran that were then taking place: “This is the dirty work that Israel is doing for all of us.” He added to the German journalist, “We are also affected by this regime. This mullah regime has brought death and destruction to the world.”

The chancellor’s candor was notable, and he wasn’t finished. A few days later, back in Germany, after the United States had joined Israel in striking Iran’s nuclear-weapons program, Merz said: “There is no reason for us and also for me personally to criticize what Israel started a week ago and also no reason to criticize what America did last weekend. It is not without risk, but leaving it as it was wasn’t an option either.”

Such insights are important coming from any European leader, but especially from Germany’s. Rather than condemning military action, Merz acknowledged the reality that, in effect, Iran is the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism and one of its most dangerous nuclear proliferators. He said out loud what many of his fellow European leaders knew but couldn’t bring themselves to admit, and in doing so, reversed two decades of European Union policy in support of failed diplomacy with Iran. Merz now recognized that the logic of force, whether in self-defense in Israel’s case or preemptively in America’s, had become overwhelming. The rationale for military action had become only more compelling when Tehran unleashed its “ring of fire” assaults against Israel after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack.

If the Trump administration had any strategic sense, it would immediately seize the opportunity Merz has provided. Regardless of whether European leaders might ever have initiated the strikes against Iran, they have now occurred—and they define a new reality about Iran’s nuclear-proliferation threat. President Donald Trump has been offered a great chance to lead a united Western alliance that can reconsolidate tactics against Iran’s nuclear efforts.

The EU’s efforts to cajole the mullahs into giving up their nuclear ambitions date back to 2003. Germany, France, and the United Kingdom (the EU-3, as they called themselves then) wanted to prove that they could thwart Iran’s quest for weapons of mass destruction through diplomacy, in pointed contrast to George W. Bush’s military action against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. The EU aspired to a higher purpose, as two commentators noted in Foreign Affairs in 2007: “The European doctrine of managed globalization envisions a world of multilateral rules that will supersede U.S. power.” Over a dozen years and through many permutations, these negotiations with Tehran led to the deeply flawed 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

The EU-3 efforts did have one virtue. From the start, they pressured Iran to forswear uranium-enrichment activity before being permitted access to Western nuclear-reactor technology. The Europeans also insisted that Iran refrain from reprocessing spent reactor fuel to extract plutonium, the alternative source of fissile material for a bomb. These crucial prohibitions, the EU-3 believed, would block Iranian nuclear-weapons ambitions while affording Tehran the benefit of civil uses of atomic energy for electrical power, medical research, and the like.

When President Bush agreed in 2006 to join the European diplomatic initiative, he did so on the express precondition that Iran suspend its enrichment activities. He wanted to oblige the mullahs to renounce both ends of the nuclear-fuel cycle in exchange for receiving civil nuclear technology. Initially, the Obama administration continued with the no-enrichment, no-reprocessing position that Bush had established—until desperation to get a deal ultimately meant caving on this central element of the EU-3’s long-standing strategy. That concession to Tehran was the 2015 deal’s original sin. President Trump was right to withdraw from the Obama administration’s misbegotten project in 2018—even though the EU signatories remain pledged to the zombie agreement to this day.

Iran, of course, never had the slightest interest in renouncing domestic mastery of the entire nuclear-fuel cycle. As a practical matter, this was perfectly logical for a regime that saw getting the bomb as central to its survival: How else could the Iranians produce nuclear weapons free from external reliance and therefore vulnerability? These self-evident truths demonstrated so palpably Iran’s intention to become a nuclear-weapons state, rather than merely a green-energy success story, that I was always baffled by how anyone could mistake Tehran’s true objective.

After last month’s Israeli and American military strikes, including Israel’s targeting of Iran’s senior nuclear scientists, that historical issue is now moot. Iran has neither shown remorse nor indicated any inclination to give up its long quest to acquire nuclear weapons. Tehran’s immediate response to the attacks was to declare Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “enemies of God,” which, coming from a theocracy, sounds serious. The regime immediately began work to excavate the deeply buried nuclear facilities at Fordo that had been struck by U.S. bunker-buster bombs. After personally threatening the International Atomic Energy Agency’s director general, Rafael Grossi, Tehran suspended all cooperation with the agency. These are not the actions of a government seeking serious diplomacy. By contrast, amid all its problems, Israel is helping Ukraine repair damage to water systems caused by Russian attacks.

The 2015 deal has become a dead letter, but its nominal expiration date of October 18 coincides with the Trump administration’s new opportunity to pull in its EU partners to create a solid Western position that would put more international pressure on Iran’s highly stressed leadership. Even more important, a resolute West would encourage internal Iranian dissidents to express their opposition to the regime more forcefully, encouraging fragmentation within its senior ranks.

A renewed Western alliance has no guarantee of success against Iran. Its restoration would not ensure solidarity on other fronts, such as Ukraine, where the Trump administration may be pulling away from the international support for Kyiv. Nor would it ensure the future of NATO, whose superficially friendly summit in The Hague last month merely carried its members past one more potential flash point. But revived Western cooperation on Iran might at least give those inside the Trump administration who still prize America’s alliances hope that all is not yet lost.

This article was orginally published in The Atlantic on July 9, 2025. To read the original article, click here.

Trump and Netanyahu are heading for an Oval Office showdown

July 05, 2025

Bibi Netanyahu’s Oval Office meeting with Donald Trump on Monday could be a game-changer. They will undoubtedly focus on Iran, Gaza, and Syria’s new regime among other subjects. But how close are the two leaders’ positions, and can their differences be reconciled?

Both will declare the meeting “successful,” but the reality may be quite different. On Iran, Trump crossed a Rubicon by ordering direct US military action against nuclear-weapons-related targets in Iran. He may think the strikes were simply a “one and done” affair, but, if so, he is badly mistaken. Trump put his personal prestige on the line, not to mention America’s. Despite his contention that the B-2 bunker-buster raids “completely and totally obliterated” the targeted nuclear-program sites, much remains to be done.

No one knows that better than Netanyahu, who has focused on the Iranian nuclear threat for over three decades. Although he persuaded (or manoeuvred) Trump into using military force, Trump swerved immediately after receiving favourable reports on the strikes to impose a cease-fire on Israel and Iran. Netanyahu had little choice but to stand down, having achieved two major objectives: getting Trump into the fight and imposing significant, albeit not fatal, damage on Iran’s nuclear project. Iran also had little choice, having been pounded by Israel and the US, but to launch merely pro forma retaliation, shake its rhetorical fist in defiance, and hope to escape any additional destruction.

Nonetheless, Netanyahu sees that the time is ripe for further action against Iran, including actions to encourage the domestic opposition to move against the ayatollahs. Iran’s air defences are now essentially flat, but the moment will not last forever. Top Iranian commanders and nuclear scientists have been eliminated, but their ranks will reform, and their respective work will resume. The ayatollahs have clearly signalled their continuing resolve by effectively expelling all International Atomic Energy Agency personnel from the country.

The last thing Netanyahu wants is for Trump to throw Tehran an economic or political lifeline. Israel seeks regime change in Iran, and Netanyahu needs at least Trump’s acquiescence for Israel to continue deconstructing the remains of Iran’s nuclear enterprise. Further US participation would be icing on the cake. By contrast, Trump desperately wants a Nobel Peace Prize. After all, he reasons, Barack Obama received one (which he didn’t deserve), so why not Trump?

Trump’s Nobel obsession now seems concentrated on Gaza, where the ongoing conflict has intensified since the Israel-Iran ceasefire took effect. He has pressured both Israel and Hamas to reach agreement to effect the return some still-unsettled number of Israeli hostages and remains, in exchange releasing possibly 1,000 Hamas prisoners in Israeli custody, plus a 60-day ceasefire. The sticking point remains Hamas’s insistence on a complete end to the war, or, reportedly, a commitment that talks to end the war commence immediately after the hostage/prisoner exchanges.

This sort of framework has been used before, but its durability remains just as doubtful as other post-October 7, 2023 efforts. Trump wants to announce a cease-fire on or before the Monday meeting, but how long it lasts is anyone’s guess. Hamas undoubtedly wants relief from Israeli military strikes, and domestic political pressure to secure the release of more hostages has left Netanyahu little manoeuvring room. But, apart from humanitarian objectives regarding the hostages, Israel gains no strategic upside from yet another cease fire. Israel has repeatedly suspended combat operations and withdrawn from already-secured positions in Gaza, and then been forced to re-take them, at considerable human and material costs to the Israeli Defense Forces. Lengthening the war also imposes additional strains on an already stressed Israeli economy.

The collapse of Syria’s Assad regime, replaced by former Al-Nusra Front terrorists (now known as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, or “HTS”), was undoubtedly a serious setback for Iran. Acceding to Saudi Arabia’s requests, Trump lifted US economic sanctions previously imposed against Assad’s government, but substantial questions remain whether HTS has actually renounced terrorism.

Its leader, Syria’s de facto head of government, Ahmed al-Sharaa, is also an unknown, having shed his combat fatigues for a suit, trimmed his beard, and dropped his nom de guerre for, apparently, his real name. In the meantime, Israel continues military operations inside Syria, in addition to holding onto an extended buffer zone occupied after Assad’s fall.

Perhaps nothing concrete regarding Syria will emerge from the Netanyahu-Trump meeting, but the two leaders need a better sense of each other’s concerns and objectives. Since the First World War, the Middle East has seen more diplomatic efforts crash and burn than any other geographic hot spot. Iran and Gaza today are unlikely to prove more successful.

Monday’s most important outcome in the West Wing will be decisions on the possible further use of US and Israeli military force to achieve key objectives on both fronts.

This article was originally published in The Telegraph on July 5, 2025. To read the original article, please click here.

Trump’s Work in Iran Has Only Begun

July 03, 2025

Satisfaction and frustration most accurately capture what should be America’s reaction to last month’s Israeli-U.S. military strikes on Iran.

Satisfaction because the raids, particularly against the nuclear-weapons program, may have achieved what decades of illusion, naïveté, misguided diplomacy and inadequate economic sanctions failed to achieve, and frustration because the strikes were terminated early and unnecessarily.

It remains to be seen if Washington has learned enough of a lesson to complete the destruction of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, by military means if necessary. As on many previous occasions, Iran has announced that it will cease cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, demonstrating that there is currently no serious chance of a satisfactory diplomatic solution.

The early signs are mixed and opaque. Much depends on the stability of the ayatollahs’ regime and its internal divisions, and whether Iran’s population will publicly express its discontent.

Unfortunately, the opposition in Iran, while national in scope, is not well organized, and the regime’s potential for brutal repression has been repeatedly demonstrated. Much also depends on whether America’s leaders have the necessary resolve, focus and persistence — a matter in considerable doubt.

The Middle East has changed significantly since Iranian proxies enacted on Oct. 7, 2023, the culmination of the Islamic republic’s “Ring of Fire” strategy — surrounding Israel with enemies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza and foreign militias in Syria. Along almost every important strategic dimension, Iran is today far weaker, and Israel (and the United States) far stronger.

Nuclear-weapons factors of production delayed are nuclear weapons denied, albeit temporarily. There is zero evidence the ayatollahs are prepared to abandon their nuclear dreams, and this is certainly not the moment for Washington to throw Tehran political or economic lifelines, particularly not a “new” nuclear deal with the United States.

Immediately after President Trump prematurely declared victory, ended U.S. strikes and forced Israel and Iran into a cease-fire, fierce debate erupted over initial estimates of the damage inflicted on Tehran’s nuclear project. With precious little evidence, Mr. Trump immediately proclaimed the “complete and total obliteration” of Iran’s efforts, while anonymous sources breathlessly maintained that a hot-off-the-presses preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency analysis concluded America had set Iran’s nuclear program back only a few months. The day after the attack, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Dan Caine, said accurately that it was “way too early” to make a viable assessment.

To borrow from Matthew Arnold, ignorant armies clashed by night in this battle for control of the political narrative. Only further data can clarify or perhaps resolve where the truth lies. I am satisfied for now with the subsequent conclusion of Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, that the Israeli-U.S. attacks caused “enormous damage” to Iran’s nuclear efforts. Enormous yes, but still not enough.

The inevitable continuing debate over whether further military force will be necessary will color both Washington’s view on Tehran’s remaining nuclear threat and how to deal with its badly weakened regime. Those who opposed using military force, including several Democratic senators who now criticize Israel and the United States for failing to destroy every aspect of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, implicitly argue that we shouldn’t have destroyed any of it. Where is the enriched uranium, they ask? What about newer or more obscure sites of nuclear activity, like Pickaxe Mountain near Natanz? What about the reality that pummeling the physical program does not eliminate the knowledge Iran retains to rebuild it?

In a perfect world, all of Iran’s uranium, at whatever enrichment level, would be removed and stored at a safe place, like Oak Ridge, Tenn., where what was once Libya’s nuclear-weapons program was shipped. Any uranium in the hands of a proliferator is potentially dangerous.

Whatever stockpile the ayatollahs may have previously hidden or recently spirited away from known nuclear facilities is truly dangerous only when weaponized. It must be converted into uranium metal to fashion nuclear weapons. As best we know, Tehran’s conversion capabilities, both from yellowcake to UF6 and from UF6 to metal, are most likely now inoperable.

Moreover, Iran’s weapons-fabrication facilities are either known and destroyed; underground and possibly irradiated; or at least capable of being observed and therefore destroyed later. Critical here is continuous American and Israeli surveillance, and the resolve to strike again if necessary.

The existence of unknown locations cannot be discounted. But the possibility that everything was not destroyed in the first attacks is not a legitimate reason to have forsworn those attacks.

Some people are never satisfied. If the United States had instead bombed uranium-storage facilities, those opposed to the strikes would complain about releasing radioactive materials into the atmosphere. Patience and persistence are required to stifle such a dogged proliferator like Iran.

Ironically, the continued existence of the scientific and technological know-how for Iran to rebuild its nuclear capacity was precisely what concerned George W. Bush’s administration as it faced Saddam Hussein. After the Persian Gulf war of 1991, Mr. Hussein kept on his payroll some 3,000 “nuclear mujahedeen,” as he called them, to recreate Iraq’s nuclear-weapons program. They were well known to U.N. weapons inspectors after the 1991 war. After the second war in the gulf, the United States and other coalition nations had programs to keep them gainfully employed so that they could not be hired by other rogue states.

That intellectual firepower alone was a compelling argument for regime change in Iraq. Iran now has the same asset, although degraded by Israel’s most recent attacks.

Nonetheless, many are still reflexively pursuing the Holy Grail of an Iran nuclear deal, perhaps including, according to news reports, the Trump administration. Whatever efforts are made, however, will simply be a waste of oxygen.

Satisfying America’s legitimate demands requires Iran to do a full Libya, meaning real performance in denuclearizing, not just acquiescing to treaty verbiage. It requires that Iran surrender all of its weapons-related assets, meaning any enriched uranium and all remaining physical assets, including dual-use capabilities.

However, absent a change of government in Tehran, which Washington should support, a full Libya is impossible. Unlike Muammar el-Qaddafi, the mullahs, already badly humiliated, realize that further humiliation would fatally weaken their rule. They will never voluntarily accept that fate. Instead, they will resume their earlier tactic of using negotiations to string the West along until memories dim and, as the old saying goes, “zeal for a deal” takes over, as it did for Barack Obama, producing the fatally flawed 2015 Iran agreement.

Closely related to the suggestion of more diplomacy is the assumption that the International Atomic Energy Agency is the solution. Realistically, the ayatollahs are no more likely to acquiesce to the agency’s prerequisites for a proper inventory and cleanup job than they would to American or Israeli prerequisites.

The atomic energy agency does important work, but it is neither an espionage agency nor an occupying force. Much of the most important and sensitive information it has acquired over the years came from the United States, Britain and Israel. Tehran has long treated the agency with disdain, following what James Baker once called the “cheat and then retreat” strategy to defy effective international inspection. Most important, the issues Iran poses are political, not technical. The atomic agency can be useful in a future solution, but not as the centerpiece.

The all-purpose answer from those who prefer wringing their hands to accomplishing anything: Remember Iraq. The critics of the U.S. strike on Iran are fighting the last war. The worldwide terrorist proxies Iran deployed and its advanced nuclear programs are orders of magnitude more threatening than Mr. Hussein’s Iraq. Moreover, “no boots on the ground” need be involved. The short answer is that Iran is not Iraq, which Jerusalem and Washington have already partly demonstrated.

Israel most likely has the resolve to do what is necessary to ensure its survival. The real question for America’s survival is whether the same can be said for the current U.S. administration.

This article was first published in The New York Times on July 3, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

Iran’s Ayatollahs Are Weaker Than Ever

June 16, 2025

Iran’s war against Israel took another turn for the worse last week as Operation Rising Lion struck Tehran’s nuclear-weapons program, air defenses and military leadership. Iran’s retaliation has so far been uneven and ineffective. Contrary to the scaremongers, World War III hasn’t broken out, nor will it.

But what next? The 1979 Islamic Revolution retains power in Tehran, and it could rebuild its nuclear and ballistic-missile programs and terrorist networks. The only lasting foundation for Middle East peace and security is overthrowing the ayatollahs. America’s declared objective should be just that. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the case last week, telling the Iranian people: “The time has come for you to unite around your flag and your historic legacy by standing up for your freedom from an evil and oppressive regime.”

Despite outward appearances of solid authoritarianism, the regime in Tehran faces widening discontent. The opposition extends across Iran, in the smaller cities and countryside, far beyond Tehran, where the few Western journalists congregate. Iran’s economy has been parlous for decades, and Israeli strikes on oil refineries may weaken it further. Citizen protests in 2018-19 provoked heightened nationwide repression. International antiproliferation and antiterrorism sanctions caused part of the distress, but the fundamental lesson is plain: Never trust your economy to medieval religious fanatics. There is widespread outrage at the corruption and self-enrichment of senior clerics and flag officers (and their families) in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and regular military.

The regime’s imperial projects have done nothing for Iran’s people. They have brought only devastation in Iran itself and elsewhere. Untold billions of dollars were spent over decades to empower terrorist proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis), to prop up Bashar al-Assad’s regime, and to undertake massive nuclear and missile projects that now lie in ashes.

Click here to read the full article.

Why Trump stopped listening to Netanyahu

June 06, 2025

Donald Trump was widely seen in his first term as a knee-jerk defender of Israel. Not so now. Whether and how far Washington splits from Jerusalem, especially on Iran’s nuclear-weapons program, has enormous security implications for America, Israel, and the wider Middle East.

For Trump, personal relationships with foreign heads of government equate to the relations between their countries. If he is friendly with Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, then US-Israeli relations are good. And vice versa. Today, neither relationship is fully broken, but both are increasingly strained.

Seeking the strongly pro-Israel evangelical Christian vote in 2016, Trump pledged to withdraw from Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, and generally provide Israel strong support. He satisfied that pledge, exiting Obama’s agreement in 2018. Moreover, Trump moved America’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, merged the separate Palestinian liaison office into our bilateral mission, recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and protected Israel at the UN Security Council. The transactional basis for these acts was clear. Having close personal relations with Netanyahu, or at least appearing to, buttressed this political imperative.

How good those first-term relations really were invites debate, but a continuing rationale was Trump’s desire for re-election in 2020 and, later, 2024. Keeping the pro-Israel vote was a top priority in both. Even though tensions developed between Trump and Netanyahu, few surfaced publicly. In 2024, Trump held the evangelical vote, and lost Jewish voters to Harris, 66%-32%. Even many Harris voters believed Trump would safeguard Israel’s interests(https://www.commentary.org/articles/jay-lefkowitz/jewish-vote-2024/).

Now, that electoral constraint is gone. since Trump has essentially admitted he cannot run again(https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/read-full-transcript-president-donald-trump-interviewed-meet-press-mod-rcna203514). Meanwhile, earlier irritants like Netanyahu garnering publicity for his role in the 2020 strike against Iran’s Qassem Soleimani; swiftly congratulating Joe Biden for winning in 2020; and his general aptitude for getting more attention than Trump himself, caused personal relations to grow frostier, very likely fed by Trump’s recurring envy of Obama’s 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

So, in just four months since Inauguration, Trump concluded a separate peace with Yemen’s Houthi rebels, ending inconclusive US efforts to clear the Red Sea maritime passage, and leaving Israel in the lurch while Houthi missiles targeted Ben-Gurion airport. The White House, without Israel, bargained with Hamas for release of their last living American hostage. Trump’s first major overseas trip was to three Gulf Arab countries, but he skipped Israel, in direct contrast to his first term. While in Saudi Arabia, Trump lifted sanctions imposed on Syria’s Assad dictatorship, clearly breaking with Israel, which retains grave doubts about the HTS terrorists who ousted Assad.

The record is not entirely negative. Trump sanctioned the International Criminal Court for initiating investigations(https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/imposing-sanctions-on-the-international-criminal-court/) against Netanyahu and his former defense minister, and broadly, but not unreservedly, backs Israel’s campaign against Hamas(https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/26/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-trump-isolation.html).

But the greatest divergence has emerged over the existential threat of Iran’s nuclear-weapons program. On April 7, during Netanyahu’s second post-Inaugural visit to the Oval Office(https://www.whitehouse.gov/videos/president-trump-welcomes-netanyahu-for-2nd-white-house-meeting-of-this-term/), no one seemed more stunned than he when Trump announced Steve Witkoff would soon be negotiating with Iran.

Trump had previously disclosed writing to the Ayatollah Khamenei, expressing openness to negotiation(https://www.axios.com/2025/03/19/trump-letter-iran-nuclear-deal), but setting a two-month deadline, implying military force should talks fail. If the clock started from the date Iran received the letter, the two-month period has run. I f it began with the first Witkoff-Iran meeting (April 12 in Oman), the drop-dead date is imminent. Trump could extend the deadline, but that would simply extend Israel’s peril. Reports that Witkoff has broached an “interim” or “framework” deal(https://www.axios.com/2025/04/24/iran-us-interim-nuclear-deal) further exacerbate the dangers of Tehran tapping Washington along. Time is always on the proliferator’s side. While discussions languish, Iran can even further disperse, conceal, and harden its nuclear-weapons assets.

Trump acknowledges(https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/us/politics/trump-israel-iran-nuclear.html) pressing Israel more than once(https://www.axios.com/2025/05/28/trump-told-netanyahu-not-strike-iran-nuclear) not to strike Iran’s nuclear program. Such public rebukes to a close ally facing mortal peril are themselves extraordinary, proving how hard Trump is trying to save Witkoff’s endeavors. Little is known about the talks’ substance, but media reports evidence signs(https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/us/politics/as-trump-seeks-iran-deal-israel-again-raises-possible-strikes-on-nuclear-sites.html) of inconsistency and uncertainty, indeed incompetence, over critical issues like whether Iran would be permitted to enrich uranium to reactor-grade levels, the Obama deal’s original sin. To say Netanyahu is worried is more than an understatement.

Trump’s behavior is entirely consistent with greater personal distance from Netanyahu, and a desire to be the central figure, rather than Netanyahu’s Israel, taking dispositive action against Tehran’s threat. It may also reflect the isolationist voices within his administration, although not among Republicans generally, with 52 Senators and 177 Representatives (https://jewishinsider.com/2025/05/most-congressional-republicans-insist-on-no-enrichment-for-iran/) (https://jewishinsider.com/2025/05/most-congressional-republicans-insist-on-no-enrichment-for-iran/) urging Trump not to throw Iran a lifeline.

Israel did not ask permission in 1981 before destroying Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor, or in 2007 before destroying Iran’s reactor-under-construction in the Syrian dessert. Trump is grievously mistaken if he thinks Netanyahu will “chicken out,” standing idly by as Iran becomes a nuclear-weapons state. Cometh the hour, cometh the man.

This article was first published in The Hill on June 6, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

Securing America’s Interests In a Challenging World

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