President Trump’s first-term record of steadfast support for Israel and “maximum pressure” against Iran has earned him a fair degree of benefit of the doubt when it comes to Middle East policy. But as his envoy Steve Witkoff pursues nuclear diplomacy with Iran and another cease-fire deal in Gaza, there are troubling signs that Trump may be going down the same failed path of Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
On Wednesday, Trump confirmed that he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to strike Iran’s nuclear program, saying, “I don’t think it’s appropriate” while talks are ongoing. “Right now, I think they want to make a deal,” Trump said. “And if we can make a deal, I’d save a lot of lives.” Holding off on striking Iran now risks squandering a crucial window, with Iran’s anti-aircraft defense systems still damaged from Israel’s retaliatory strike against the terrorist regime last October.
In his first term, Trump rightly recognized that Iran was not a negotiating partner to be trusted. He tore up Obama’s disastrous nuclear deal, under which Iran obtained tens of billions of dollars in sanctions relief while retaining its ability to enrich uranium and grow its ballistic missile program. Also, that deal did not address any other malign behavior by Iran (from its sponsorship of terrorism to other destabilizing actions throughout the region, including its targeting of U.S. military personnel and assets).
But now, unfortunately, Trump is pursuing a deal that sounds in many ways like the failed Obama agreement, with its promise of inspections and its avoidance of fully dismantling the nuclear program, akin to the deal the U.S. struck with Libya in 2003. Witkoff, a few weeks ago, said that Iran would be allowed to enrich uranium at 3.67 percent (the Obama deal limit), but more recently he has said that the U.S. “red line” was that Iran would not be permitted any enrichment. Iran, for its part, has said it would never accept that limitation. With Trump so eager for a deal, it’s fair to be concerned that the U.S. will let this red line shift.
Iran doves within the administration and their allies are making the same disingenuous arguments that John Kerry and the gang made during the Obama administration — that the only alternative to a deal is a world war. In reality, an Israeli-led strike on Iran’s nuclear program would not trigger another world war, nor is it akin to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It is likely to be closer to the 1981 Israeli attack on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor. Trump should understand this. In 2020, when he rightly ordered the strike that killed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qasem Soleimani, the reactions were so hysterical that the terms “Franz Ferdinand” and “World War III” were trending online, and yet Iran avoided a major escalation that it could ill afford. The same calculation would be likely to hold this time.
Meanwhile, Israel is currently making significant progress in its campaign against Hamas. Israelis recently killed Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Mohammed Sinwar, the younger brother of Yahya Sinwar (the October 7 architect who was killed by Israel last October). And perhaps more importantly, there are signs that the people of Gaza are starting to feel more emboldened to defy the terrorist group that has ruled the area with an iron grip for nearly 20 years.
The U.S. and Israel have worked together with contractors to create a new mechanism for distributing aid directly to Gazans, unlike the United Nations effort that allowed Hamas to steal the aid. Before the distribution began, Hamas issued a warning to Gazans not to participate in the U.S.-backed effort. Yet Gazans ignored the warning, and hundreds of thousands of meals were distributed in the first day of operation. In a further sign that Hamas, which has been controlling the flow of food and supplies, is losing its grip, a mob broke into a warehouse in central Gaza to take flour.
Unfortunately, by pushing for another cease-fire when Israel has the momentum, the U.S. could end up tossing Hamas a lifeline.
Witkoff has been pushing for a new 60-day cease-fire deal that would involve Israeli withdrawal from its recent gains in Gaza; letting the U.N. back in to distribute aid; and the release of only about half of the remaining 58 hostages, ten living and 18 dead, in two groups, in exchange for the release of terrorists being held by Israel (Trump had previously said he was frustrated with these sorts of piecemeal proposals). As of this writing, the fate of the deal remains unclear.
A meeting in Washington between Witkoff and Israel’s strategic affairs minister, Ron Dermer, was described in a report by the Times of Israel as “uneasy,” with Witkoff said to be growing impatient with Israel. These are the sorts of stories we would regularly read about Biden administration officials venting at Israelis, and we had hoped that the election of Trump would put an end to them.
Unfortunately, even though Trump has some great people on his foreign policy team with stellar records on Middle East policy, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, everything seems to be dictated by Witkoff, a real estate developer with little background in foreign diplomacy and with a significant conflict of interest: His troubled Park Lane hotel investment was bailed out by the Qatar Investment Authority last year to the tune of $623 million, and Qatar is a benefactor of Hamas and key ally of Iran. In March, Witkoff admitted in a television interview that he was “duped” by Hamas during earlier negotiations.
Instead of repeating the same mistakes of Obama and Biden, Trump should return to his successful first-term approach to the region. Israel should be given a free hand to finish off Hamas, without pressure to agree to a cease-fire, and the U.S. should not resuscitate Obama’s disastrous nuclear deal.