Trump Owns the Middle East Wars Now
The president is quickly wiping out his own accomplishments.
President Donald Trump's most impressive accomplishment was also his first one: bringing calm to the Middle East. Before taking office, he pushed Israel and Hamas to accept a ceasefire deal that had been on the table since May 2024, including an Israeli-Palestinian prisoner exchange. With peace in Gaza, the Houthi forces in Yemen halted their attacks on foreign shipping, and the U.S. could end its own failed campaign there. Iran seemed ready to negotiate over other outstanding issues, such as its nuclear program.
Now, Trump is rapidly undoing those accomplishments. After Israel blocked foreign aid shipments into Gaza, the Houthi movement announced that it would begin attacking Israeli shipping again. Trump not only resumed U.S. attacks on Yemen over the weekend but also took the opportunity to threaten direct war with Iran, which backs the Houthi government. Early on Tuesday morning, Israel resumed its own war in Gaza, killing hundreds of Palestinians in air raids, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that further hostage negotiations will take place "only under fire."
Turning a ceasefire into permanent peace was always going to be difficult, and both Israel and Hamas played hardball, especially as Trump's plan to empty the Palestinian population loomed in the background. The ceasefire breaking down at exactly this time in exactly this way, however, was a U.S.-Israeli decision. The Israeli army launched the airstrikes in the middle of talks, and the Trump administration admitted that it was "consulted" by Israel beforehand.
The Iranian government, meanwhile, has hardened its stance around negotiations. Iranian leaders said in the beginning of Trump's term that it was "not really a problem" for Iran to avoid pursuing nuclear weapons. But the Trump administration has been insisting that Iran has to give up some of its conventional weapons, too. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, in turn, said earlier this month that negotiating was pointless and would only "make the sanctions knot tighter."
Trump's America First mantra has always contained two contradictory urges. On one hand, there's a feeling that America is wasting its resources on hopeless foreign causes, which can be avoided by trying to "solve problems over the telephone." This view is represented by figures around Trump such as Vice President J.D. Vance and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff. On the other hand, there's an intense desire to show strength and an intense fear of looking weak. This view is represented by Trump administration figures such as National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, who publicly wanted to escalate in Ukraine and re-invade Afghanistan, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a traditional neoconservative.
Waltz and Rubio seem to be feeling their oats with the latest Middle Eastern escalation. Rubio, who physically squirmed in his seat while Vice President J.D. Vance chewed out Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last month, got to be the stern face of the Trump administration while threatening Hamas on Fox News earlier this month. When the airstrikes on Yemen began, Waltz was photographed in the Situation Room with a smug grin, and he gave the administration's pitch for war in an ABC interview soon after.
Some of the people around Trump may be telling him that he can escalate even further without embroiling Americans in a full-on war. The American Conservative alluded to "forces inside and outside his administration" urging an expansion of the war in Yemen and a direct attack on Iran. Talk show host Tucker Carlson took to the social media network X to warn that bombing Iran "will set off a war, and it will be America's war. Don't let the propagandists lie to you."
Earlier this month, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir declared that 2025 would be a "year of war" in Gaza and Iran. At the time, it looked as though the Trump administration simply would not allow that to happen. Now, Zamir's prediction seems to describe the Trump administration's policy well.
The public shift has been extremely rapid, although the internal conflict was boiling for a few weeks. Adam Boehler, the nominee for Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, became the first U.S. official to meet directly with Hamas earlier this month. His mission was to secure the release of Edan Alexander, an American captured while fighting for the Israeli army. Boehler told the media that he was optimistic about a broader deal for all Israeli hostages, but "we're not an agent of Israel."
After news of Boehler's meeting broke, the Wall Street Journal editorial board condemned Boehler, and Republicans in the Senate privately badgered the White House, according to Axios. Boehler withdrew his nomination for the envoy post, and Rubio stressed that the talks were a "one-off situation." This weekend, after Hamas announced that it would release Alexander and hand over the bodies of four Israeli Americans killed in captivity, Witkoff accused Hamas of "publicly claiming flexibility while privately making demands that are entirely impractical without a permanent ceasefire." Ironically, making an offer and then withdrawing the offer after the counterparty accepted it was a classic Biden administration tactic, one that had prolonged the war by months.
Just as things shifted rapidly over the past few weeks, they can shift again. By both brokering the ceasefire and allowing it to fall apart, Trump demonstrated that he has more control than anyone else over the pace of violence in the Middle East. And that means he owns whatever comes next. There is no blaming his predecessors now.
