Trump's Team Discovers That Diplomacy Is Hard
Diplomacy is better than war in Ukraine, Gaza, and Iran. But that doesn't mean it's easy.
You can have your cake and eat it, too. That was the promise of President Donald Trump's "peace through strength" pitch on the campaign trail, promoted most loudly by his former national security adviser Mike Waltz. By looking powerful and fearsome, the United States could get what it wants from its opponents without either costly wars or uncomfortable diplomatic concessions.
After all, the Biden administration's combination of moralizing words and military intervention had been the worst of both worlds. And Trump's outside-the-box approach allowed him to snatch some low-hanging fruit that his predecessors failed to. Over the past month, he has freed the last living American hostage from Gaza, cut a deal to get U.S. forces out of Yemen, helped broker an Indian-Pakistani ceasefire, opened negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, and brokered a Russian-Ukrainian prisoner exchange.
Trump's tour of the Persian Gulf two weeks ago was supposed to be a victory lap for his diplomatic efforts. The president declared the end of "neocon" meddling and announced the lifting of economic sanctions on Syria, while Arab leaders announced huge new investment deals in the United States. But since then, the Trump administration's efforts to end conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine seem to have stalled—and Trump himself is getting frustrated.
"I don't know what the hell happened to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin," Trump told reporters on Sunday after Russia launched major air raids on Ukraine, killing 12 people. "I've known him a long time, always gotten along with him but he's sending rockets into cities and killing people, and I don't like it at all."
Afterward, Trump wrote on Truth Social that Putin "wants ALL of Ukraine, not just a piece of it, and maybe that's proving to be right, but if he does, it will lead to the downfall of Russia!" Although Russian government spokesman Dmitry Peskov shrugged off the comments as "emotional overload," the Trump administration followed up on the comments with a serious escalation. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced on Monday that the United States and European allies were lifting all restrictions on the range of weapons provided to Ukraine, an option Waltz had been a fan of.
Last week, Trump had convinced Russia and Ukraine to enter the first direct talks since the beginning of the war. During the meeting in Turkey, the two sides agreed to trade 1,000 prisoners of war for 1,000 prisoners of war—and not much else. Peskov told reporters that further negotiations would be possible only after the two sides "achieve certain results in the form of agreements."
The fundamental issue is still the same as it was before Trump came to office: Russia wants to keep the land it seized and neutralize Ukraine as a military threat, while Ukraine wants to get its land back and gain protection against further Russian attacks. Trump reportedly told European leaders that Putin doesn't want to end the war because he believes Russia is winning, while Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov publicly accused Trump's ceasefire proposal of being a way to buy time in order to "rearm Ukraine in a calm atmosphere."
U.S.-Iran talks are dragging on with a similarly unclear outcome. At the same press conference where he attacked Putin's air raids, Trump claimed that the two countries concluded "very, very good talks" in Rome on Friday and "I have a feeling I might be telling you something good" over the next few days. But Oman's Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi, who has been mediating the talks, said that the last round was "not conclusive."
The U.S. and Iran have publicly incompatible positions on the nuclear issue. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Senate last Tuesday that Iran can have a civilian nuclear energy program if it gives up on domestic uranium enrichment and imports all of its fuel instead, because "all you need is time" to turn low-enriched fuel into weapons-grade uranium. Iran, on the other hand, sees enrichment as a "source of national pride, our moon shot," and a sovereign right.
"Figuring out the path to a deal is not rocket science," Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated going into talks. "Zero nuclear weapons = we DO have a deal. Zero enrichment = we do NOT have a deal. Time to decide."
More fundamentally, Iran wants to hedge against the possibility that the U.S. will break its side of any deal. In 2015, the Iranian government agreed to restrictions on its nuclear program in exchange for lifting the U.S. economic embargo, only for Trump to impose "super maximum economic pressure" four years later. In that first deal, Iran had given up concrete concessions—including filling a nuclear reactor with cement—in exchange for paper guarantees.
When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Trump administration has been repeatedly pulling the rug out from under its own diplomacy. During the last ceasefire in Gaza, the Trump administration offered a ceasefire extension if Hamas were to release Israeli-American captive Edan Alexander. After Hamas offered to release him, U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff accused Hamas of "making demands that are entirely impractical without a permanent ceasefire," and Israel resumed its war.
Hamas eventually did release Alexander on May 12, with the understanding that Israel would end its 10-week blockade of all imports and aid to Gaza. (At least 58 people have died from malnutrition, 242 people have died from shortages of food or medicine, and 300 women have miscarried since the lockdown began, according to the Palestinian health ministry.) Israel and the U.S. have announced a new plan to distribute food to Palestinians in heavily guarded, access-restricted compounds that leaked internal documents warned would be seen as "'concentration camps' with biometrics."
Meanwhile, Arab Americans for Trump founder Bishara Bahbah has continued negotiating on Witkoff's behalf for a new ceasefire deal. After Hamas agreed on Monday to Bahbah's proposal for a 70-day temporary ceasefire in exchange for 10 hostages, with a path to fully ending the war, Israeli officials told local media that they would reject the proposal. Witkoff then denounced the ceasefire proposal, which his own deputy had made, in an interview with Axios.
"The deal Bahbah reached with Hamas was totally rejected by Israel, and it seems that when Witkoff realized that, he pulled the brakes on it," an Israeli official told Axios.
As with Ukraine and Iran, there is a fundamental disagreement that can't be papered over. Hamas does not want to give up hostages without an end to the war. Israel does not want to end the war short of satisfying vengeance for the October 2023 attacks. Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu added physically removing the Palestinian population from Gaza as one of his victory conditions.
To resolve all these cases, the U.S. would either have to make compromises—giving concessions on European security, allowing Iranian enrichment, and pressuring Israel to moderate its goals—or escalate further. Both come at a political cost that Trump is so far unwilling to pay. Instead, he's resorted to making vague promises and blaming others when they fall short.
"This is [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy's, Putin's, and [former President Joe] Biden's War, not 'Trump's,' I am only helping to put out the big and ugly fires, that have been started through Gross Incompetence and Hatred," Trump wrote in his Truth Social post on Ukraine. That rhetoric might have cut it on the campaign trail. But now that he's in the White House, Trump owns these conflicts, too.
