by Jonathan S. Tobin
The president’s refusal to appease Tehran, along with his insistence that Riyadh recognize Israel if it wants a nuclear program, are potential political liabilities. But both stands are right.
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| U.S. President Donald Trump departs the Ellipse on Marine One in
Washington, D.C., en route the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa.,
July 15, 2026. Credit: White House intern Austin DeSisto/White House. |
As a man who has always prided himself on his unpredictability,
President Donald Trump has achieved at least one goal in the Middle East
of late. Few, if any, among his supporters or detractors (and perhaps
not even the president himself) know exactly what he’s going to do next.
As he zig-zags his way through the ongoing war with Iran while
navigating the sometimes fractious relations with America’s main allies
in the region—Israel and Saudi Arabia—he is, if nothing else, keeping
friends and foes guessing.
But while it’s difficult to be sure
where this is all heading, even his critics should concede that, for all
of his erratic public statements and course shifts over the past few
months, for the time being, Trump isn’t taking the expedient or even
popular path with respect to the war. For the moment, he’s actually
doing the right thing.
An unpopular war
That’s not the way most members of Congress
see it. Democrats are united against his policies and the war.
Republicans fear that the fallout from the conflagration is going to
hurt them in the fall midterm elections; in fact, they are starting to
worry about that more than being in Trump’s bad graces, with some even
crossing the aisle to make their stance known.
The president’s declining poll ratings also demonstrate the war’s unpopularity, which has kept gas prices high for the past five months.
At the same time, the Iranians remain committed to their drive to achieve a nuclear weapon, and buoyed by opposition to the renewed war against them, rejected a U.S. ceasefire offer this week.
Meanwhile,
the Saudis, who seem to be of two minds about the conflict, think that
Trump double-crossed them. They’re angry because he first signed an accord that could let them enrich nuclear fuel. Then, only a day later, he said the deal was contingent on them joining the Abraham Accords and formally recognizing Israel.
For
those who claim that Trump is an unprincipled cynic, his stand on both
Iran and the Saudis makes no sense. After all, if doing the popular
thing was his priority, he would have ended the conflict with Iran. An
attempt by some in Congress to pass a war powers resolution that would
hamstring the administration’s ability to carry on the fight has, to
date, failed. It’s a reflection of the general lack of enthusiasm for a
war the president struggles to explain clearly as much as it is about
anti-Trump partisanship.
If he wanted to shore up America’s
standing with a major ally in the Middle East that is also one of the
world’s leading oil producers, then he might not have thrown a
monkey-wrench into the nuclear agreement with Riyadh.
But Trump,
who realizes that the final two years of his term in office could be
turned into a nightmare if the Democrats win the midterms, chose not to
do either of those things.
The war against Iran continues with no
letup in sight. U.S. forces have been pounding Iranian targets for the
last two weeks. Meanwhile, Tehran’s leaders continue to menace shipping
in the Strait of Hormuz. They also continue to strike at America’s Arab
friends in the region, including Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, the
United Arab Emirates and Oman, while conspicuously not targeting the two
most powerful countries allied with Washington: Israel and Saudi
Arabia.
Taking him seriously, not literally
Undeniably, Trump’s statements on the war have been all over the place.
One
day, he’s predicting that Iran will soon come to its senses and make a
deal with him over its nuclear project and perhaps other outstanding
issues that he can accept. Only a few days later, he’s declaring that
the deal the United States struck with them in June is “over”—and that
the regime’s leaders are “scum” or “sick people being led by sick
individuals” and that “negotiations are a waste of time” with them.
That’s after having said only a month ago that the same bunch was a
group of “very rational people.”
Part of the problem is that Trump
watchers, especially in the media and among his political opponents,
keep forgetting the basic insight about him that journalist Salena Zito
famously wrote in 2016 and which remains true today: “The press takes
him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but
not literally.”
The point isn’t that he engages in hyperbole, as
well as pays little attention to whether his statements are measured or
entirely accurate. His threats, like his praise, are merely talking
points and negotiating tactics.
Sometimes, that’s deeply
unfortunate. His comments earlier this year that encouraged the Iranian
people to revolt against their corrupt Islamist tyrants, saying “help
was on the way” when it was not, were a tragic mistake. The result was
that tens of thousands of protesters were slaughtered by a regime still
in place.
Rejecting appeasement
But for all of his inconsistency, Trump still gets the big picture on Iran right.
He
ended the joint Israeli military campaign against Iran in April with a
ceasefire out of impatience with Tehran’s resilience, despite
overwhelming losses, mainly because the hike in gas prices was a blow to
the GOP’s hopes of holding onto Congress this fall. And he sent Vice
President JD Vance, along with foreign-policy envoy Steve Witkoff and
presidential adviser/son-in-law Jared Kushner, to Switzerland to
negotiate a pact to end the war while allowing him to claim that he had
also ended the Iranian nuclear threat.
Predictably, this exercise in essentially repeating past administration’s mistakes failed. The notion, put forward by Vance—that
ending the war was a priority and that the United States could trust
the Islamists to keep their word on nuclear issues—was soon exposed as a
colossal blunder. Iran had no more intention of giving up its nuclear
ambitions than it had of ceasing its role as the world’s leading state
sponsor of terrorism, locked in a generational war against the West.
Trump
could have accepted this humiliation. Indeed, all the experts urged him
to do so because they argued that Iran could not be defeated. It was,
they said, a struggle in which America’s refusal to accept any economic
pain or even minimal casualties was matched against Tehran’s capacity to
continually escalate the conflict and tolerate almost unlimited
destruction. That’s something, establishment voices say, that makes them
invincible.
But so far, Trump isn’t buying it.
He gave the
Iranians a chance to make a deal that was extremely favorable to them.
Had they abided by the Memorandum of Understanding negotiated by Vance,
it would have been a triumph for the regime and a defeat for the United
States. But, like former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, Vance
learned that the Islamists don’t want a favorable settlement. They will
never give up their quest for regional hegemony or their mission of
spreading their brand of fanatical Islam across the globe. The
difference between this administration and its predecessors is that the
man in the Oval Office isn’t willing to accept that kind of humiliation.
While
he may be deeply frustrated with the failure of the military campaign
to bring the regime to its knees as quickly as he would like, he is
equally determined not to give up and let a terrorist regime have its
way.
Trump entered politics primarily as a critic of the failed
“forever” wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Although he is sensitive to
critics who claim that he’s repeating the mistakes made by former
President George W. Bush in those two unwinnable conflicts, he
understands that while the United States might have been able to walk
away, albeit disgracefully, from those battles, Iran is a different
story.
The Islamic Republic has been at war with the United States
since the Islamist regime seized power in 1979. It is responsible for
killing hundreds of Americans and launching wars that caused the deaths
of exponentially more people around the region, including the one that
followed the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab assault in southern Israel on
Oct. 7, 2023. Its nuclear ambitions are a direct threat to the United
States as well as other countries in the Middle East.
Contrary to
the arguments of those who claim that Washington can simply walk away
from this problem—whether articulated by liberal pundits who hate Trump
and are allergic to the exercise of U.S. power or antisemitic
conspiracy-mongers like former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who
have become Islamist cheerleaders—this is a conflict where the defense
of U.S. interests requires the defeat of America’s antagonist. Far from
an illegal or immoral foreign adventure, it is a just war that needs to
be fought to a successful conclusion.
Kicking the can down the
road for a successor to deal with a dilemma that will almost certainly
be harder to solve might lower fuel costs for now, as well as preclude
any further casualties and bad press. But it would also be irresponsible
and dangerous.
Ultimately, Trump may not stay the course on Iran.
But for the moment, he is acting, if not always speaking, as if he
knows that he must not let the Islamists triumph. The fighting will have
to keep going until there is a government in Tehran that will accept
American terms and be forced to abide by them.
It’s also true that
Trump may have already concluded that his administration’s worries
about the midterms won’t be fixed by letting the Iranians win. Whatever
political capital he expended on the issue is, at this point, spilt milk
and cannot be retrieved by adopting appeasement. Having lost a war to
terrorists will be worse for the Republicans in November than to still
be fighting one that is far from popular.
Standing his ground on
Iran will be a better position for him and the GOP than waving the white
flag. And in doing so, he will actually be rising to his responsibility
of defending his nation and the West.
Saudi nuclear deal
The same is true for his reversal on the deal with the Saudis.
The
Saudi monarchy was initially quietly in favor of the U.S.-Israeli war
on Iran, which poses as great a threat to Riyadh as it does to
Jerusalem. But it got cold feet once the Gulf states began to be hit by
Iran, coupled with attacks on shipping that disrupted the oil trade.
Their
interest in a nuclear deterrent to Iran—and approving the start of a
nuclear project for the Saudis has no other purpose other than that—may
be understandable. In a world where the United States punts on stopping
the Iranian nuclear threat, this might seem rational. But save for
Vance’s neo-isolationist rants, it has never been something Trump
accepted as an option.
In contrast to Obama and Biden, Trump has
rightly sought to maintain close relations with a nation that is—its
flaws as an Islamist autocracy notwithstanding—key to keeping Iran in
check and a Middle East that is friendly to the West. But giving it a
pathway to nuclear weapons (safeguards in the proposed agreement with
the United States notwithstanding) is frankly insane. There is always
the possibility that the current leadership embodied by Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), who wants to modernize if not democratize his
country, might be toppled by his radical foes. It is equally true that
even under its current conservative leaders, the Saudis ought not to be
trusted with the ultimate weapon.
Many in Israel and in the United
States believe that it is only a matter of time before the Saudis join
the Abraham Accords. But that sort of optimism, which was widespread
after the normalization agreement was crafted in 2020, is almost
certainly wrong.
The Saudis may have a relatively friendly
relationship with Israel. They are tacit allies with it against Iran and
open to the economic benefits of commerce with the Jewish state. But
MBS and other Saudi leaders don’t need to extend themselves much further
than that and rock the regional boat; they feel their current
relationship with Israel is just fine.
Moving to full recognition
and the exchange of embassies will bring them more problems than
benefits. The core identity of the Saudi regime is inextricably linked
to the Wahhabi sect of Islam, and its status as the guardian of the
Muslim holy places in Mecca and Medina. That’s an insuperable obstacle
to normalization. Moreover, their enthusiasm for closer ties with
Jerusalem rises and falls in direct relation to the threat level from
Tehran, which, as long as Washington is dedicated to ending the nuclear
peril, is low.
By demanding normalization, Trump is essentially
spiking the nuclear deal with the Saudis. Like the MoU with Iran, the
pact with Iran was always a terrible idea. While there is clearly a
faction inside the administration that, motivated by neo-isolationist
sentiment, wants to retreat from the Middle East and likely pushed for
this fiasco, Trump knew better.
Again, there is a political cost to this decision.
It
is entirely possible that alienating Riyadh could contribute, either
directly or indirectly, to oil-supply decisions that could contribute to
rising prices—political poison for Trump. But to his credit, again he
did the right thing after flirting with an unforced error that would
have been a potential disaster.
Big picture decisions
Trump’s
Middle East policies continue to be a mix of keen insight and puzzling
decision-making. For example, his closeness with Turkey’s leader Recep
Tayyip Erdoğan has led to mistaken policies with respect to the Kurds
and Syria that are undermining the struggle against Iran and its
terrorist auxiliaries.
And his on-again, off-again bromance with
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is deeply frustrating for
friends of the Jewish state and those who understand the stakes involved
in nurturing the alliance between the two nations. Going back and forth
from rightly praising Israel for fighting side by side with America
against common foes—and then, inappropriately, using the prime minister
as a scapegoat for the lack of immediate success against Iran—only
encourages the war’s critics, and antisemites on the right and the left.
When
looking at the big-picture decisions the president is making, the
errors aren’t as serious as his determination to keep fighting against
Iran and not to let the Saudis go nuclear, despite the potential
political costs. Focusing on his inconsistent day-to-day statements on
the war only adds to the confusion. But so long as he is standing his
ground on Iran and protecting U.S. interests rather than doing the
politically expedient thing, Trump deserves far more praise than
criticism.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem News Syndicate, a senior contributor for The Federalist, a columnist for Newsweek
and a contributor to many other publications. He covers the American
political scene, foreign policy, the U.S.-Israel relationship, Middle
East diplomacy, the Jewish world and the arts. He hosts the JNS “Think Twice”
podcast, both the weekly video program and the “Jonathan Tobin Daily”
program, which are available on all major audio platforms and YouTube.
Previously, he was executive editor, then senior online editor and chief
political blogger, for Commentary magazine. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia and editor of the Connecticut Jewish Ledger.
He has won more than 60 awards for commentary, art criticism and other
writing. He appears regularly on television, commenting on politics and
foreign policy. Born in New York City, he studied history at Columbia
University.
Source: https://www.jns.org/opinion/column/jonathan-s-tobin/trump-is-a-puzzle-but-hes-standing-firm-on-iran-and-the-saudis
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