As usual, Victor Davis Hanson, writing for amgreatness.com, has provided us with a superb analysis – this time, a 10-point analysis detailing how President Donald Trump was able to square the circle and put together a deal acceptable to both Israel and hamas.
You’ve got the link, and absolutely should be reading every one of those points. But let me show you just three:
1. Trump curtailed a considerable amount of Iranian oil income and its dispersal. He stopped, for the near future, the Iranian effort to build a bomb. Trump also allowed Israel to destroy Tehran’s air defenses, humiliate it militarily, and eliminate many of its top military officers and nuclear physicists. Thus, Israel’s half-century-long worries about Iranian nukes were addressed. At the same time, its stature as a military power soared to an all-time high—even if it became more isolated politically. Israel became more confident but also more sensitive to past, current, and future American military and political support—or pressure.
2. Trump allowed Netanyahu to destroy Hamas, cripple Hezbollah, and retaliate at will against the Houthis. That liberation led to general dejection among Israel’s enemies and a resurgence in Netanyahu’s own political fortunes. And that rise of Israel and the collapse of the Iranian terrorist network—the “ring of fire”— explain the greater chances for a ceasefire and possibly a peace. Trump allowed no daylight between Israel and the U.S., which, under the Biden administration, may have sent the wrong signals to Hamas prior to October 7.
So there is now no terrorist Palestinian leader, such as a Yasser Arafat or an all-powerful Hamas killer, to sandbag negotiations. Instead, Trump involved a number of self-interested surrogate Arab officials who have the money and influence to rebuild Gaza and restore calm on their own terms. Trump and Israel are not just negotiating from positions of historic strength, but they have also empowered the reasonable Arab nations to have honor and clout in Middle East negotiations in an unprecedented fashion.
6. Trump dealt with enemies, allies, and neutrals from a position of strength, comparative advantage, and national ascendance, unlike the appeasing and anemic Biden years or the apologetics of Obama. The successful complex bombing of the Iranian nuclear facilities and the past elimination of terrorist Iranian General Qasem Soleimani and ISIS founder and thug Bakr al-Baghdadi ensured Trump was seen as more serious than either Obama or Biden ever were.
The Arab world and Israel also understood that there are no alternatives to Trump. Russia’s Syrian outpost is gone. Moscow is bogged down in a forever war in Ukraine and under sanctions. It is no longer a force in the Middle East.
Trump has confronted China and exposed its economic vulnerabilities, ensuring that the Arabs saw no outside power comparable to the U.S.
Chinese and Russian allies, like the Iranian theocracy and the former Assad dynasty in Syria, were also shown over the last year to be shrill, impotent, losing clients. At home, restoring the U.S. border, strengthening NATO, rebooting the U.S. military, fast-tracking energy development, and cracking down on crime fed the impression of an American renaissance rather than the continued Obama-Biden-managed decline.
There is more. SO MUCH more. Please, please use the link (here it is again) and read every word. Then marvel at how Trump was able to accomplish this seemingly impossible deal.
I will end with a compilation of all the congratulations I have read so far from the “CEASEFIRE NOW!!!” crowd; the crowd that should be reveling in this remarkable turn of events/congratulating President Trump for his amazing accomplishment that brought the result they demanded. Here is the entire compilation so far:
End of blog.
