Iran’s Ayatollahs Are Weaker Than Ever

June 16, 2025

Iran’s war against Israel took another turn for the worse last week as Operation Rising Lion struck Tehran’s nuclear-weapons program, air defenses and military leadership. Iran’s retaliation has so far been uneven and ineffective. Contrary to the scaremongers, World War III hasn’t broken out, nor will it.

But what next? The 1979 Islamic Revolution retains power in Tehran, and it could rebuild its nuclear and ballistic-missile programs and terrorist networks. The only lasting foundation for Middle East peace and security is overthrowing the ayatollahs. America’s declared objective should be just that. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the case last week, telling the Iranian people: “The time has come for you to unite around your flag and your historic legacy by standing up for your freedom from an evil and oppressive regime.”

Despite outward appearances of solid authoritarianism, the regime in Tehran faces widening discontent. The opposition extends across Iran, in the smaller cities and countryside, far beyond Tehran, where the few Western journalists congregate. Iran’s economy has been parlous for decades, and Israeli strikes on oil refineries may weaken it further. Citizen protests in 2018-19 provoked heightened nationwide repression. International antiproliferation and antiterrorism sanctions caused part of the distress, but the fundamental lesson is plain: Never trust your economy to medieval religious fanatics. There is widespread outrage at the corruption and self-enrichment of senior clerics and flag officers (and their families) in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and regular military.

The regime’s imperial projects have done nothing for Iran’s people. They have brought only devastation in Iran itself and elsewhere. Untold billions of dollars were spent over decades to empower terrorist proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis), to prop up Bashar al-Assad’s regime, and to undertake massive nuclear and missile projects that now lie in ashes.

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Will Trump TACO on Iran?

June 11, 2025

The world is undeniably close to learning whether Iran can yet again out-negotiate and out-last feckless Western politicians and save its nuclear-weapons program. On June 5, Donald Trump said(https://www.axios.com/2025/06/04/iran-nuclear-deal-trump) Iran was “slow-walking” nuclear negotiations with the United States. His two-month time limit to the Ayatollah Khamenei has either expired already or soon will(https://www.axios.com/2025/03/19/trump-letter-iran-nuclear-deal).

The moment of decision is near, but there is no credible evidence which way Trump will go. Is he prepared to accept Israel using force against Iran’s nuclear program, either acting alone or alongside the United States? Or will we see another episode of what Wall Street calls the “TACO trade”: Trump Always Chickens Out? At this point, not even Trump knows the answer.

He may hope to proclaim he has produced a better nuclear deal than Barrack Obama’s flawed 2015 agreement, but this is a risky domestic gambit. Trump faces palpable political vulnerability if he agrees to something that looks, in substance, like Obama’s deal, permitting Iran to continue any uranium-enrichment capability, let alone one as large and sophisticated as Tehran has already developed. Indeed, if Iran were allowed to do so under whatever guise, including an “international consortium,” Trumpian claims of outdoing Obama and actually stopping Tehran’s drive for nuclear weapons will be immediately exposed as false.

This risk to Trump of appearing to “chicken out” to Iran is just as high even if an agreement is disguised as “interim,” or “time limited” or qualified in any cosmetic way. A poorly camouflaged deal is so intellectually dishonest that, when inevitably discovered, the political damage to Trump would be extensive and lasting. Trump’s “zeal for a deal” has already united congressional Republicanshttps://jewishinsider.com/2025/05/most-congressional-republicans-insist-on-no-enrichment-for-iran/), notably tame on almost every other issue, against allowing Iran any enrichment capabilities. Trump says repeatedly he doesn’t want to see force used, but he will soon have no choice, given his own framing of the Iran issue, let alone political and military reality.

Middle Eastern oil-producing states are reportedly working quietly to facilitate a US-Iran deal. Of course, Gulf Arab states would respond affirmatively if asked whether they prefer seeing Iran’s nuclear-weapons program ended peacefully. But in real-world terms, they are confronted by a different question. If they must face the risk of hostilities with Iran, would they prefer to do so before Tehran possesses deliverable nuclear weapons, or after? Understood fully, there is only one correct answer, unless Gulf Cooperation Council members wish to live in Tehran’s nuclear shadow, or to launch full-scale efforts to achieve nuclear-weapons status, precipitating an arms race in which they start far behind

Unsurprisingly, Arabian Peninsula leaders have indicated their worries that, given Tehran’s bizarre worldview, they might be targets of Iranian retaliation should Israel and/or America attack the nuclear program. The United States also worries that its deployed forces in the Middle East are possible targets, and that Iran’s support for international terrorists and murder-for-hire criminal efforts might also be expanded. Israel need not speculate. Tehran and its terrorist proxies, particularly Hezbollah, will try to strike Israel, in whatever way they can.

But assessing possible Iranian retaliation means more than simply listing measures the ayatollahs can take. So doing affords all manner of possible threats a level of credibility that only plays into Iran’s hands. Right now, Iran is in its weakest geostrategic position since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Its terrorist surrogates Hamans and Hezbollah have been battered, if not yet fully destroyed; Syria’s Assad regime has fallen; the Houthis are at least damaged; and Iran itself has sustained catastrophic losses to ballistic-missile production facilities and some damage to its nuclear program.

Is a country already in such dire straits really prepared to add as many as four-to-six new enemies, risking the survival of the regime itself, which is already under enormous threat internally and externally? In short, Iran’s threats sound decidedly hollow. In any case, American and Gulf Arab interests coincide, arguing for Washington to meld both its defensive and its deterrence strategies against Iran with interested GCC members, and legitimate for Gulf Arabs to be included in US protective measures for military forces in their territories.

Many believe Israel will not act decisively against Iran’s nuclear program without explicit US approval. This is incorrect. As a geographically small nation, like Singapore and most GCC states, Israel knows that nuclear weapons are an existential threat: just a few nuclear detonations, and there is no more Israel. Jerusalem acted without Washington’s blessing against Iraq in 2001; Iran and Syria in 2007; and against one facility of Tehran’s nuclear-weapons enterprise (never inspected by the IAEA) at the Parchin military base in 2024. Faced with Iran’s existential threat, Israel will do what it must, Bibi Netanyahu in particular understands the American saying, “better to ask for forgiveness than for permission.” And if the Israelis fail to act, they will have only themselves to blame.

This article was first published in The Independant Arabia on June 11, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

What is required of Sharia to obtain full American recognition

May 26, 2025

Donald Trump’s just-concluded Middle East visit produced considerable press coverage for the business deals and investments he and his counterparts announced. The visit’s biggest news, however, was his declaration that the United States would lift economic sanctions on Syria imposed during the Assad regime. Trump said in Riyadh(https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-starts-gulf-visit-seeking-big-economic-deals-2025-05-13/), “Oh what I do for the crown prince [Mohammed bin Salman].”

Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, even received a brief meeting with Trump in Riyadh(https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/14/middleeast/syria-trump-meeting-analysis-intl). In 2013, America had named(https://2009-2017.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2013/05/209499.htm) Al-Sharaa, under his nom de guerre Mohammed al-Jawlani, a “specially designated global terrorist,” and put a $10 million bounty on his head. The US had previously listed his terrorist group, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, once known as the Al Nusrah Front, an Al Qaeda affiliate, as a foreign terrorist organization.

American presidents don’t normally meet with terrorists, but al-Sharaa obviously received good public-relations advice after taking power: he abandoned his nom de guerre, trimmed his beard, and traded his combat fatigues for a suit and tie, looking more like a businessman than a terrorist. But have Al Sharaa and HTS truly renounced terrorism?

Trump didn’t wait to find out. To be sure, Trump advised al-Sharaa during their meeting to sign an Abraham Accord recognizing Israel, expel foreign terrorist fighters from Syria, and join the fight against ISIS. But Al-Sharaa made no apparent commitment to do so, certainly not publicly. This is hardly “the art of the deal” at its finest.

Saudi Arabia’s interests, and those of the broader Arab world, in accepting al-Sharaa’s new government are clear. Assad’s fall was a massive defeat for Iran, losing its most important regional ally and cutting off land supply routes to Hezbollah, Iran’s principal terrorist proxy. Moving to restrict Turkish President Erdogan’s influence in Syria was also important, since HTS could not have overthrown Assad without Ankara’s considerable assistance.

Defeating Tehran’s mullahs and restraining Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman influence in Syria and the Middle East generally are also in America’s interest. But these objectives are not enough. Washington needs more than rhetoric from al-Sharaa, it needs performance of concrete actions proving he has abandoned terrorism in fact not just in talk. Trump let the moment slip when he should have insisted on America’s conditions to lift sanctions, but the designations of al-Sharaa and HTS as terrorists, and Syria’s Assad-era designation as a state sponsor of terrorism remain in effect. These listings should not be rescinded unless and until al-Sharaa’s regime meets several further conditions, enumerated below. Moreover, if it fails to do so promptly, sanctions should be reimposed.

Most importantly, al-Sharaa must permanently reverse Assad policies that led to Syria’s ostracization, and be completely transparent with the Assad’s government’s archives and related materials. Since non-terrorist governments do not take hostages, al-Sharaa should open Syria’s government records to international review on all aspects of foreign hostages seized over the past decades. For the hostage families’ sake, their stories must be told fully, and any Syrian links with foreign entities assisting the hostage-taking must be disclosed to law-enforcement agencies for appropriate follow-up.

There must also be a clean break from all Assad regime efforts in chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, particularly ties with governments like Iran. After Assad’s fall, Israel reportedly bombed suspected chemical-weapons facilities, but al-Sharaa should nonetheless identify all chemical-weapons-related sites in Syria, and open these locations and government files to inspection either by Washington or the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Comparable steps need to be taken regarding biological weapons.

Syria’s nuclear activities likely centered on the nuclear reactor, which it aided Iran and North Korea in building at Deir al-Zour. Syrian records on Deir al-Zour and other links with Iran could prove invaluable in countering Tehran’s regional threat. Syria should take every step to preserve this evidence and make it available for international review. Al-Sharaa should also abandon support for Iran’s efforts to dominate Lebanon through Hezbollah.

Moreover, if al-Sharaa has indeed renounced terrorism, he needs to fully disclose Al Nusrah’s funders over the years. He should commit to working with the Kurds, particularly the Syrian Democratic Forces, in securely confining their thousands of ISIS prisoners. Other terrorists in Syria should be imprisoned there, not expelled, as Trump suggested, possibly to return to terrorism elsewhere. Signs of possible Turkish reconciliation with its own Kurdish citizens do not prove that Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman ambitions regarding Kurdish-populated areas in Syria and elsewhere have diminished. Accordingly, US forces need to remain in northeastern Syria until HTS’s good faith is fully proven.

Finally, Syria should expel Russia from its naval station at Tartus and air base at nearby Hmeimim. Russia’s 2022 unprovoked aggression against Ukraine, not to mention its long-time support for Assad, prove how dangerous an extensive Russian military presence in Syria is

In short, Al-Sharaa has a long way to go before he and his HTS regime deserve full recognition and legitimacy from the United States. This “deal” is not yet done.

This article was first published in The Independent Arabia on May 19, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

Starmer’s turn against Israel will prolong war

May 26, 2025

Removing the ayatollahs in Iran is the only route to securing longterm peace in Gaza

Israel is now grappling with possibly the last phases of eliminating the Hamas terrorist threat. Instead of support from a unified West determined to extirpate terrorism, however, Jerusalem is under attack for attempting exactly that. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was “horrified” by Israel’s recent “escalation”. Foreign Secretary David Lammy condemned the “dark new phase in this conflict,” suspended trade negotiations with Israel, and said it should agree to a cease-fire to free remaining hostages, as if that were Jerusalem’s only legitimate objective.

Last week, a gunman in Washington brutally murdered two Israeli embassy employees, chanting “free, free Palestine” while being arrested. Thereafter, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Starmer and others were “on the wrong side” of justice, humanity and history. Starmer has not responded. Before he does, he should at least check the history.

Immediately after Hamas’s barbaric October 7, 2023, invasion, Netanyahu declared that Israel would seek Hamas’s political and military destruction. This was an entirely legitimate exercise of UN Charter Article 51, which affirms “the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense.”

Jerusalem was not limited to a “proportional” response, something comparable to the Hamas terrorist attack, any more than America was limited to a “proportional” response to Pearl Harbor. States are entitled not merely to repel threats, but to destroy them, as the allies did to Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

Moreover, clear from the outset and becoming clearer by the day as new information emerges, Hamas’s attack was part of Iran’s “ring of fire strategy” against Israel, a strategy implemented by the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Just to remind, “Quds” is an Arabic term for Jerusalem, celebrated on Ramadan’s last day by Palestinians as “Quds Day.” Implementing its “ring” strategy, Tehran created or fostered a chain of terrorist groups: Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Shia militias in Iraq. Bashar al-Assad’s Syria was a key ally.

The anti-Israel strategy unfolded across the Middle East immediately after October 7. From the beginning, Israel saw Gaza as part of a wider war, not merely a discrete conflict. Now far more evident than at the outset, however, is the war’s economic dimension, a critical factor long before October 7.

Iran and other regional states, groups and individuals provided billions of dollars, directly and through international agencies like UNRWA, ostensibly for humanitarian aid. Tragically, however, as we now know, Hamas diverted much of these “humanitarian” resources to build Gaza’s underground fortress of tunnel networks; armed itself to the hilt (including with missile arsenals capable of menacing all Israel); and effectively mobilised most Gazans to serve as human shields for that fortress. If Hamas kept adequate records that can be recovered, the story will embarrass those who enabled this massive fraud, particularly in the West.

Meanwhile, Jerusalem is pursuing its post-October 7 goals, which must include eliminating all potential assets, in cash or in kind, Hamas can use to retain control over Gaza’s population. Working through UNRWA over decades, Hamas seized control over the distribution of virtually all humanitarian supplies entering Gaza. Credible reports (and Hamas records, if recovered) demonstrate how the terrorists rewarded their cadres at the expense of others, using control over the internal distribution of supplies in Gaza to cement their political control.

This pattern is nothing new. After the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein used the UN’s “Oil for Food” programme to gain control over Iraq’s population. As originally conceived, an intrusive UN presence would use Iraq’s oil revenues for humanitarian aid to its people, thus ensuring the non-political delivery of assistance to the truly needy, while also demonstrating to Iraqis that Saddam had effectively lost control of his country. He repeatedly rejected this model, until the Clinton administration conceded that his regime would disburse Oil-for-Food aid. That mistake helped Saddam reinforce his authoritarian grip, repress Kurds and other dissidents, and again threaten his neighbours,

Hamas has thus simply been following Saddam’s plan. Israel, by contrast, has followed principles Herbert Hoover first articulated in World War I when he organised relief programs in Europe, starting in Belgium. Hoover ordered that no aid would go to combatants, and that his volunteers would distribute the aid, or at least rigorously monitor delivery to prevent diversion to combatants.

Hamas scorned Hoover’s principles, and continues to do so. Comments by Starmer, Lammy and others ignore both the reality in Gaza today and Hoover’s wise admonitions about ensuring that relief goes to those who actually need it, not those who use the aid to oppress them.

Israel has a plan to aid Gazans, backed by Washington but opposed by the UN. Instead of criticising Israel, Starmer should support and help perfect Jerusalem’s plan and thereby properly deliver humanitarian assistance.

The only way Gazans can ever be free is to eliminate the curse of Hamas. And because Gaza is part of Iran’s larger war against Israel and the West, that will happen only when Iranians are free of the ayatollahs. That should be our common goal.

This article was first published in The Daily Telegraph on May 26, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

Will Trump Blow Up the National Security Council?

May 19, 2025

President Trump is reportedly considering(https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/rubio-working-major-changes-national-security-council-rcna206658) major alterations to the National Security Advisor’s role and the National Security Council staff. One administration source said(https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/14/politics/rubio-national-security-council-overhaul) the “NSC as we know it is done.” The potential changes center apparently on reducing the staff and its responsibility for developing and coordinating policy formulation, particularly long-range policy, and making it an implementer of Mr. Trump’s directives.

If executed, such changes will affect not merely the staff, but the NSC process itself. Ignoring history’s lessons, reflecting instead Mr. Trump’s aversion to coherent strategy and policy, the proposals would seriously harm both the administration’s already haphazard decision-making process and the president’s ability to manage the enormous foreign-policy, defense, intelligence, and homeland-security bureaucracies. The ultimately critical factor in presidential national-security strategy is judgment, but a properly functioning NSC staff can help provide the necessary information and options foundational to the sound exercise of judgment.

The 1947 National Security Act established the NSC to help presidents get their arms around the new and enlarged departments and agencies required to cope with a complex, menacing international environment, the likes of which we had never before experienced. Because presidents differ in their work habits, the NSC structure was intended to be flexible, varying in size and shape over time. But through often painful lessons in recent decades, until Trump 47, a broad consensus formed over an optimal approach.

Dwight Eisenhower was the first president to pay real attention to NSC staffing, which he structured along lines comparable to his military experience. John Kennedy rebelled against what he saw as excessive rigidity, at least until the Bay of Pigs, the discouraging and intimidating 1961 Vienna summit with Nikita Khrushchev, and the Cuban Missile Crisis convinced him that structure wasn’t so bad after all.

The personalized National Security Advisor roles of Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brezinski in the Nixon/Ford and Carter administration respectively have received enormous attention, but, in between, Brent Scowcroft was building the current NSC model. Scowcroft would perfect the model under George H.W. Bush, confronting Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, the Soviet Union’s collapse, and the start of the post-Cold War era.

Scowcroft devised a system to coordinate and control the flow of decision-making, topped by Cabinet-level NSC meetings chaired by the President; “principals” meetings, also cabinet-level, led by National Security Advisors; “deputies” meetings attended by deputy- and undersecretary-level officials; down to meetings of assistant and even deputy assistant secretaries. Some describe this five-tiered edifice as too bureaucratic, but Bush 41 and others proved it could move as fast and comprehensively as exigent circumstances warranted.

The plan embodied the principal of subsidiarity, with decisions made at the lowest level achievable, with only the most important issues occupying the attention of the president and his top advisors. This system’s substantive outcome was providing the ultimate decision makers with all the pertinent data, the full range of available options, the pros and cons of each, and forward thinking about implementation, counter-moves by adversaries and allies, and possible US responses.

To Scowcroft also goes considerable credit for repairing the NSC after the Iran-Contra crisis, its worst mistake, during which NSC staff became operational. Since then, almost all agree the NSC should coordinate, and implementing departments and agencies should implement. Not all have adhered perfectly to this maxim.

Importantly, the size of the NSC staff is solely a dependent variable. Size follows mission. Setting a staff level before deciding its tasks is backwards. Moreover, comparing current staff levels to prior administrations is inapposite for several reasons. In bygone days, only “professionals,” not “administrative” staff, were counted; Situation Room staffers were sometimes included in NSC numbers, sometimes not; and, pre-9/11, there were almost no “homeland security” staff anywhere in the White House.

On the president personally, Scowcroft ‘s model bestowed one key advantage: creating interagency staff contacts reaching into deep bureaucratic depths gave far greater insight into potential agency agendas and disagreements before they rose to higher levels, thereby reducing the risks of bureaucratic obfuscation and delay. Similarly, presidents today have significantly enhanced capabilities to monitor how their decisions are implemented down below in the operating agencies. A dramatically constrained NSC staff would simply not have such abilities.

Everyone knows presidents make the ultimate decisions. But will they make the best-informed decisions, in widely varying contexts, or will they merely follow their own neuron flashes? The animus now directed at Scowcroft’s system largely emanates from fear of the bureaucracy (“deep state”’ to Trump acolytes). The real question is whether top decision-makers will run the bureaucracy or whether the bureaucracy runs them. If the highest levels fail to drive lower levels, the fault lies more with inadequate top officials who lack knowledge, experience, and resolve.

The NSC system has its faults, but turning its staff into liege-men and -women will not benefit America, or even Donald Trump.

This article was first published in Wall Street Journal on May 19, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

John Bolton: ‘The term chaos is commonly used to describe the top of the Defense Department’

May 07, 2025

The Signal chat group created by US National Security Adviser Mike Waltz to discuss imminent strikes targeting Houthi terrorists in Yemen in March ultimately cost him his job. Waltz’s misjudgment exposed the Trump administration to substantial domestic political criticism at a difficult time and shocked friends and allies of the United States worldwide.

Other errors in judgment continue to be made. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth created his own Signal group chat to discuss the operation in Yemen with, among others, friends and family. Hegseth compounded his mistake by installing Signal on his office computer, demonstrating that he had learned nothing from Waltz’s initial mistake.

Hegseth is familiar with controversies. He has been criticized for inviting or wanting to invite Elon Musk to the Pentagon to inform him of US military plans in the event of a war with China. It is possible that Trump himself canceled this ill-advised meeting.

An outrageously simplistic vision

This episode, combined with other troubles, led to the resignation or firing of five of Hegseth’s aides, whom he had just hired. Hegseth was so concerned by the press leaks that he threatened to subject several high-ranking military officers to a lie detector test, including the acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The term “chaos” is now commonly used to describe what is happening at the top of the Defense Department.

Failures to protect sensitive information and in making critical diplomatic and military decisions exemplify the most severe problems of Trump’s second term. He and most of his senior advisers do not take national security seriously enough.

Trump does not concern himself with political philosophy, grand strategy, or even “policy” as we usually understand the term. His world consists of transactions, one after another, with no connection or relation between them, implemented as if the consequences of one such transaction would not affect the others. This may be the world that Manhattan real estate operates in, which Trump proclaims he has been successful in, but it is no way to run the US government.

Trump sees international affairs as little more than his personal relationships with foreign leaders. In his mind, if he has a good relationship with Vladimir Putin, then the United States and Russia have good relations as states. The reverse is also true. Some readers will undoubtedly be put off by such an incredibly simplistic view of global affairs, but this is indeed Trump’s view, which applies to Chinese President Xi Jinping as well as his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong-un.

How, under these conditions, does Trump deal with “Biden’s war” in Ukraine, which he has consistently said would never have happened had he been president? By sending a close friend, Steve Witkoff – another New York real estate negotiation professional – to meet with Putin, which he has done four times since Trump’s inauguration. Witkoff knows little or nothing about Russia, Ukraine or NATO, but he meets with Putin alone for several hours. The result is a draft agreement so adverse to Western interests, and especially those of Ukraine, that the Kremlin could have written it.

An agreement, period

Neither Washington nor Moscow has officially confirmed the details of the negotiations between Putin and Witkoff, but they reportedly include considerable concessions to Russia, hinted at by JD Vance during the 2024 presidential campaign.

The tentative US plans involve surrendering, at least de facto, all Ukrainian territory Russia currently holds (and perhaps recognizing Moscow’s sovereignty over Crimea) and barring future Ukrainian NATO membership and security guarantees. In Trump’s eyes, these concessions have no impact on the US, and if they trouble European nations, it’s their problem. Trump wants a deal, period.

The recently concluded US-Ukraine minerals deal does not fundamentally change this equation. Ukraine does gain some political advantage from the deal, and any prospect of investment that facilitates reconstruction is welcome, but Russia will not be impressed. Trump’s casual approach to unprovoked Russian aggression, twice in the last 11 years, is simply not the way to repel grave threats to US and Western security.

But this is also true of Trump’s approach to Iran. Having rightly withdrawn from Obama’s ill-advised 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, Trump failed to apply his rhetoric about “maximum pressure” effectively, and the ayatollahs remain in power in Tehran. Currently, his friend Witkoff is negotiating an agreement remarkably similar to the failed 2015 effort.

Witkoff, unsurprisingly, knows nothing about Iran, nuclear weapons, arms control and nonproliferation. On the Iran issue, however, there is apparently real disagreement within Trump’s administration over Witkoff’s uninformed exchanges with Iranians.

Damage control

Many Europeans have taken Trump’s chaotic approach to national security as an opportunity to lay the foundations for a post-American Europe. This would be a serious strategic mistake, undermining chances for a measurable upswing in NATO’s combined political-military capabilities.

The West generally badly misread the Soviet Union’s collapse as effectively reflecting the end of major geopolitical threats, some called it “the end of history.” Defense budgets were slashed dramatically (the so-called “peace dividend”) and have not yet recovered. At least before Trump, Washington had done more to rebound from this illusion than its allies, better understanding the dangers posed by the deepening Chinese-Russian axis, which comes complete with outriders like North Korea, Iran and Belarus, among others.

The threat posed by the Beijing-Moscow alliance will persist for decades if we do not respond effectively. Let us keep in mind that Trump has just under 45 months left. Planning the future as if he were a permanent fixture is as illusory as his attempts to reach an agreement with Russia and Iran. Serious defenders of Western security will instead strive to mitigate his casualness and ignorance of important issues by working to limit the additional damage he could inflict on NATO and international trade before beginning to lay the foundations for a post-Trump world. It can’t come soon enough.

This article was first published in Le Monde on May 6, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

Chaos Is Embedded in Trump’s DNA

May 06, 2025

His pinball-machine style hinges on his advisers’ personal fealty. This will mean more trouble ahead.

Donald Trump’s chaotic national-security governance is in full flood. Whether it’s risking American military operations, making volatile, highly dubious tariff decisions, hiring uninformed senior advisers, or seeing senior government officials dissenting from presidential decisions, the disarray is palpable and likely to spread. It did Thursday, with the ouster of national security adviser Mike Waltz. It doesn’t have to be this way. Not in my experience have emojis been deployed as they were during the inexplicable group chat on Signal. For Mr. Trump, however, chaos is embedded in his DNA and endemic in his team. Consider the recent evidence.

Open debate before a presidential decision is normal and productive. Questioning decisions afterward, even doubting the boss’s judgment, is something else, but apparently not to JD Vance on whether to strike the Houthis: “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now.” Weeks later, Mr. Vance hied himself off to Greenland to denounce Denmark’s administration of that Trump-coveted island. Denmark’s foreign minister metaphorically slapped the administration’s wrist, emphasizing correctly that this is no way to treat close allies. Even congressional Republicans now see the Vance style as a problem. If he gives similar speeches about China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, perhaps we could rest easier.

Mr. Trump’s chaotic management is exemplified by his friend Steve Witkoff, whose portfolio began with Gaza hostages and then absorbed the entire Middle East, including Iran’s nuclear-weapons program and the highest-level U.S. negotiations with senior Iranian officials in years. It expanded to the Russia-Ukraine war, on which Mr. Witkoff meets alone with Vladimir Putin, and now includes crushing the Houthis. Shadow secretary of state? Not bad for someone without diplomatic experience.

Mr. Witkoff has no evident expertise in Russia, Eastern Europe (especially Ukraine), the Middle East, Iran, state-to-state negotiations, nuclear-weapons technology, weapons-of-mass-destruction proliferation, verification of international agreements, or armed conflict. His Ukraine cease-fire work verges on collapse. He acts at Mr. Trump’s direct behest, and his connection to Secretary of State Marco Rubio is unclear. Mr. Witkoff’s access could be ideal to introduce Mr. Trump to reality, but both men succumb all too readily to Russian propaganda, as these pages have shown.

This article was first published in the Wall Street Journal on May 2, 2025. Click here to read the rest of the article.

Putin certainly sees Trump as an easy mark

April 29, 2025

Judging a US president’s first hundred days began with Franklin Roosevelt. For Donald Trump, however, certainly on national-security issues, comparison to Napoleon’s hundred-days campaign may be more apt, ending as it did in disaster for both the emperor and France.

Trump’s indifference to Ukraine and his conciliatory approach toward Russia are only one of several shocks to trans-Atlantic relations. Disdain for NATO and the ever-present specter of US withdrawal, or even substantial disengagement, like renouncing the supreme European command, are also dangerous. Combined with Trump’s chaotic, incoherent, economically illiterate trade decisions, there is reason to despair.

The good news, such as it is: Trump is not pursuing a grand strategy, or even “policy” as we normally understand that word. He sees everything transactionally, through the prism of personal ties, and how he benefits from them, politically or economically. If he and Vladimir Putin have good rapport, he believes America and Russia have good state-to-state relations. This is not unique to Putin. Trump said about North Korea’s Kim Jung Un: “We fell in love.”

Putin certainly sees Trump as an easy mark, not a friend, manipulating him on Ukraine, for example, by agreeing that Trump was correct to say that the Ukraine war would not have happened had he been president. Putin then released a US hostage, followed by Belarus also doing so, always a winner with Trump. Moscow has just recently exchanged yet another US citizen, even as Russia has been slow-rolling cease-fire negotiations. This is not about a Trump strategy, but about his susceptibility to flattery and exploitation.

Trump is an aberration in American politics, someone entirely absorbed with himself. That he has been elected twice says more about his opponents’ weaknesses than voter devotion to Trump personally, or his actions as president. His public support is dropping and will drop significantly more if his newly launched trade wars cause an economic downtown. Republicans in Congress are finally beginning to distance themselves from Trump and will steer further away as the 2026 elections approach. Democrats, by contrast, still have not regained a pulse since last November’s election.

The answer is not to panic or do things that give Trump further excuses to quit Europe. During the Cold War, Soviet leaders sought to split the Atlantic alliance. Their failure to do so contributed significantly to Moscow’s defeat. This is not the time for us to do to ourselves what the Kremlin could not.

This article was first published in Atlantik-Bruecke on April 29, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

Ukraine, Trump and the Middle East

April 22, 2025

Donald Trump’s jarring Oval Office confrontation with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky symbolizes what is wrong with Trump’s dysfunctional approach to foreign policy. In what seemed like a television comedy show, Trump accused Zelensky of everything from risking World War III to having no cards to play in defending his homeland from Russia’s unprovoked aggression. Trump then kicked Zelensky out of the West Wing without even providing lunch.

Most American children are raised to be more polite to their guests. The real meaning of the Oval Office debacle, however, does not turn on who committed the worst breaches of etiquette. Instead, Trump’s evident hostility toward Zelensky reflected the reversal of America’s position in the Russo-Ukrainian war, from supporting Ukraine to effectively supporting Russia. Recent US history provides nothing remotely comparable to Trump’s about-face.

Trump, of course, contends he is merely seeking peace to stop what he called in his State of the Union address the “senseless” war in Europe’s center. Of course, neither Russia nor Ukraine consider the war “senseless,” albeit for very different reasons. The Kremlin is fighting to recreate the Russian empire, a goal Putin announced as far back as 2005, whereas Ukraine is defending its freedom and independence. Americans once fought for freedom and independence, and certainly didn’t consider it “senseless.”

What explains Trump’s emphasis on rapidly ending the conflict, and his sympathy for Moscow? He has frequently said that if he has good personal relations with a foreign head of state, then America has good relations with that leader’s country. Conversely, if his personal relations with a foreign leader are bad, then US relations with his country are bad. Personal relations have a place in international affairs, as in all things, but they are not decisive factors in national-security decision-making, especially for the world’s hard men like Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, or North Korea’s Kim Jung Un. These authoritarians are cold-blooded and clear-eyed in knowing what their national interest are, and they pursue those interests unhesitatingly.

Trump, by contrast, pursues his personal interest. He thinks Putin, Xi, and Kim are his friends, even saying(https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/we-fell-in-love-trump-and-kim-shower-praise-stroke-egos-on-path-to-nuclear-negotiations/2019/02/24/46875188-3777-11e9-854a-7a14d7fec96a_story.html) he and Kim “fell in love.” In the case of Ukraine, that explains Trump’s tilt toward Putin and against Zelensky: Trump wants the war, which he considers Biden’s responsibility, behind him so that Moscow-Washington relations will improve. During the 2024 campaign, Trump said repeatedly that the war would never have begun had he been President.

Based on my own observations, Putin, reflecting his KGB training and skills, does not think he and Trump are friends. Rather, Trump is an easy mark, to be manipulated to achieve Moscow’s objectives. In short, the Kremlin sees Trump as what Vladimir Lenin once called a “useful idiot,” meaning he can be made to serve Russian purposes without realizing what he is doing. As part of his ongoing manipulation, Putin recently agreed the war in Ukraine would not have occurred under a Trump presidency(https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/24/world/putin-trump-ukraine-crisis-talks-intl/index.html).

Putin continued the manipulation by releasing Marc Foley, an American hostage held in Moscow, followed by Belarus releasing another US hostage, and much more. The game continues, as reflected by Putin’s conditional acceptance of the Saudi-brokered cease-fire between Washington and Kyiv. Putin doesn’t want to endanger the concessions Trump has already made to him, so he carefully accepted the cease-fire in principle, only to obscure it with conditions and modifications. Despite this carefully muddled answer, Trump was enthusiastic, saying it was “very good and productive(https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/russia-calls-for-trump-putin-talks-on-ukraine-war-4dd35ede).” The Kremlin must have celebrated its success.

What does Trump himself want? He wants the Nobel Peace Prize. After all, Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel for no particular reason, just months after assuming office. Under Nobel’s prize rules, nominations for a given year must be submitted by January 31 of that year(https://www.nobelpeaceprize.org/nobel-peace-prize/nomination/), meaning Obama’s nominations had to be received eleven days after his Inauguration, making the award laughable. Trump may not realize it is already too late for him to win this year, but he still craves the faded glory of a Nobel prize.

The likely next step on Ukraine is direct Trump-Putin talks, which Trump clearly wants as soon as possible. Putin also wants direct negotiations because it provides an opportunity to manipulate Trump directly, rather than through intermediaries. Moreover, by definition, their conversation would exclude Ukraine and the Europeans from the real dealmaking, which won’t bother Trump as all. While there is no certainty to the outcome of this coming conversation, all signs point to a result heavily skewed in Moscow’s favor.

The lesson for the Middle East goes straight to the question, how to deal with Trump? He is not pursuing some American grand strategy or playing sophisticated three-dimensional chess. He is pursuing a Trump-centric strategy in two dimensions, one move at a time. Keep that in mind, pile on some personal flattery of Trump, add pomp and circumstance, and who knows what Trump will be prepared to give away?

This article was first published in Independent Arabia on March 17, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

What Next After Rome?

April 22, 2025

No one was more surprised than Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu when he learned of Donald Trump’s intention to reopen negotiations with Iran over its nuclear-weapons program. At an April 7 meeting in Washington, Netanyahu almost certainly expected to move forward on plans for a potential Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs, perhaps together with the United States. There were, of course, other issues on the agenda, particularly Trump’s tariff war with friends and foes alike, but Iran’s existential nuclear threat to Israel was the most pressing.

Trump rebuffed Netanyahu (https://apnews.com/article/trump-netanyahu-tariffs-iran-gaza-9aaf17d50beb5a5891895a702a1bac5d) according to multiple press accounts. Neither the first nor the second negotiations, on April 12 and 19, produced any visible progress, although the sides agreed to reconvene on April 26, preceded by “technical-level” talks. Trump would do well to remember one of baseball’s most important rules: three strikes and you’re out.

Iran’s unrelenting efforts to acquire deliverable nuclear weapons, and the extraordinary threat posed thereby, make the logic of preventative destruction of its capabilities unarguable to Netanyahu and many others, Israeli and American alike. With good reason, therefore, Israel believed that Trump would agree that destroying Iran’s nuclear program was entirely justifiable.

No one could say Israel was acting hastily or rashly. For three decades, Iran has pursued deliverable nuclear weapons, and the threat has grown with time. Nothing has changed the mullahs’ strategic decision to achieve that goal, not diplomacy, not economic sanctions, and not mere threats of using force. Iran’s progress on both the nuclear and missile fronts has been clear and dangerous, and the need to decide whether to use military force, already long overdue, is increasingly apparent.

What the outside world knows about Iran’s capabilities, frightening though it is, must also be weighed against what we do not know because of inadequate intelligence and international oversight. Tehran has consistently obstructed the International Atomic Energy Agency, barring its inspectors from key military facilities undertaking the critical weaponization work on nuclear arms. Moreover, Iran could be even closer to achieving nuclear weapons than suspected because of its cooperation with North Korea. exemplified by the North’s construction of Iran’s Dair Alzour reactor in Syria, destroyed by Israel in 2007. Pakistani nuclear proliferator A.Q. Khan supplied both Tehran and Pyongyang their initial uranium-enrichment and weapons-design plans. Thus, what we detect in Iran could be merely a part of its nuclear program, with subcontracted facilities buried undetected in North Korea.

Accordingly, for Israel, the key question is not if it should strike Iran’s nuclear program, but when, and whether it would strike alone or with the United States. Viewed strategically, Washington has every justification to take military action against Tehran’s proliferation efforts. Iran’s nuclear threat is not a problem merely for Israel, but for the entire world. For thirty years, the ayatollahs have sought to become a nuclear power, to the detriment of everyone else. America has the wherewithal to eliminate this proliferation threat, and would be politically and morally justified in doing so. Helping Israel de-fang Iran follows quite logically.

Trump may not have the resolve or character required to make this difficult decision. Reports indicate deep splits(https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/us/politics/trump-israel-iran-nuclear.html?searchResultPosition=1) within his administration over using force against Iran, with several of its least competent senior officials arguing against doing so. Fortunately, however, while a combined US-Israeli strike would be more likely to achieve total success, Washington’s participation is not a necessity. Israel’s own forces can destroy or at least substantially cripple Iran’s program far into the future, albeit with some subsequent maintenance work from time to time. Moreover, if Israel is prepared to act, it should not seek merely a partial destruction of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, but its entirety. There may not be a better time than now.

What the ayatollahs will really fear after Israeli strikes, with or without US participation, is the reaction of Iran’s people. Tehran’s ayatollahs have lost enormous power in the Middle East and are urgently trying to rebuild their network of terrorist proxies even while trying to shore up the regime domestically. Assad’s fall in Syria, added to the defeats Israel has inflicted on Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis since October 7, has produced significant finger-pointing and recrimination inside Iran(https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/world/middleeast/iran-syria-assad.html).

The very foundations of the 1979 revolution are now severely weakened. Losing the nuclear program could be the spark that ignites Iran’s people, at long last, to rise against the regime and fragment its top leadership. The ayatollahs desperately need relief from Israel’s punishing military assaults and from international economic sanctions. Entering lengthy negotiations with Washington would give them a lifeline.

For those who oppose the world’s most dangerous nations possessing the world’s most destructive weapons, this is not a time, as Lady Thatcher once advised, to go wobbly. End the fruitless discussions with Tehran, and do what is necessary to safeguard the world from a nuclear Iran.

This article was first published in the Independent Arabia on April 22, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

Essential

His pinball-machine style hinges on his advisers’ personal fealty. This will mean more trouble ahead.