Peloni: Is there a Trump Mideast Shift?
President Donald Trump attends a FIFA Task Force meeting, Tuesday, May 6, 2025, in the East Room. (By The White House – Flikr, Public Domain)
Is the Trump administration leaving Israel behind? That’s the impression one gets from recent news stories.
Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy to the whole entire world, has been leaking to media and then commenting on his own leaks to the media. It’s a monologue billed as a conversation. And it has some Israelis worried.
According to Israel’s Channel 12, Witkoff is leveraging the hostage families as a political cudgel against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “If until now the hostages have paid the price for the war not ending, today the price will be much heavier for Israel, and not just for the hostages,” he reportedly told the families. “President Trump is determined to move forward toward a significant deal with Saudi Arabia, even without Israeli involvement.”
Follow-up reporting from Haaretz found Witkoff debating with himself publicly: “The source told Haaretz that Witkoff’s criticism of the Israeli government was leaked at his request. Witkoff’s office denied that the administration is pressuring Israel to reach a deal.” So Witkoff is criticizing Israel, then making sure that criticism gets out to the press, then denying that he’s criticizing them at all. If Witkoff himself is also Haaretz’s source, he will have accomplished the rare feat of putting together a new Mideast Quartet consisting entirely of Steve Witkoff.
While we let the Steves work this out, we should note that this all came in the wake of President Trump declaring a unilateral-ish cease-fire with the Iran-backed Houthis. “They’ve announced to us at least that they don’t want to fight anymore,” he said, seemingly out of nowhere. “They just don’t want to fight, and we will honor that.” The Houthis “capitulated” and the Trump administration “will take their word. They say they will not be blowing up ships anymore.”
The truce, if it exists, appears to cover U.S. targets only. Today, the Houthis resumed their fire at Israel, though the missile was shot down by Israeli air defenses.
What has changed about the proposed U.S.-Saudi deal is unclear as well. The administration wants Israel to think it will no longer require Saudi recognition of Israel in return for a U.S.-aided civilian nuclear-power program. But the wording in the initial Reuters report is vague: “The United States is no longer demanding Saudi Arabia normalize ties with Israel as a condition for progress on civil nuclear cooperation talks, two sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit next week.”
Now come two more reports of muddled messaging, throwing even more confusion into the air right before Trump travels to the Mideast. Trump has talked tough about the prospect of an Iranian nuclear deal, all but saying that if a deal fails, the U.S. will do with force and fire what Iran won’t do on its own: dismantle its illicit program. After Witkoff initially seemed open to letting Iran enrich its own uranium (up to a point), which would reproduce one of the flaws of Obama-era policy, he backtracked. Secretary of State Marco Rubio echoed the backtrack: No enrichment should be allowed, none. On Tuesday, Trump reiterated that if Iran insists on trying to obtain a nuke, “it’s going to be a very sad thing, and it’s something we don’t want to have to do but we have no choice: they’re not going to have a nuclear weapon.”
But on Wednesday, when the president was asked if Iran could still have a civilian nuclear enrichment program, he responded: “We haven’t made that decision yet.”
And now the Wall Street Journal reports that nobody actually believes Trump’s declaration of a cease-fire with the Houthis: “We are not going back any time soon,” said Nils Haupt, a spokesman for a major German liner. “It’s a good development, but it needs a lot of security guarantees for the Red Sea to be considered safe for big merchant ships.” The Journal adds that the agreement “makes no clear mention of ending attacks on commercial shipping.”
President Trump’s upcoming trip to the Middle East is shaping up to look a lot like Obama’s notorious 2009 “apology tour” during which Obama reached out to the Arab and Muslim world, but skipped Israel!
If Trump continues down this dead end track laid by his inexperienced, Qatar-compromised envoy, Steve Witkoff, Israel will have no choice but to go it alone against the imminent, existential threat of a nuclear-armed Iran and proceed apace with its plans to win a decisive victory over Hamas!
Israel’s continued existence is too important to be left to the whims of Witkoff, Trump, or an international community totally insensitive to the fate of Israel and the Jewish people!
anything published by msm is quarter truth and 4 quarter lies.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/trump-is-stumbling-into-a-catastrophic-diplomatic-error/ar-AA1EwU9P?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=HCTS&cvid=0642de462b4d4ed7a304cdeb54a5c06a&ei=18 Yes, there is a shift, and its for the worse, not the better. Read this article by someone named Stephen Pollard. I haveno idea whether or not he is related to Jonathan Pollard. Be that as it may, this pollard accurately describes Trump’s tilt towards th Iranian mullahs and away from Israel. Trump has offered Iran a sweetheart deal that is eve more favorable to the mullahs than the Obama=Biden deal. He will let them keep their enriched uranium at nearly the degree of enrichment needed to make nuclear weapons. No restrictions on Iranian missiles, which can reach not only Israel but Europe. He has forced Israel to withdraw from Lebanon’s Hesbollah territory and hand it over to the Lebanes army, which is run by Hezbollah. He has proposed a settlement of the Gaza war that would hand the territory back to Hamas, Islamic Jihad and company once the hostages are released, He has made a deal for a truce with the Houthis that does not include Israel. Apparently he is under the influence of his chief negotiator, Steve Witkpff. And Witkoff appears to be a truly horrible influence.