One of the major disappointments at the end of the first five months of Donald Trump’s second term as president has been the lack of progress towards the peaceful resolution of a number of major international conflicts that Trump had promised to negotiate during his presidential campaign last year. Despite Trump’s vigorous efforts, after an encouraging start, he has been unable to fulfill his ambitious promises. These include: bringing an end to the fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza while securing the release of the remaining hostages who were taken during Hamas October 7 attack; stopping the war of attrition in Ukraine which has been taking a terrible toll of roughly 5,000 soldiers killed each week, but resulting in little movement on the battlefield; and preventing the radical Shiite Islamic regime in Iran, once and for all, from crossing the threshold to becoming a nuclear weapons-capable threat to the existence of Israel and the stability of the entire Middle East region.
But after the past few months of stalled Trump-led negotiations to bring an end to all three conflicts, this past week has seen the emergence of much more encouraging signs that the stalemates may soon be broken.
The most promising development was, after months of growing signs of tension developing between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Binyomin Netanyahu, the announcement that the two leaders had held a friendly and productive 40-minute-long phone call, shortly after Iran announced that it would soon respond to Trump’s latest proposal for finally bringing an end to its dangerous efforts to produce near weapons-quality enriched uranium.
TRUMP AND NETANYAHU BACK ON FRIENDLY SPEAKING TERMS
An encouraging statement issued by Netanyahu’s office shortly after their conversation was completed last Monday night, June 9, declared that “President Trump told the Prime Minister that the United States has presented a reasonable proposal to Iran and is expected to receive its response in the coming days.” It also stated that Trump had informed Netanyahu “that he plans to hold another round of talks with Iran over the weekend.” In addition, the statement implied that after a reported disagreement between Trump and Netanyahu last month over whether Israel should launch a preventive strike against Iran’s nuclear program, the two leaders were, once again, on the same page and presenting a united front against Iran’s nuclear ambitions by insisting that it abandon its dangerous uranium enrichment activities.
While the statement from Netanyahu’s office revealed no specific details of their conversation, in comments to White House reporters, Trump said that their phone call had gone “very well” and covered a variety of issues, including their agreement on the position the U.S. would be taking during the next session of its nuclear negotiations with Iran, scheduled for Thursday, June 12.
Meanwhile, Reuters reported that a spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry said that the “next round of Iran–U.S. indirect negotiations was being planned for next Sunday in Muscat,” the capital of Oman, and offered no explanation for the apparent discrepancy with Trump’s statement that the meeting would take place on Thursday.
TRUMP DEMANDING THAT IRAN GIVE UP URANIUM ENRICHMENT
In a statement that Trump made on Friday, June 6, he made it clear that as part of any new agreement between Iran and the U.S., he is insisting that Iran must also give its uranium enrichment activities, which have already produced enough 60%-pure U-235 highly enriched uranium for Iran to build as many as 10 nuclear weapons. “They won’t be enriching,” Trump declared flatly. He then added that, “if they [Iran do continue to] enrich, then we’re going to have to do it [stop them] the other way, [meaning militarily].”
In other words, Trump was implying that if Iran does not agree to his demand that it stop the enrichment of uranium, he would give Netanyahu the green light that he has requested for a pre-emptive Israeli strike, with U.S. cooperation, to destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure before it crosses that last threshold.
Trump’s latest statements clearly stating his agreement with Israel in opposition to any continuation of Iran’s uranium enrichment efforts, stands in contrast to Trump’s statements when the latest round of negotiations with Iran began earlier this year which indicated that he might be willing to permit Iran to continue the same 3.67 percent low level of enrichment that was permitted under the 2015 Obama-era nuclear agreement with Iran.
But more recently, Trump said that he has decided that Iran must not continue to be the only non-nuclear-armed country in the world permitted to keep enriching uranium on its soil.
Trump also reportedly said that Netanyahu’s prior request, that the U.S. join with Israel in attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities, was “inappropriate” as long as negotiations for a new nuclear deal with Iran are still in progress. In response, according to an Axios news report, Netanyahu had assured Trump that Israel would not launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran until Trump agreed that his efforts to negotiate a new nuclear deal with Iran had finally failed.
However, according to another media report, during an angry phone call between the two leaders in late May, Trump had warned Netanyahu against Israel doing anything that might jeopardize his nuclear negotiations with Iran.
In further comments Monday to reporters at the end of a White House economic event with business and Wall Street leaders, Trump said that Iran is “just asking for things that you can’t do. They don’t want to give up what they have to give up. You know what that is: They seek [to continue uranium] enrichment.”
IRAN ALREADY HAS ENOUGH ENRICHED URANIUM FOR 10 BOMBS
In an interview with Israel’s i24 News channel, Rafael Grossi, the head of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been monitoring Iran’s compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal, has warned that any attack by Israel on Iran’s nuclear program would be counterproductive. That is because such an attack would likely prompt Iran to immediately abandon its compliance with the international nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. “I’m telling you this because they have told me,” Grossi emphasized.
He was also deeply skeptical that any such Israeli attack would succeed in crippling Iran’s nuclear facilities. “[Iran’s] program runs wide and deep,” Grossi said. “And when I say deep, I know what I’m saying. So many of these facilities are extremely well-protected. This would require a very, very devastating force to affect it.”
Meanwhile, Iran has flatly rejected an American offer through Trump’s chief negotiator, Steve Witkoff, that would have permitted it to continue to enrich uranium at low levels until a new international consortium, which would include Iran and other Arab states, would begin manufacturing civilian nuclear reactor fuel outside of Iranian territory. This would be for use in Iran’s electric power reactor in the town of Buhsher and reactors in various other countries around the Middle East.
While refusing to provide further details on Iran’s response, Trump said, “They have given us their thoughts on the deal, and I said, you know, it’s just not acceptable.” He also added, “We can’t have enrichment. We want just the opposite, and so far, they’re not there. I hate to say that, because the [military] alternative is a very, very dire one.”
TRUMP REVEALS IRAN’S INVOLVEMENT IN THE GAZA CEASEFIRE TALKS
In a related but still unexplained development, President Trump told reporters last Monday, in response to a question about the stalled Gaza ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas, that “even Iran actually is involved” somehow in those negotiations, and then Trump added, cryptically, “We’ll see what’s going to happen with Gaza. We want to get the hostages back. That’s all I can say.”
While Trump’s latest comments adds yet another layer of complexity to the diplomatic situation facing the U.S. and Israel by tying Iran somehow to the Gaza ceasefire and hostage release negotiations, Hamas’ remaining leadership has continued to insist that Israel must allow it to survive intact by ending the war in Gaza permanently before Hamas agrees to release any more of its remaining October 7 hostages, both alive and dead.
Hamas has also rejected the latest proposal from Trump’s chief negotiator, Witkoff, which was submitted on May 29. It calls for the release of 10 [roughly half] of the still-living hostages and the bodies of 18 dead hostages during the first week of a new 60-day ceasefire in Gaza, in return for Israel’s release of 125 Hamas prisoners from Israeli prisons, and more than 1,100 post-October 7 Gaza detainees. During the new ceasefire, IDF forces in Gaza would be redeployed, the flow of humanitarian aid for Gaza’s civilian population would resume, and negotiations with Israel would start on an agreement to permanently end the fighting with Hamas.
HAMAS IS MAKING DEMANDS IT KNOWS ISRAEL CAN’T ACCEPT
While Hamas claims that it has accepted Witkoff’s offer in principle, it has also demanded modifications to the offer that both the U.S. and Israel have deemed to be unacceptable. Hamas is demanding a guaranteed end to the Israeli war to eliminate it from Gaza, and a drawn-out, piecemeal release of the remaining October 7 hostages, further prolonging their suffering and the suffering of their families.
In its latest statement, surviving Hamas leaders said, “Israel’s escalating military operations [in Gaza] are worsening its losses and pushing its captives into the unknown. The only solution is a comprehensive deal, which Netanyahu refuses.”
While it came as no surprise that Prime Minister Netanyahu rejected the Hamas reaction to his proposal as “totally unacceptable,” Trump chief negotiator Witkoff was fully supportive of the Israeli position, and virtually repeated Netanyahu’s response by declaring that the Hamas response “only takes us backward.”
Meanwhile, Israel is continuing to pursue a much more aggressive military strategy to conquer and permanently occupy large portions of Gaza, while at the same time taking direct control over the distribution of humanitarian aid to Gaza away from the non-governmental organizations that have permitted Hamas to effectively hijack the shipments. This is an effort to break a key element of Hamas’ remaining hold over Gaza’s civilian population.
ISRAEL’S STEPPED-UP ASSAULT ON HAMAS IN GAZA
The mission of the five Israeli divisions involved in the IDF’s Operation Gideon’s Chariot is clear: Destroy Hamas as a military force and governing power in Gaza by systematically dismantling Hamas’ remaining strongholds. The goal of its coordinated clear-and-hold operations across Gaza is to permanently deny Hamas the ability to reconstitute militarily or politically.
During Israel’s combat operations in Gaza over more than a year and a half since the October 7 attack, it had already destroyed most of Hamas’ organized battalions and badly damaged its command structure. Now that it has also lost its previous stranglehold over food distribution in Gaza to the U.S. and Israel-sponsored Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, Hamas’ ability to maintain control over the civilian population is slipping.
Now that Israel is arming Gaza’s independent clans, the remnants of Hamas have also lost their monopoly on the use of force and terror, which it has used since 2007 to keep the rest of Gaza’s population under control. That said, by empowering Gaza’s lawless clans, Israel is taking a calculated risk. It is not a high-minded attempt at Palestinian nation-building. Rather, it is a pragmatic strategy aimed at finally bringing to an end Gaza’s security threat to Israel, 20 years after Ariel Sharon’s Gaza disengagement gambit failed because it did not provide a substitute governing force dedicated to maintaining the peace.
ISRAEL’S NEW TECHNIQUES TO DESTROY HAMAS TUNNELS IN GAZA
Another critical new element of IDF’s Operation Gideon’s Chariot is a sophisticated effort, using improved intelligence techniques and new drone technology developed on the battlefields of Ukraine to reveal, penetrate, and destroy the main arteries of Hamas’ vast network of underground tunnels crisscrossing Gaza. It replaces the IDF’s previous tactics, which tried but failed to destroy the network by attacking one tunnel at a time.
As of this April, after a year and a half of fighting, an estimated 75% of Hamas’ tunnel network was still in operation, providing storage for Hamas weapons, fully equipped command posts for its leaders, living quarters for its fighters, and a vast choice of underground escape routes in response to IDF attacks. In addition, Hamas had been able to systematically repair many of the tunnels that Israel had destroyed, as well as dig new ones.
But according to a report by Israel Hayom reporter Neta Bar on a press tour of Gaza, just three weeks after the start of Operation Gideon’s Chariot, the commander of one of the IDF’s Armored Brigades fighting in Gaza boasted, “Today we have a far greater ability to destroy Hamas’ tunnel systems in Khan Younis than in previous operations. Thanks to various intelligence assets and data collected and analyzed over months from earlier incursions, we now have capabilities we didn’t have before. We’ve managed to strike and eliminate many terrorists inside the tunnels, and confirm it. Many others are hiding there, and we’ll get to them too,” he confidently predicted.
Another IDF commander in the same area added that for the past three weeks, his forces have been taking “highly strategic underground assets away from Hamas… [and] consolidating control to prevent enemy forces from re-entering this area.”
KEEPING HAMAS FROM COMING BACK AGAIN
The IDF’s goal this time is not only to find and defeat Hamas’ remaining forces in its Gaza strongholds, such as Khan Younis, but also to maintain enough of a presence, once the fighting in each area is over, to prevent Hamas from returning and regaining control over the local population.
So far, the new IDF strategy to undermine Hamas’ continuing control over Gaza seems to be working, despite the growing political pressure on Prime Minister Netanyahu from the desperate families of the hostages remaining in Gaza to pay any price for their release, even if that means leaving the remnants of Hamas still in place and preparing to launch another devastating October 7-type attack.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has also confirmed media reports that Israel is now providing small arms to several clans across Gaza to directly challenge Hamas’ local authority.
While former Israeli defense minister Avigdor Lieberman and other members of the Knesset opposition to Netanyahu’s government have called the move dangerous and reckless, the tactic is not a new one. It was used successfully by the American armed forces, which armed local gang leaders and tribal groups in 2008 while they were occupying Iraq, in order to challenge the authority and fight back against al-Qaeda and Iranian-supported terrorists who were attacking U.S. troops with roadside bombs.
The same tactic, arming local warlords and tribes, was also used by the U.S. and its coalition partners during the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan to challenge the Taliban. And especially during World War II, the U.S. and its allies armed a broad range of resistance fighters from unsavory backgrounds, including communist militias, to lead the resistance and fight the Nazis across occupied Europe.
U.S. ENVOY HUCKABEE ASKS CHAREIDI POLITICIANS FOR PATIENCE
Meanwhile, a political crisis threatening the continuation of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s right-wing government has been playing out in the Knesset. His Likud-led coalition’s failure to pass long-promised legislation to prevent tens of thousands of chareidi yeshiva students in Israel from being forced into military service has prompted the leadership of both chareidi political parties, Shas and UTJ (United Torah Judaism), to threaten to dissolve the Knesset immediately, bringing down the current government.
In an effort to prevent the disruption of Netanyahu’s government at this delicate time, the Trump-appointed U.S. ambassador to Israel, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, has taken an unprecedented initiative by meeting privately with all of the political leaders of Shas and UTJ in order to plead with them for patience to enable the Netanyahu government to remain in power while the current U.S.-led negotiations with Iran and Hamas play out to their conclusions.
According to Israeli media reports, Huckabee has been arguing that if new elections were to be called now, it would become much more difficult for the Trump administration to maintain its current level of support for Israel and continue its efforts to negotiate a peaceful solution to the Iran nuclear threat and avoid the need for the U.S. and Israel to stage a pre-emptive attack on Iran.
Huckabee has also reportedly said that Israel’s continued “government stability is important for addressing the Iranian issue, and that early elections would be a mistake,” and that it would be very much in Israel’s best interests “not to break up the government” now.
Netanyahu has been very much aware of Huckabee’s efforts to preserve his government, and the prime minister has been trying to support them by making similar arguments to various members of the Knesset. According to a Channel 12 news report, Netanyahu has been telling the MKs, “We are in a dramatic period. There are extraordinary challenges on the table. This is a historic window of opportunity that will not return, and therefore, under no circumstances should the foundations of the government be shaken.”
On the other hand, Yair Lapid, the leader of the Knesset’s Opposition, has responded to media reports of Huckabee’s efforts to sustain the Netanyahu coalition with very cautious criticism. Lapid wrote in a tweet, “Since I have no doubt that Ambassador Huckabee respects Israel’s independence and its democracy, I hope and believe that the report that he is interfering in Israel’s internal politics by trying to help Netanyahu [deal with] the chareidi military draft exemption law crisis is not true. Israel is not a [U.S.] protectorate.”
TRUMP’S EFFORTS TO HALT FIGHTING IN UKRAINE STALLED BY PUTIN
Finally, the other war that Trump has been unable to stop, the continuation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is killing an estimated total of 5,000 soldiers from both sides per week, remains stalemated both on the battlefield and at the negotiating table.
Ever since Vladimir Putin rejected Trump’s public offer to make a side trip to Turkey on his way home from his visit last month to the Middle East, to personally participate in talks to reach a 30-day ceasefire to stop the killing in Ukraine, Trump has reportedly grown much more impatient with the Russian dictator, and is now talking about giving up on his efforts to push for an immediate halt to the fighting.
Meanwhile, Russian forces on the ground in Ukraine continue to make slow territorial gains, but at a tremendous cost in terms of the casualties suffered by their soldiers and the destruction of vast amounts of Russian military equipment. According to a newly published analysis by Seth Jones and Riley McCabe, of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, Russian casualties in Ukraine are about to exceed a total of 1 million killed or wounded soldiers. Not only is that figure more than double the estimates for Ukraine’s total casualties since the war began, put in historical context, Russian fatalities in Ukraine over the past three years are now five times higher than the total number of Russians killed in all of the other wars Russia and the Soviet Union have fought since the end of World War II, including the extended wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya.
In addition to the human casualties, Putin’s war of attrition in Ukraine has almost wiped out the vast stockpiles of military equipment that Russia has been accumulating since the end of World War II. Russia’s losses include almost 11,000 Russian tanks, 22,000 armored fighting vehicles, almost 29,000 artillery pieces, 413 Russian aircraft, 337 helicopters, 28 naval ships and boats, and almost 40,000 drones.
THE HIGH COSTS OF RUSSIA’S SMALL GAINS IN UKRAINE
Yet in exchange for these stunning costs, the pace of Russia’s territorial gains in Ukraine has slowed to a crawl. Since January 2024, Russia has conquered less than 1 percent of Ukraine’s territory. Compared to roughly 20% of Ukraine’s territory, which Russia conquered during the first five weeks of the war.
Yet despite the huge human and material costs that Russia has incurred since the invasion started, Russian President Vladimir Putin still claims that he is winning the war and demanding that Ukraine give up large swaths of its territory that it still controls in exchange for Putin’s agreement to end the fighting.
Russia has also suffered tremendous economic and strategic costs since Putin made the decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022. In light of that invasion, the U.S. and its European allies have imposed harsh sanctions on Russia’s energy exports, while Russia’s northern European neighbors, Sweden and Finland, have decided to abandon their traditional neutrality and join the NATO alliance. Meanwhile, several other NATO member states have sharply increased their defense spending as a hedge against the threat of a Putin decision to invade yet another one of Russia’s neighbors.
Ukraine’s military has also been extremely creative in devising ways to minimize its combat casualties, in sharp contrast to Putin’s callous disregard for the lives of Russia’s soldiers.
While Russia has managed to maintain the level of its attacks on Ukraine despite its huge losses, it is now beginning to see the end of its reserves of both manpower and weaponry, which could become critical if the war continues beyond the end of this year.
In light of this trend, Jones and McCabe, the CSIS experts, suggest, “The Kremlin’s main hope to win on the battlefield is for the United States to cut off aid to Ukraine and walk away from the conflict.” They also note that “Russia has some advantages [over Ukraine] in population size and industrial mobilization… [but] it also has at least two vulnerabilities that [Ukraine’s allies] the United States and Europe could better exploit…”
RUSSIA’S GROWING VULNERABILITIES
“The first is Russia’s economy. Russia is grappling with stubborn inflation, labor shortages, and limited paths to economic growth.” Jones and McCabe also note that Russia’s heavy dependence on its oil and gas exports makes it vulnerable to further increases in U.S. and European sanctions.
Putin’s second vulnerability is the potential erosion of his domestic Russian political support due to the tremendous number of casualties that Russia has already suffered, and which will become steadily greater as long as the current level of fighting continues.
As a result, Jones and McCabe conclude that the longer the war continues, the more vulnerable Putin’s position becomes. That is especially true if President Trump decides to continue America’s military support for Ukraine, or if Ukraine’s NATO European allies continue to replace any reduction in American aid.
For the time being, President Trump has indicated that he is stepping aside and waiting for the high cost of Russia’s war of attrition to wear down Putin’s will to keep the invasion going. At that point, if Trump decides to try again, he could wind up keeping his presidential campaign peacemaking promises after all.
