Trump in the Middle East

We do not yet know the full impact of the Trump presidency on the situation in the Middle East. At the least, we are confident that it cannot get any worse.

Now, Alan Dershowitz, former Democrat, has written an essay explaining that the injection of Trump in the chaos will most likely calm things down and set the region on a far better path.

Dershowitz explained:

Unlike President Biden, who demanded caution from Israel in exchange for providing arms, Trump seems to be sending a message that he will support Israel’s policy of preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons, even if that requires military action. He will also reimpose painful sanctions on Iran if it continues its march toward a nuclear arsenal.

Biden’s most significant mistake was the cowardly failure to take sides in the conflict between Israel and Iranian proxies.  He seemed to want to find some kind of equivalence between the two, thus encouraging Hamas to continue fighting.

If you want to know why Hamas continues to fight, the reason might be that they had Biden on their side.

As opposed to the dimwitted Tommy Friedman, who has been trying to blame it all on the Israeli Prime Minister, Deshowitz explains clearly that peace requires a strong approach to Iran.

In the end, the only sure path to peace in the Middle East is regime change in Iran and dismantling its terrorist proxies. If anyone can accomplish this difficult goal, it would be President Trump. The vast majority of Iranians despise the mullahs and would welcome some form of democracy. Most Iranians are pro-American, and many are even pro-Israel. But they have no say in the policies of the government, and especially the Revolutionary Guard.

Dershowitz does not say so, but the Trump administration should correct the most important policy failure that Biden brought to the region-- a wish to maintain the Iran nuclear deal.

One suspects that Joe believed he owed it to Barack, but, truth be told, starving the mullahs and even allowing Israel to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities would surely have improved the prospects for peace.

Dershowitz explains:

Even if regime change does not occur, the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities would weaken the regime considerably. Coupled with the destruction of the military capabilities of Hamas, Hizbullah and the Houthis, Iran will be seen as a paper tiger. This will encourage Saudi Arabia to continue along the road to making full peace with Israel, thereby expanding the Abraham Accords. 

He continues that once Israel is at peace with its neighbors it will be more willing to help solve the Palestinian question. Of course, the problem for Palestinians is their own leadership, as singificant a political failure as we have seen in quite some time.

Such a solution would begin with fewer Jewish settlements on the West Bank, more autonomy for peaceful areas of the West Bank, and a new governing authority in Gaza. These changes will all take time. The Palestinians will have to earn their right to a full state, by building peaceful institutions and controlling terrorist elements under their authority.

None of this is going to happen overnight. To imagine that Israelis have the power to impose it is absurd. The problem lies with the Palestinian mindset and it will not be solved until the Palestinians  accept responsibility for their own living conditions. 

The only people who profit from the current turmoil are the Iranian mullahs and their terrorist surrogates. These extremists do not want peace. They do not want a Palestinian state living alongside Israel. They want terrorism and turmoil. Their ultimate goal is the end of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people and the ethnic cleansing of Israel’s Jewish population. They don’t care how many lives – Arab, Muslims, Jews or others – are lost in this effort to achieve their religious dystopia. The Iranian mullahs and their Revolutionary Guard want to control the entire Middle East by intimidation, force and threats. They are the new Nazis, at least in their ideology and goal. The only real barriers are a strong Israel, a strong America, and a strong alliance between these two good democracies.

And then there is the war on anti-Semitism. From Ivy League universities to the streets of Amsterdam, anti-Semitism is having something of a recovery. 

One notes that the Biden administration has failed to engage the fight against anti-Semitism on college campuses. And one suspects that the Biden policy of moral equivalence between Hamas terrorists and the IDF has in some ways legitimized anti-Semitism.

So, Dershowitz is happy to speculate that the Trump administration will engage the fight against this horror:

The Trump administration will also be more aggressive in combating antisemitism and anti-Zionism around the world. In his first term, President Trump added antisemitism to the list of bigotries that universities must combat. His representative to the United Nations will stand tall against the pervasive anti-Zionism that pervades the United Nations from the top down. President Trump himself will use his bully pulpit to condemn the rancid Jew hatred that has plagued university campuses since October 7th.

Yet another failure by the Biden administration, one that the Trump administration will hopefully correct.

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