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Trump and the Middle East

History in the Middle East is moving very fast these days.  The long-overdue fall of Syria’s Assad regime is only the latest evidence, and Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration will accelerate the pace.  The central question is whether the principal players seize opportunities now open for lasting regional peace and security before they quickly close.  Of course, there are massive, daunting uncertainties, but leaders should remember the Roman saying, “fortune favors the bold.”

Surprisingly, one of the major uncertainties could be Trump.  In his first term, he was viewed as automatically pro-Israel, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over disputed territory in the Golan Heights.  It would be wrong for several reasons, however, to assume reflexively that this pattern will recur during his second term.

For example, Trump’s private view of Netanyahu is far more negative than generally perceived, exemplified by Trump’s anger when Netanyahu congratulated Biden on winning the 2020 presidential election(https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-jerusalem-israel-middle-east-iran-nuclear-d141ca03a5e38bfb60b37f94a38ecda8).  To most of the world, this was hardly noteworthy, but Trump’s fixation never to be perceived as a loser forced him to argue that the Democrats stole the election, which mythology Netanyahu violated.  Even before that, Trump said in an interview that he thought the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas wanted peace more than Netanyahu(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lq1seiWI8ro), which hardly expresses confidence in the Israeli leader.  Moreover, Netanyahu is an expert politician, far more astute than Trump, which undoubtedly also inflames Trump’s vanity.

Moreover, Trump’s obsession to seek a deal on anything and everything, even with Iran’s ayatollahs, may come to dominate his Middle East actions.  As I previously recounted in The Room Where It Happened, Trump came remarkably close to meeting Iran’s then-Foreign Minister, Javid Zarif, at the August, 2019, G-7 summit in Biarritz, France.  French President Emmanuel Macron suggested such an encounter to Trump immediately upon his arrival in Biarritz, and he was initially inclined to agree.  Conferring in Trump’s hotel room with Jared Kushner and White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvanery, I urged against meeting with Zarif.  Trump ultimately did not see Zarif, but, as the Duke of Wellington said of Napolean’s defeat at Waterloo, it was “the nearest run thing you ever saw.”

Trump’s pre-Inauguration intervention in Joe Biden’s long effort to obtain a cease-fire/hostage-release deal between Hamas and Israel is also noteworthy.  After seven months of failure, Trump’s pressure on Israel resulted in Netanyahu finally accepting Biden’s deal, or at least its first phase.  Trump wanted to take credit for the hostage releases, hearkening back to the start of Ronald Reagan’s administration, when Iran returned US embassy officials taken hostage during the 1979 Islamic Revolution.  On that level, Trump succeeded where Biden failed.  But whether Trump understands Biden’s plan has other phases is far from certain, as are the prospects that even the first phase will conclude successfully, let alone those that follow.  

Improbably, however, there have been signs, before and after Trump’s Inauguration, that he may believe that the Gaza war has actually ended.  Steve Witkoff, his family friend and now a special Middle East envoy, has stresses that “phase two” of Biden’s deal, which involves further negotiation between Israel and Hamas, should begin promptly.  This can hardly be what Israel expects.  In addition, Witkoff’s Trumpian “zeal for the deal” mentality, and his inexperience, reflected in naïve public comments(https://www.foxnews.com/media/trump-envoy-says-gaza-ceasefire-could-pave-way-mideast-normalization-deal-inflection-point), are factors that could militate against Israel in the immediate future.  Impressed by Witkoff’s performance to date, Trump may have decided to give him a role in Iran matters, although that remains unclear(https://www.axios.com/2025/01/23/trump-witkoff-iran-diplomacy-nuclear-deal).  Nonetheless, both have said they favored diplomatic options to resolve Iran’s nuclear threat.

If true, this creates a dilemma for Netanyahu.  Right now, Israel and America have the best opportunity ever to destroy Iran’s nuclear-weapons and missile programs.  Israel has already massively damaged Iran’s missile-production facilities(https://www.axios.com/2024/10/26/israel-strike-iran-missile-production) and at least one target involved in weaponizing highly enriched uranium(https://www.axios.com/2024/11/15/iran-israel-destroyed-active-nuclear-weapons-research-facility), not to mention flattening Iran’s sophisticated, Russia-supplied, S-300 air defense systems(https://www.voanews.com/a/israel-s-attack-on-iran-has-left-tehran-offensively-and-defensively-weaker/7848701.html).  Additional attacks in Syria after Assad’s overthrow have opened an air corridor allowing direct access from Israel to Iran.  The path is clear.  

Obstacles remain, notably Iran’s and Hezbollah’s remaining ballistic missiles, which would enable either retaliatory strikes against Israel, or even a pre-emptive strike to foreclose Netanyahu’s options.  Israel, Jordan, and nearby Arab states must also worry about the current regime in Damascus, led by the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (“HTS”) terrorist group.  Having shed his nom de guerre, and changed from combat fatigues to suits and ties, HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa is doing his best to convince outsiders that he now simply seeks responsible government in Syria.  Whether this is true remains unclear, as do Turkish aspirations in Syria and across the region.  The Biden administration(https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/01/24/us-syria-intelligence-hts-isis/) reportedly went so far as to share intelligence with HTS about ISIS, although whether Trump will continue this risky business is unknown.

What is inescapable is that while Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities have never been more vulnerable, Trump’s new administration seemed undecided on its future course.  His first term may not be an accurate prediction of his second.  There is no Trumpian grand strategy at work here since he does not do grand strategy.  Instead, he is transactional, episodic, and ad hoc, often making decisions based on whatever the last person he consults with recommends.  This may be the real future of America’s policy in the Middle East.

This article was first published in Independent Arabia on January 28, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

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Trump risks hamstringing Marco Rubio

Turf-fighting is a way of life at the State Department, as in much of the federal government. The department’s complex and varied responsibilities have, over time, led to an organizational chart that has defied multiple attempts at rationalization. Its internal culture has simultaneously grown more entrenched. The Foreign Service is perhaps the government’s strongest civilian bureaucracy, buttressed by the department’s civil-service employees.

This is not the “deep state” so attractive to conspiracy theorists but a species of bureaucratic culture possessed by every federal department and agency and well-explored in public-choice economics. The State Department’s cadres instinctively resist political direction and control, trying to emulate the centuries-long insulation from politics of Europe’s foreign ministries. My own experience led me to conclude in Surrender Is Not an Option that the only solution to the department’s formidable bureaucracy is a “cultural revolution,” one that will take years to accomplish since the culture itself took many decades to evolve.

Every secretary of state, therefore, faces massive obstacles to giving new directions to their bureaucracy, especially Republicans, including President-elect Donald Trump’s secretary of state nominee, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). Worryingly, however, Trump has announced multiple appointments that could add serious complications to Rubio’s leadership and ability to successfully implement the administration’s foreign policy.

None of these Trumpian decisions are fatal, nor are further confusion, obstructionism, turf-fighting, backbiting, leaking to the press, and a generally Hobbesian foreign-policy involvement. Perhaps sweetness and light will prevail. However, the risk is palpable that Rubio’s enormous responsibilities will be considerably more difficult because of assignments and personalities he may have had a precious little role in deciding.

Trump’s practice is superficially similar to prior administrations: The White House routinely makes political appointments, while the State Department proposes career ambassadors. Critically different, however, are the natures of the positions being filled (or created), the unprecedented reality that some are already performing their “duties,” and whether they have direct access to Trump. By contrast, Rubio has kept a low-profile since being tapped, the customary approach before Senate confirmation.

For example, Trump chose Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) as his U.S. ambassador to the United Nations before announcing Rubio, similar to 2016 when Trump picked Nikki Haley before Rex Tillerson. That did not turn out felicitously, either for Tillerson or his successor, Mike Pompeo. Whether or not our U.N. ambassador has Cabinet rank (and my view has always been “should not”), there can only be one secretary of state. Other opinions are welcome, but the department can only have one boss. Take my word. You have to watch those U.N. ambassadors.

Matt Whittaker, tipped for senior Justice Department roles (and perhaps still Plan B for FBI director), is to be our NATO Ambassador. Trump’s negative views on NATO are well-known, whereas Rubio has always been a strong NATO advocate. Will Whitaker report directly to Trump or to Rubio, and with what effect?

There is no doubt Keith Kellogg will have a direct line to Trump in his coming, newly-created role as assistant to the president and special envoy for Ukraine and Russia. Assistants to the president serve in his executive office, not at the State Department or another department. Trump once told me, “You know I wanted [Keith] as national security adviser after [H.R.] McMaster. He never offers his opinion unless I ask.”

This is the very paradigm of the fealty Trump wants from subordinates. Who knows what role Rubio will have in Ukraine policy?

The list of newly-concocted positions goes on: Massad Boulos, Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law, as senior adviser to the president on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs, and Steve Witkoff, a Trump family friend, as special envoy for the Middle East. Ever since Henry Kissinger and then Jim Baker, those roles have been for the secretary of state personally. Two more newly-forged, ambassadorial-style positions will go to first-term alumni: Richard Grenell as presidential envoy for special missions, “including Venezuela and North Korea,” and Mauricio Claver-Carone as the State Department’s special envoy to Latin America, which presumably still includes Venezuela. However, with Ukraine covered by Kellogg and two envoys already working in the Middle East, Grenell’s exact role is unclear.

Perhaps for belt-and-suspender purposes, the president-elect has not only nominated Warren Stephens, a respected investment banker, to be ambassador to the United Kingdom but just weeks later named Mark Burnett, producer of the former president’s television show The Apprentice, as special envoy to the U.K. Donald Trump said Burnett would “work to enhance diplomatic relations, focusing on areas of mutual interest, including trade, investment opportunities, and cultural exchanges,” which sounds suspiciously like the ambassador’s job.

Of course, all these appointees could also complicate the National Security Council’s interagency process, so Rubio will not likely be the only top-level Trump official wondering, “Who’s on first?” There may be more: Donald Trump hasn’t even taken office yet.

John Bolton served as national security adviser to then-President Donald Trump between 2018 and 2019. Between 2005 and 2006, he served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

This article was first published on January 8, 2025 for The Washington Examiner. Click here to read the original article.

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A U.N. Reform Plan for Trump and Stefanik

The new administration should reject mandatory ‘assessments’ and fund only programs that work.

By John Bolton

Elise Stefanik, Donald Trump’s pick for the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has her work cut out for her. Fortunately, she’s already aware of the U.N.’s flaws. In a September op-ed for the Washington Examiner, she applauded Mr. Trump for withdrawing from the “corrupt and antisemitic” Human Rights Council and defunding the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, the U.N.’s permanent refugee organization for Palestinians, during his first term. She also praised House Republicans for voting to sanction the International Criminal Court.

Ms. Stefanik joins a long line of U.S. officials dismayed by the U.N.’s profound failings, including its deep-seated bias against Israel. As one of those officials, my contributions to U.N. reform include implementing President George W. Bush’s decision to remove America’s signature from the treaty establishing the ICC, advising Mr. Bush to vote against creating the Human Rights Council and then doing so, and leading the effort to repeal the U.N.’s infamous “Zionism is racism” resolution. Several years later, in 2018, I recommended that Mr. Trump withdraw from the Human Rights Council and defund Unrwa.

But the job is far from over. No one should underestimate the difficulties that lie ahead or the effort that will be required to achieve real, lasting U.N. reform. A major obstacle is our own State Department. Its bureaucracy historically has been unwilling to do the heavy lifting required to muster support for transforming the U.N. That burden will fall not only on U.S. missions to U.N. components but also on the State Department’s regional bureaus, which are responsible for bilateral relations with the other 192 members. For decades, the regional bureaus have found reasons not to engage, pleading that innumerable bilateral issues be given higher priority. Secretary of State-designate Marco Rubio will need to crack the whip for reform to succeed.

The new administration should prove to U.N. members that its goal of reform isn’t merely rhetorical. Washington’s most important weapon will be its wallet—decisions about how much it financially contributes, or doesn’t contribute, to the U.N. Current spending is out of control. In 2022, the most recent year for which we have accurate data, the U.S. contributed more than $18 billion, accounting for roughly one-third of total U.N. funding. As the Heritage Foundation reported, “the U.S. provided more funding to the U.N. system than 185 other U.N. member states combined.” That year we forked over 8.5 times the amount that China, the second-largest donor, contributed.

Funding for U.N. components falls into two categories: mandatory “assessed” contributions and voluntary contributions. Assessments are calculated by opaque “capacity-to-pay” formulas, which have historically made America the largest contributor. After decades of negotiation and congressional legislation, U.S. assessments are currently capped at 22% for most contributions and 25% for peacekeeping operations. On a one-nation-one-vote basis, bodies like the General Assembly decide agency budgets, and members then pay their percentage shares.

Assessments, therefore, amount to international taxation of America by other U.N. members. A majority of member governments tells us what we owe, on pain of losing our vote in U.N. governing bodies if we don’t pay up. That alone is sufficient reason to reject the concept of assessments, since it is not our votes in these bodies that matter. The only vote that does matter is our Security Council vote (and veto), our main shield against one-nation-one-vote majorities U.N.-system-wide. Our permanent seat in the Council and its vote are written into the U.N. Charter, and we can veto changes to the Charter. The potential negative consequences of ending assessed contributions, then, are essentially nil.

U.N. bureaucrats, U.S. officials and nongovernmental organizations assert without evidence that America gets enormous credit for its contributions to the U.N. and warn that America’s influence would diminish worldwide if those contributions were significantly reduced or eliminated. These assertions are false. Special-interest advocates simply take our current level of funding for granted, complain that it’s inadequate and demand more. It’s time they get their comeuppance.

The U.N. Charter doesn’t require assessed contributions. The Charter says merely that the organization’s expenses shall be “apportioned by the General Assembly,” but requires no specific approach. The Assembly could make contributions entirely voluntary, as is the case already with some U.N. agencies and programs. The Trump administration simply needs to resolve against the U.N. system’s longstanding reliance on assessments until the totally voluntary approach prevails and other members acquiesce.

Shortly after taking office, Mr. Rubio and Ms. Stefanik should announce that the U.S. no longer accepts the concept of assessed contributions. Henceforth, we will pay only voluntary contributions, which we will decide by evaluating the performance of each U.N. agency and program. We may zero out some programs; we may voluntarily fund others at or near our current assessed level; and we may even increase funding for others. But we will decide. And every other U.N. member will have the same prerogative.

This approach rests on the revolutionary assumption that we fund the U.N. based on its performance, paying only for what we want and insisting that we get what we pay for. U.N. agencies that are funded entirely by voluntary donations, such as the World Food Program, generally tend to outperform those funded by assessments. Because they have to prove their worth annually, they have an incentive to sustain and even boost their performance. If voluntarily-funded programs fail or falter, we should reduce their funding accordingly. Ultimately, some agencies will prove unreformable, and America should simply withdraw from them. The U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization immediately comes to mind, as it did for President Ronald Reagan, who withdrew the U.S. from UNESCO in 1984. The country later rejoined in 2003 under Mr. Bush, although Mr. Trump withdrew in his turn, and Joe Biden rejoined. Doubtless, Mr. Trump will withdraw again—and rightly so—during his second term.

Using America’s money as an existential threat will rock the U.N. system. While many other reforms are possible, they won’t match the power of unilaterally controlling our contributions. Besides, we need a much larger defense budget; reducing contributions to the U.N. is a good start to find the necessary funding.

First Published in the Wall Street Journal on December 26th here

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Kash Patel Doesn’t Belong at the FBI

The President’s constitutional obligation to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” requires evenhanded action in the national rather than his personal interest, a distinction Donald Trump does not grasp.  His often-stated intention to seek retribution against opponents, if implemented, facially contravenes the Take Care clause.

Too many of Mr. Trump’s personnel selections evidence his assiduous search for personal fealty from subordinates, not loyalty to the Constitution and its Take Care clause.  Stocking his administration with lickspittles will benefit him, but not America.  Kash Patel’s nomination as FBI Director squarely fits this pattern.

Congressman Devin Nunes pushed Mr. Patel for the National Security Council staff after Republicans lost control of the House in 2018.  Notwithstanding Mr. Patel’s utter lack of policy credential, the President ultimately ordered him hired.  NSC staff has long been divided into Directorates responsible for different policy areas.  Charlie Kupperman, my Deputy, and I placed Mr. Patel in the International Organizations (IO) Directorate, which had a vacancy.

Approximately five months later, an opening arose in the Counter Terrorism (CT) Directorate.  The pressure resumed, and so Mr. Patel moved laterally.  In neither case was he in charge of a directorate during my tenure as National Security Advisor, or thereafter, as he contends in his memoir, and has repeatedly stated elsewhere.  He reported to Senior Directors in both cases, and had defined responsibilities.  His puffery was characteristic of the resumé inflation we had detected earlier when he was first pressed upon us.  He proved less interested in his assigned duties than in worming his way into Mr. Trump’s presence, which evidenced he was duplicitous, manipulative, and conspiratorial, as the following examples demonstrate.

Fiona Hill, NSC Senior Director for Europe, later testified to Congress during the impeachment hearings that Mr. Patel, at that time assigned to the IO Directorate, participated in a May, 2019, Oval Office meeting on Ukraine, and that he had engaged in various other Ukraine-related activities(https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2019/11/FionaHill-compressed.pdf).  Whatever he did on Ukraine while an NSC staffer was unrestrained freelancing.  He denies any communication with Mr. Trump on Ukraine(https://www.axios.com/2019/11/09/national-security-council-staffer-denies-secret-ukraine-conversations-trump).

In August, when I was overseas, Mr. Trump called Mr. Kupperman and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone to the Oval Office, finding Mr. Patel already there, to discuss making him an administration enforcer of presidential loyalty.  Messrs. Cipollone and Kupperman strongly objected to any such vigilante role, whether in the NSC or the Counsel’s office, and the issue disappeared.  I resigned shortly thereafter.

In October, 2020, during a hostage-rescue mission, as former Defense Secretary Mark Esper memoir described, Mr. Patel, then in the CT directorate, misinformed other officials that a key airspace-transit clearance had been granted.  In fact, the clearance had not been obtained, thus threatening the operation’s success.  Mr. Esper writes that his team “suspected Patel made the approval story up,” but was not certain.  Typically, Mr. Patel’s version of this episode in his memoir denies any error, but, ironically, boasts of his acting beyond the authority of NSC staffers.  Then-Secretary of State Pompeo also knew the day’s details, including the clearance problem.  He has not spoken publicly about the incident.  He should.

Last week, Olivia Troye, Vice President Pence’s former counter-terrorism advisor, elaborated on these concerns, tagging Mr. Patel with “making things up on operations” and lying about intelligence(https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14158977/trump-fbi-kash-patel-legal-threat-msnbc-olivia-troye.html).  His lawyers responded by threatening to sue her for defamation, writing that “[a]t no point did Mr. Patel ever lie about national intelligence, place Navy Seals at risk, or misinform the Vice president.”  Of course, what Mr. Esper and Ms. Troye are accusing Mr. Patel of lying about is the airspace-transit clearance, the lack of which would have made transit by US forces though the airspace of the country in question an act of war.

These are but a few of many cases that touch directly on Mr. Patel’s character, or lack thereof, and his consistent approach of placing obedience to Mr. Trump above other, higher, considerations, like loyalty to the Constitution.  His conduct in Mr. Trump’s first term and thereafter shows clearly that his mantra as FBI Director would be Lavrenty Beria’s reported comment to Joseph Stalin, “show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime(https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/12/03/patel-deep-state-trump-retribution/).” These are precisely the character flaws, repeatedly displayed, which disqualify him for any senior law-enforcement or national-security role.

Mr. Patel has made numerous statements, many of which he has tried to walk back once they came to wider public attention.  He has, for example, frequently called for investigations of journalists(https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/kash-patel-said-come-journalists-now-hangs-fbi-candidacy-rcna182661).  He has been accused of seeking to declassify sensitive information for political or personal reasons rather than for legitimate national-security reasons(https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/12/06/kash-patel-trump-fbi-director/).  Tellingly, during Mr. Trump’s first term, both Attorney General Bill Barr and CIA Director Gina Haspell(https://www.axios.com/2021/01/16/kash-patel-cia-gina-haspel), respectively, threatened to resign if Mr. Patel were forced upon them as their deputy.

Mr. Trump argues he was unfairly, even illegally, targeted by partisan Biden prosecutors.  His opponents believe this is false.  The dispute is irresolvable in this brief article.  What is true, is that if illegitimate partisan prosecutions were launched, those responsible should be held accountable in a reasoned, professional manner, not in a counter-witchhunt.

The worst response is for Mr. Trump to engage in precisely the prosecutorial conduct he  so roundly condemns.  Simply making the threats politicizes and degrades the legal process and people’s faith in even-handed law enforcement.  A President possessed of civic virtue would not launch retribution against opponents, and he would certainly not appoint an FBI Director who saw himself solely as the President’s liege man.  That kind of President would never consider Mr. Patel.  If Mr. Trump is determined, wrongly, to remove Chris Wray, there are previous examples to follow that have restored faith in a battered Justice Department and FBI.  In 1975, President Ford selected University of Chicago Law Dean Edward Levi as Attorney General, and in 1978, President Carter named Judge William Webster, a Republican, to be FBI Director.

Mr. Patel is no Ed Levi or Bill Webster.  To resolve disagreements over his integrity and fitness, a full-field FBI investigation, as prior nominees have undergone, is clearly warranted.  With more facts available and less rhetoric, the result will be clear.  I regret I did not fully discern Mr. Patel’s threat immediately.  I might have, to borrow Winston Churchill’s phrase, strangled his Trumpian-servility in its cradle.  But we are now all fairly warned.  Senators will not be able to escape history’s judgment if they vote to confirm him.

During 1985-89, Mr. Bolton was Assistant Attorney General of the Office of Legislative Affairs and then of the Civil Division at the Justice Department.  He is the author of “The Room Where It Happened.”

This article was first published in WSJ on December 10, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

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Trump and Iran

Donald Trump’s election as President guarantees that America’s Middle East policy will change.  The real question, though, and a major early test for Trump, is whether it will change enough.  Does he understand that the region’s geopolitics differ dramatically from when he left office, and could change even more before Inauguration Day?  The early signs are not promising that Trump grasps either the new strategic opportunities or threats Washington and its allies face.

The region’s central crisis on January 20 will be Iran’s ongoing “ring of fire” strategy against Israel.  Right now, Israel is systematically dismantling Hamas’s political leadership, military capabilities, and underground Gaza fortress.  Israel is similarly dismembering Hezbollah in Lebanon:  its leadership annihilated, its enormous missile arsenal steadily decimated, and its hiding places shattered.  Israel will continue degrading Hamas, Hezbollah, and West Bank terrorists, ultimately eliminating these pillars of Iranian power.  Even President Biden’s team has already urged Qatar to expel Hamas’s leaders(https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/08/politics/qatar-hamas-doha-us-request/index.html).

Unfortunately, Yemen’s Houthis, still blocking the Suez Canal-Red Sea passage, have suffered only limited damage, as have Iran’s Shia militia proxies in Syria and Iraq.  Iran itself finally faced measurable retaliation on October 26, as Israel eliminated the Russian-supplied S-300 air defenses and inflicted substantial damage on missile-production facilities.  Nonetheless, Iran’s direct losses remain minimal.  Due to intense White House pressure and the impending US elections, Jerusalem targeted neither Tehran’s nuclear-weapons program nor its oil infrastructure.

Whether Israel takes further significant action before January 20 is the biggest unknown variable.  Israel’s October 26 air strikes have prompted unceasing boasting from Tehran that it will retaliate in turn.  These boasts remain unfulfilled.  The ayatollahs appear so fearful of Israel’s military capabilities that they hope the world’s attentions drift away as Iran backs down in the face of Israel’s threat.  If, however, Iran does summon the will to retaliate, it is nearly certain this time that Israel’s counterstrike will be devastating, especially if during the US presidential transition.  Israeli Defense Forces could lay waste to Iran’s nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs so extensively they rock the foundations of the ayatollahs’ regime.

Washington’s conventional wisdom is that Trump will return to “maximum pressure” economically against Iran through more and better-enforced sanctions, and stronger, more consistent support for Israel, as during his first term.  If so, Tehran’s mullahs can relax.  Trump’s earlier “maximum pressure” policy was nothing of the sort.  Even worse, a Trump surrogate has already announced that the incoming administration will have “no interest in regime change in Iran(https://www.timesofisrael.com/ex-envoy-says-trump-aims-to-weaken-iran-deal-of-the-century-likely-back-on-table/),” implying that the fantasy still lives that Trump could reach a comprehensive deal with Tehran in his second term.

Moreover, despite the staged good will in Bibi Netanyahu’s call to Trump last week, their personal relationship is tense.  Trump said in 2021, “the first person that congratulated [Biden] was Bibi Netanyahu, the man that I did more for than any other person I dealt with.  Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake(https://www.axios.com/2021/12/10/trump-netanyahu-disloyalty-fuck-him).”  In practice, this means that Israel should not expect the level of Trump support it received previously.  And, because Trump is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term, he need not fear negative domestic political reactions if he opposes Israel on important issues.

Much depends on the currently unclear circumstances Trump will face on January 20.  In addition to shunning regime change, Trump seems mainly interested in simply ending the conflict promptly, apparently without regard to how(https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-erratic-foreign-policy-meet-a-world-fire-2024-11-06/), which has proven very effective in US politics.  This approach is consistent with his position on Ukraine.  Asserting that neither conflict would have even occurred had he remained President, which is neither provable nor disprovable, Trump sees these wars as unwanted legacies from Biden.

If Israel does not demolish Iran’s nuclear aspirations before Trump’s inauguration, those aspirations will be the first and most pressing issue he faces.  If he simply defaults back to “maximum pressure” through sanctions, he is again merely postponing an ultimate reckoning with Iran.  Even restoring the sanctions to the levels prevailing when Trump left the Oval Office will be difficult, because Biden’s flawed and ineffective sanctions-enforcement efforts have weakened compliance globally.  Trump will not likely have the attention span or the resolve to toughen sanctions back to meaningful levels.  The growing cooperation among Russia, China and Iran means Iran’s partners will do all they can to break the West’s sanctions, as they are breaking the West’s Ukraine-related sanctions against Russia.

As they say in Texas, Trump is typically “all hat and no cattle”:  he talks tough but doesn’t follow through on his rhetoric.  Since he has never shown any inclination to move decisively against Iran’s nuclear program, that leaves the decision to Israel, which has its own complex domestic political problems to resolve.  An alternative is to assist Iran’s people to overthrow Tehran’s hated regime.  Here, too, however, Trump has shown little interest, thereby missing rare opportunities that Iran’s citizens could seize with a minimum of outside assistance.  If Tehran’s ayatollahs are smart, they will dangle endless opportunities for Trump to negotiate, hoping to distract him from more serious, permanent remedies to the threats the ayatollahs themselves are posing.

Of all the critical early tests Trump will face, the Middle East tops the list.  China, Russia, and other American adversaries will be watching just as closely as countries in the Middle East, since the ramifications of Trump’s decisions will be far-reaching.

This article was first published in The Independent Arabie on November 10, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

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What Next in the Middle East?

One year after Hamas launched Iran’s “Ring of Fire” strategy with a barbaric attack against Israeli civilians, the Middle East has changed significantly.  Now, the world awaits Jerusalem’s response to Tehran’s ballistic-missile attack last week, the largest such attack in history.  It was the current war’s second military assault directly from Iranian territory against Israel, the first being April’s combined drone and ballistic/cruise missile barrage.  We do not know how Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu will respond, but it is nearly certain Israel’s answer will be far stronger than in April.

Meanwhile, Iran’s Ring of Fire is clearly failing.  Israel is systematically destroying Hamas and Hezbollah, two critical foundations of Iran’s terrorist power.  Whatever now happens between Jerusalem and Tehran, Iran’s efforts to debilitate Israel —  and potentially the Gulf Arab states  —  with terrorist and conventional military assets may well suffer irreversible defeat.

According to Israel, 23 of 24 Hamas combat battalions have been destroyed, and what’s left remains under attack.  Numerous Hamas leaders have been killed, not the least being Ismael Haniyeh in a supposedly secure compound in the heart of Tehran.  Yahyah Sinwar remains at large;  Hamas still holds Israeli civilian hostages;  and Gaza’s enormous underground fortress is still partially in Hamas hands, but the ending is increasingly clear.

Hezbollah is still in the process of being destroyed.  Israel’s killing of Hassan Nasrullah is already a turning point in Middle East history, so great was the shock in Lebanon and beyond.  As effectively as against Hamas, or perhaps more, Jerusalem is relentlessly decapitating Hezbollah’s leadership, eliminating officials even as they are being promoted to the fill vacancies left by dead colleagues.  Israel also claims to have destroyed half of Hezbollah’s enormous arsenal of missiles and launchers.  That estimate seems high, and in any case leaves significant work remaining against Hezbollah’s estimated  inventory of up to 150,000 missiles.  Nonetheless, with Nasrullah’s demise and with its leadership decimated, Hezbollah is reeling.

The Gulf Arab states and others should now be considering what the future holds for the people of Lebanon and Gaza without Hezbollah and Hamas.  What has been unthinkable for decades may now be within sight.  As long as Hezbollah, the world’s largest terrorist group, controlled Lebanon and its government, there was no possibility to achieve political freedom and stability.  Given the prospect of Hezbollah’s eradication as both a political and military force, urgent attention is required to the possibility of a society without intimidation and control from Iran.  Lebanon with Hezbollah could and should be a very different place.

Gaza, although smaller, is more complicated.  Palestinians are the only major refugee population since World War II that has not benefitted from the basic humanitarian principle of either returning to their country of origin or being resettled.  Palestinians are, unfortunately for them, the exception, not the norm.  The international community needs to confront the reality that Gaza is not and never will be a viable economic entity, even if some distant day combined as a state with “islands” on the West Bank.  Far better, once Hamas is on history’s ash heap, to treat Gazans more humanely than simply being shields for their terrorist masters.  It makes no sense to rebuild Gaza as a high-rise refugee camp.  The most humane future for innocent Gazans is resettlement in functioning economies where their children have the prospect of a normal future.

Although Gaza and Lebanon have something to look forward to, the same cannot yet be said, sadly, for Yemen, Syria and Iraq.  Yemen’s Houthi terrorists and Iranian-backed Shia militias in Syria and Iraq remain largely untouched after October 7.  That should change.

Although the Houthis have launched missiles and drones against Israel, and Israel has retaliated, the Houthis main contribution to Iran’s Ring of Fire has been effectively closing the Suez Canal-Red Sea maritime passage.  This blockade has been extremely harmful to Egypt through lost Suez Canal transit fees, and has hurt the wider world by significantly increasing shipping costs.  A clear violation of the principle of freedom of the seas, the major maritime powers would be fully warranted to correct it through force, with or without UN Security Council approval.

For the United States, freedom of the seas has been a major element of national security even before the thirteen colonies became independent.  In the last two centuries, America and the United Kingdom led global efforts to defend the freedom of the seas, and should do so now, eliminating the ongoing Houthi anti-shipping aggression.  Cutting off Iran’s supply of missiles and drones is a first step, coupled with destroying existing Houthi stockpiles.  Washington’s opposition to prior efforts by Saudi Arabia and the UAE to defeat the terrorists was misguided and should be reversed.  Destroying Houthi military capabilities would afford Yemen the same opportunities now opening for Lebanon and Gaza, and should be urgently pursued.

In Iraq and Syria, as Iran’s power fades (and may well fade dramatically after Israel’s coming retaliation), action against the Iran-backed Shia militias should be the highest priority.  In such circumstances, Baghdad at least may well think twice before demanding that the few remaining US forces still in Iraq and Syria be removed.

For Iran itself, loss of its terrorist proxies, after having invested billions of dollars over decades to build the terrorist infrastructure, will be a dramatic reversal of fortune.  If Iran’s nuclear program is similarly devastated, the threat Iran has posed by seeking to achieve hegemony in the Middle East and within the Islamic world will likely be impossible for the foreseeable future.  In these circumstances, the people of Iran may finally be able to achieve the downfall of the ayatollahs and the creation of representative government.  It is far too early to be confident of such an outcome, but it is not too early to hope for it.

This article was first published in Independent Arabia on October 7, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

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‘Midnight in Moscow’ Review: Losing the Deterrence Game

For more than a century, U.S. diplomats in Russia have had to fend off propaganda, outright lies, harassment and seduction, often simultaneously. Our envoys have been gulled into damaging concessions, and their Washington bosses have proved just as susceptible. Recall Franklin Roosevelt’s appalling observation about Joseph Stalin: “I think if I give him everything that I possibly can and ask nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won’t try to annex anything and will work for a world of democracy and peace.” Incredibly, Roosevelt’s mindset, with variations, persists in many contemporary American leaders.

John J. Sullivan worked for two such presidents, first as deputy secretary of state from May 2017 to December 2019, and as U.S. ambassador to Russia from then until September 2022. In “Midnight in Moscow,” Mr. Sullivan describes what it was like.

Mr. Sullivan focuses on the events before, during and after Russia’s Feb. 24, 2022, invasion of Ukraine, but he covers considerable additional territory. His legal career and experience under prior Republican presidents made him a natural for deputy secretary. Mike Pompeo, as the new secretary of state, kept him on after Rex Tillerson was unceremoniously purged by President Trump in March 2018. Mr. Trump, if he wins in November, may find Mr. Sullivan too experienced, grounded and loyal to the Constitution to serve in a second term. His is a cautionary tale for those thinking about joining a Trump administration redivivus.

Mr. Sullivan describes Mr. Trump’s “chaotic and undisciplined style,” as when he fired Mr. Tillerson via tweet—an episode that captured the tumult that made Mr. Tillerson, among others, “completely miscast for his role—any role—in an administration [so] undisciplined and unconventional.” Mr. Trump “would not or could not draw a distinction between his own interests and those of the country he was leading,” Mr. Sullivan concludes.

He was dispatched to Moscow without the traditional photograph with the president. Mr. Sullivan never spoke with him thereafter—not even to have a courtesy meeting before the ambassador’s departure: another reminder of Mr. Trump’s limited comprehension of running a government, especially in national security.

President Biden kept the ambassador in place. Mr. Sullivan paints a telling picture of State Department operations, especially the unglamorous but critical job of keeping Embassy Moscow functioning in a hostile environment, exacerbated further by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Outside their embassies, our ambassadors have responsibilities for Americans living or visiting their respective countries. They strive, for example, to ensure that U.S. citizens arrested, legitimately or otherwise, receive fair, humane treatment. The Kremlin’s use of innocents abroad as human pawns greatly complicated that effort. Mr. Biden explicitly embraced outright hostage swapping (with Russia, Iran and others), significantly departing from Ronald Reagan’s opposition to trading guiltless victims for criminals or spies. Mr. Trump has recently pilloried swaps for well-known victims, like WNBA star Brittney Griner, but Mr. Sullivan reveals that the Trump administration attempted exactly that in 2020, unsuccessfully offering to trade convicted Russian criminals for Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed, two Americans held in Russian prisons, since released.

Describing Mr. Biden’s actions prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Mr. Sullivan shows that the president’s minimal emphasis on deterring Moscow contributed to Vladimir Putin’s confidence that he could succeed. At Mr. Biden’s June 2021 Geneva summit with Mr. Putin, Ukraine barely came up. Nor did it often arise at lower levels in the following four months, further confirming to Moscow that Mr. Biden gave it low priority. Watching “the calamitous and tragic American withdrawal from Afghanistan,” the Kremlin “drew a direct connection to Ukraine,” Mr. Sullivan writes. Nikolai Patrushev, Moscow’s then-counterpart to our national security advisor, predicted that Ukraine, like Afghanistan, “would be left to ‘the whim of fate.’ ” Mr. Sullivan found the Afghanistan pullout the only point at which even ordinary Russians expressed “to me personally their contempt for the United States.”

The Biden administration, then and now, seemed completely unaware that its behavior was encouraging the Kremlin to believe that a second invasion of Ukraine would produce the same response as Barack Obama’s after Russia attacked the Donbas region and annexed Crimea in 2014—essentially no response at all. At least from Embassy Moscow’s perspective, there is little evidence that Mr. Biden’s policy makers were thinking hard about deterring a renewed Russian assault.

On Oct. 25, 2021, Mr. Sullivan, then in Washington, attended an intelligence-community briefing at the National Security Council, stressing that Russia was “undertaking a massive aggregation of forces” on its Ukraine border, preparing to invade. This news “changed everything in my life,” he writes. He was “struck . . . that the information had come together so quickly.” The week before, he had “met with the senior U.S. military leadership in Europe, and no one had raised an alarm about an imminent invasion of Ukraine by Russia.”

Eventually, when Russia’s intention became obvious, Mr. Biden sent CIA Director Bill Burns to Moscow to tell Mr. Putin that our response to an invasion would be “devastating.” But the Russian leader had seen Washington’s feckless response to his aggression in 2014 and the incompetent Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021. Why should he have listened?

Mr. Biden’s subsequent public releases of intelligence, touted as an administration success, obviously failed to make a difference in Mr. Putin’s calculations. Moreover, U.S. intelligence badly underestimated Kyiv’s resolve and capacity to resist Moscow’s assault, which led to Mr. Biden’s unwillingness to provide additional lethal support to Ukraine before the invasion began.

Mr. Sullivan has made an important contribution to understanding what transpired in Washington and the Kremlin concerning Russia’s unprovoked 2022 aggression, and what might have been done differently. Unfortunately, it’s still midnight in Moscow.

Mr. Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, served as national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019.

 

This article was first published in the Wall Street Journal on September 22, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

 

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Effects of the Haniyah Assassination

Ayatollah Khamenei should increase his security protections.  Whoever assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in a supposedly secure compound in Iran’s supposedly secure capital sent an unmistakable message to Khamenei, Iran’s citizens, its terrorist proxies, and the world at large:  No one is safe in Iran.  

Not the Supreme Leader, not Qassem Soleimani, and not the lowliest Basiji militiaman.  This grim reality should lead all Iranians not lost in religious fanaticism or authoritarian ideology to reconsider their own future under the mullahs.  Whether Israel (or whomever did the deed) used a bomb planted two months before detonating during Haniyeh’s visit, or fired a precision-guided weapon, the result was the same.  Haniyeh is dead, and Iran stands humiliated.

What now?  Almost a month after Haniyeh’s demise, Iran has not retaliated, although Israel’s pre-emptive August 25 strike against Hezbollah may have thwarted part of Iran’s plan.  The situation remains fluid.  The United States, committed to defend Israel, had acted earlier, deploying the USS Abraham Lincon carrier strike group to the Middle East, overlapping with the USS Theodore Roosevelt group before it returned home.  Also now on station is the nuclear-powered USS Georgia, a cruise-missile submarine.  Together with already present American military capabilities, this is a force to be reckoned with, offensive and defensive.  Its presence alone could be delaying Iran’s response(https://www.wsj.com/opinion/israel-iran-u-s-force-pentagon-biden-administration-gaza-hamas-dcf393a1?mod=opinion_feat1_editorials_pos3).

While no one can ignore a US carrier strike group in their backyard, the main cause for Iran’s hesitation in again attacking Israel, as it did on April 13 with 320 missiles and drones, is the decidedly unpleasant strategic conundrum it faces.  Humiliated, presumably by Israel, the mullahs must undertake devastating reprisals to reestablish credibility and deterrence.  This time, a pinprick attack on Israel, which is all Hezbollah’s Sunday attack amounted to, will not suffice.  

Moreover, some observers are dubious about Iran’s April strike, asserting that it warned Israel in advance, thereby enabling Israel’s defenses to blunt the assault.  In turn, in President Biden’s words, Jerusalem could “take the win” and respond minimally.  This analysis is speculative, and there are reports Iran suffered massive failures in its ballistic-missiles launches(https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iran-launches-drone-attack-toward-israel-idf-says/).  Whichever version is true, Iran caused only minimal casualties and physical damage.  That will not be nearly enough this time, whether the response comes from Iran itself, Hezbollah, or another terrorist proxy.  

However, a truly punishing attack is what creates Iran’s strategic conundrum.  Iran fears that an emboldened Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not bend to Washington’s pressure this time, as he did in April.  With Biden now a lame duck, and the US presidential election in doubt, Israel could conclude that this is precisely the moment to launch a debilitating response, not just take out a few missile-launching sites.  To start, Jerusalem could level Iran’s air-defense capabilities.  Then, Netanyahu could target Iran’s nuclear weapons and ballistic-missile programs;  its oil terminals and loading facilities in the Gulf;  or major IRGC and regular military facilities countrywide.  This time, the Supreme Leader might also be a target.

If Israel caused serious damage, the entire 1979 Islamic Revolution could be in jeopardy, which the ayatollahs will not want to risk.  Their hold on power domestically has never been so unsteady, with substantial, long-brewing political, economic, and social discontent.  Wrestling with the competing imperatives of striking Israel savagely but not being overthrown is paralyzing the regime’s decision-making.  Trying to make a virtue out of necessity, Tehran claims to be withholding revenge to avoid jeopardizing the Qatari-led effort to establish a Hamas-Israel cease-fire in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages.  With the negotiations seemingly stalled, the mullahs welcome further delay, not out of altruism for the combatants in Gaza, but because it affords Tehran precious additional time to untangle its strategic dilemma.  

If the cease-fire negotiations do collapse, Iran will have no satisfactory way to escape the unpleasant alternatives it faces.  That is a problem of its own making, having forged its “ring of fire strategy” against Israel over decades, and for reasons still unclear, launching it with Hamas’s barbaric October 7 attack.  Tehran may have miscalculated the effect of Hamas’s blitz, which clearly did not crush Israel’s resolve.  Instead, Netanyahu is now close to achieving his stated goal of eliminating Hamas’s political and military capabilities.  

Moreover, with chaos in Gaza so extensive, Israel can now reopen the decades-old issue of what to do next with Gazan civilians, and whether resettlement to third countries is now in order.  Following World War II, tens of millions of refugees who, for whatever reasons, could not return to their home countries were resettled.  Only Palestinian were exempted from this outcome, treated instead as hereditary refugees, weapons against the very existence of Israel.  That already-obsolete plan met its demise thanks to the Iran-Hamas October 7 assault.

Iran could choose to do very little, hoping its reputation as a regional power with nuclear capabilities will not suffer greatly.  Its terrorist surrogates, however, will then question the basic terms of their dependence on Iran.  If the ayatollahs can’t protect terrorist leaders in Tehran, what are their incentive to do Tehran’s bidding in a dangerous and uncertain future?  Might not Tehran’s timidity inspire Iran’s domestic opposition?  Seeing weakness externally, might not the regime’s domestic enemies conclude that their moment to oppose the legitimacy and very existence of the mullahs’ regime is at hand?

The clock is ticking for the ayatollahs.  They do not have forever to decide.

This article was first published in Independent Arabia on September 26, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

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What Netanyahu’s visit showed about the future of the U.S.-Israel relationship

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to America last week reflected long-term pluses and minuses for the U.S.-Israel relationship. The historical relationship between Israel and the Democratic Party hit its lowest point ever, while that between Republicans and Israel has never been stronger. Driving these developments are tectonic shifts of power and demographics among Democrats and, even more importantly, tectonic shifts in Israeli public opinion about how to achieve lasting peace and security.

Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress echoed both alterations. His Gaza objectives were clear: “Israel will fight until we destroy Hamas’s military capabilities and its rule in Gaza and bring all our hostages home. That’s what total victory means, and we will settle for nothing less.”

The prime minister rightly laid responsibility for the threats facing Israel on Iran, the principal menace to Middle Eastern stability. This reality has still not sunk in with Democrats, particularly in the Biden White House. In Israel today, whatever Netanyahu’s personal popularity, there is little debate on these points.

America’s core national interest in supporting Israel against Iran and its terrorist surrogates is more than religious, historical and cultural. Iran’s nuclear and terrorist threats both currently manifest themselves in the Hamas war against Israel, the “little Satan,” but Tehran also targets America, the “great Satan.” Gaza is not the main battleground, but merely one front of Tehran’s threat, which Netanyahu spelled out clearly, yet again. And yet again, the Democratic establishment didn’t get it. Fortunately for Israel, most Americans do.

Netanyahu’s meeting with President Biden was apparently workmanlike, focusing on Biden’s continuing, misbegotten pursuit of a cease-fire-for-hostages deal between Hamas and Israel. Ominously for Netanyahu, however, Biden has already moved far away from the “ironclad” support for Israel he pledged shortly after Hamas’s barbaric Oct. 7 attack. Inevitably, the leaders’ meeting reflected the unrelenting, unprecedented pressure the White House has put on Jerusalem to end the Gaza conflict.

When still a candidate for reelection, Biden wanted the Middle East (and Ukraine) off the front pages, hoping to conceal the spreading global chaos caused by his own foreign policy’s grave weaknesses. Biden also wanted to avoid offending tender Iranian or Russian sensitivities, lest increased global oil prices reignite inflation, thereby diminishing his waning chances of victory in November. Although Biden is now a lame duck, his and Vice President Kamala Harris’s interests still converge on this point.

For Israel, Biden truly is a transitional president, the last vestige of President Harry Truman’s pride that the U.S. was first to recognize Israel’s independence. Those days are over. As Netanyahu said to Congress, Biden described himself as “a proud Irish-American Zionist.” Vice President Harris is not a proud Zionist of any variety, which, if not already clear, became so in her Netanyahu meeting, evidenced by her frosty manner and both her public and private remarks.

Afterward, Harris said, “let’s get the deal done so we can get a cease-fire to end the war.” Easy to say if eliminating Hamas’s threat (let alone Iran’s) isn’t your foundational objective. But Harris wasn’t finished. She proclaimed that she would “not be silent” about suffering Gazans, although if suffering Gazans were her true concern, she would be pressuring Hamas, not Israel.

Hamas, after all, turned Gaza into an underground fortress at the expense of its civilians, whom it has used ruthlessly as human shields. Failing to acknowledge this reality effectively endorses a terrorist veto against Israel’s right of self-defense. Let Harris explain that during the campaign’s final 100 days.

The Democrats’ split with Israel mirrors Britain’s new Labour Party government. Labour has a long, disturbing history of antisemitism and doubtful support for Israel, and once again disdains the Jewish state. Last week, Prime Minister Keir Starmer pleased Labour’s hard left by lifting U.K. objections to the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu and others. Another question for reporters to ask Harris: Does she support Biden’s continuing opposition to the warrants?

Netanyahu’s meeting with Donald Trump was no picnic either. The day before, Trump said, “I want him to finish up [in Gaza] and get it done quickly. They are getting decimated with this publicity. Israel is not really good at public relations, I’ll tell you that.” It suits Trump politically to pretend that his personal relationship with Netanyahu was always good, and the meeting provided Trump an excellent opportunity to recall his presidency’s pro-Israel decisions, like moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The risk underlying these comments, like similar Trump remarks recently, is not abstract concern about Israel losing the propaganda war with Iran and Hamas. Instead, Trump fears that his pro-Israel stance is now bringing him political costs rather than benefits, which is not how Trump thinks the world should work. His interests alone dictate his political positions, so Israel needs to shape up and stop troubling his already difficult presidential campaign.

Post-visit, Netanyahu and Israel have a better picture of the troubling tendencies of America’s three most important political leaders before Election Day. Whether Harris or Trump wins, Jerusalem’s relations with Washington will be more difficult. This is not the road America should be on, but these are the candidates we have, and one of them will prevail in November.

This article was first published in The Hill on July 30, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

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Against the International Criminal Court – Lawless in the Hague

Since the late 19th century, generally well-meaning idealists have tried to conjure an international judicial system that would transform diplomatic, military, and economic conflicts into legal disputes. Led by sensible legal experts (who, of course, thought as they did), the global rule of law would replace destructive strife. If the rule of law worked within nations, why shouldn’t it work internationally? Whether parading under the banner of “world government,” “global governance,” or “the rules-based international order,” this blinkered, reductionist view of foreign affairs always includes a judicial component.

After World War II, the pace quickened. The United Nations Charter created the International Court of Justice (ICJ), to which nations could bring their disputes, replacing the failed Permanent Court of International Justice (formed by the Treaty of Versailles as an adjunct of the League of Nations). No one noticed the irony. The charter admonished the Security Council “that legal disputes should as a general rule be referred by the parties” to the ICJ (Article 36), and U.N. members agreed to comply with ICJ decisions in cases to which they were parties.

Contemporaneously, the victorious Allies established the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals to try allegations of “crimes against peace,” war crimes, and “gross abuses of human rights” committed by Germany and Japan. These tribunals were controversial even in their day, faulted for trying ex post facto charges (thereby violating the principle Nullum crimen sine lege, “No crime without law”), for being “show trials” with largely predetermined outcomes, and for constituting mere “victors’ justice.”

Advocates of judicializing international affairs wanted more, and in 1998, by the Statute of Rome, established the International Criminal Court (ICC), seated in The Hague near the ICJ. The European Union and Bill Clinton were ardent supporters of the treaty. Clinton signed it in his administration’s waning hours, knowing there was no chance of Senate ratification. His chief negotiator described the ICC as “the ultimate weapon of international judicial intervention” and “a shiny new hammer to swing in the years ahead.” George W. Bush reversed course, ordering the treaty unsigned in 2002, effectively ending any prospect of U.S. membership far into the future. India, Russia, and China, among others, also did not join.

American opposition to both the ICC and the Rome Statute’s substantive provisions (defining four crimes: genocide, aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity) was hardly confined to the Bush administration. Shortly after the statute entered into force, Congress enacted the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, authorizing, among other things, “all means necessary and appropriate” to release Americans held by or on behalf of the ICC. For good reason, it was dubbed the “Hague Invasion Act.” 

Simultaneously, President Bush launched a global campaign under the statute’s Article 98 to prevent U.S. citizens from being turned over to the ICC, in time securing agreements with over 100 nations. The Trump administration made further efforts to protect U.S. interests, although Joe Biden has abandoned many of them.

The ICC’s flaws are too numerous for one brief article. Fundamentally, the very concept of the ICC is illegitimate, an utterly unwarranted derogation of our constitutional, democratic sovereignty by an unaccountable entity operating in an international void. The court is not part of a coherent international-order structure. It is simply “out there” pretending to be a court in a pretend constitutional system that lacks even a pretend legislature to make laws and a pretend executive to enforce them. The ICC combines all three branches of government authority into one body, defying every American concept of separation of powers and the “structural constitutionalism” the Framers believed so critical to protecting our freedoms. Though ICC supporters claim it as vital, it is precisely this consolidating of functions that makes the court most dangerous.

The ICC is not checked anywhere in its jurisdictional reach, its legal conclusions, or its prosecutorial discretion. ICC supporters argue that its member governments ultimately control the judges and the prosecutor, but that is entirely theoretical. So far-reaching is the ICC’s purported jurisdiction that it applies even to nonmembers such as the United States and Israel when alleged crimes are committed on the territory of a state that is party to the Rome Statute. When such nonmembers try to protect themselves against the ICC’s excesses, they are accused of interfering with its independence. While the ICJ decides cases among nations, the ICC purports to exercise jurisdiction directly over individuals, authority no prior international organization ever claimed. Americans fought a revolution against such usurpations.

ICC advocates believe that if they just pretend hard enough, real governments will come to accept the prosecutor’s unaccountable decisions and follow the ICC’s orders. Unfortunately, for over two decades, it has been the court and its prosecutor that have done most of the pretending. Nonetheless, Westerners especially have a childlike capacity to pretend; they see hope in the ICC where potential aggressors see only opportunity. Those whom the threat of prosecution and punishment is supposed to deter have not been impressed, an outcome surprising to ICC partisans but not to history’s hard men. The likes of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un, and Ayatollah Khamenei couldn’t care less about the threat of “legal” consequences for their actions.

The ICC’s most dangerous component is its essentially unaccountable prosecutor, whose extraordinary leeway makes U.S. “independent counsels” look tame. As with the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals, the Rome Statute’s substantive crimes are vaguely stated, written in broad and sweeping diplomatic prose. They do not pass muster by American standards, which require clarity and precision in criminal statutes in order to give citizens notice of what prohibitions and obligations they face. The Supreme Court has long employed the “void for vagueness” doctrine to declare unconstitutional laws that afford too much discretion to prosecutors, impermissibly putting citizens at risk of prosecution for crimes they never understood existed.

Turned loose on the Rome Statute’s definitions of crimes, U.S. courts would not hesitate to declare much of them unacceptably vague. Moreover, the statute’s drafters openly advocated expanding the list of criminal prohibitions as the prosecutor and the ICC confronted new circumstances. Here, of course, the lack of separated powers and checks and balances figures importantly. It is one thing for a popularly elected legislature to enact new criminal laws but quite another for a prosecutor accountable to the ICC alone, and a court accountable to no one, to do so, especially where the ex post facto issue arises every time a new “crime” is detected. Nor are defendants protected by jury trials, as our Sixth Amendment requires; cases are tried instead before panels of the court, juries being so 18th-century to the statute’s drafters.

ICC supporters believe that many of these concerns are overstated because of the doctrine of “complementarity.” Embodied in the statute’s Article 17, complementarity means theoretically that jurisdiction to handle serious international crimes lies primarily in member states, with the ICC involved only rarely. Although reasonable-sounding, complementarity is not some well-settled principle of international law. It is simply an academic theory, carrying about as much force in the real world as most such fantasies. In practice, the ICC decides whether states have sufficiently met their obligations, and if not, the ICC will act. States are subordinated to the ICC’s unreviewable decisions, period. This is as plain a usurpation of sovereignty, especially from constitutional democracies, as one can imagine. What other countries accept is up to them, but America bends its knee to the ICC at its own peril.

Concern about the mirage of complementarity is not hypothetical. The prosecutor’s recent decision to seek arrest warrants against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defense minister Yoav Gallant, along with two Hamas officials, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza (and other Iranian-backed terrorist threats against Israel) was a fire bell in the night that complementarity was no protection at all. Moreover, by interfering in the heat of battle, the ICC undoubtedly made resolving the war politically more difficult, all the while exhibiting the stench of moral equivalence by seeking arrest warrants against both sides as if they were equally culpable. Similar concerns apply to the prosecutor’s decision to proceed against Vladimir Putin and then–Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu in the ongoing Ukraine conflict. Who holds the ICC to account for these unilateral decisions? The precedent for irresponsible interference in future conflicts is unmistakable.

The solution is to treat questions of whether and when to prosecute internationally as unique to their circumstances. Prosecution über alles is not the answer. Nations should take responsibility for their own citizens’ crimes even if that is impossible until there is regime change in the offending state. That may mean justice delayed, but international probity will ultimately increase only when nations accept responsibility for crimes committed in their names. Merely that the ICC can try cases more immediately is no answer. The hard reality is that many (perhaps most) contemporaneous ICC trials would be in absentia, which simply fuels grievances that provoke future conflicts. Who, for example, believes that trying Putin in absentia would increase global peace and security? The most grievous crimes ultimately require international resolution in broad political terms, not narrow legal ones. The ICC cannot bear that burden.

For Americans, the fundamental question is how to protect ourselves and our allies from this illegitimate court and prosecutor. During two decades of operation, the concerns expressed while the Rome Statute was being negotiated have too frequently become realities. “Fixes” to the ICC, of whatever magnitude, will not suffice. The institution itself is irreparably flawed.

Sporadic U.S. cooperation with ICC investigations is potentially dangerous. Indeed, the most insidious temptation is for Washington to assist the ICC when the likely accused nation is discernibly evil. In George W. Bush’s second term, for example, the United States cooperated with the ICC in the Darfur conflict and more broadly. Barack Obama found numerous opportunities, including in Kenya, Libya, and the former Zaire. Under Joe Biden, with the support of several congressional Republicans, U.S. cooperation with and rhetorical support for the ICC advanced to its highest levels, especially regarding multiple allegations of Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

Although such cooperation has not to date increased the chance that Washington will join, the risk is still real, and the allegation of hypocrisy hard to ignore. The unpleasant reality is that U.S. cooperation with the ICC when it suits us is hypocritical and ultimately damaging to America’s principled case against the ICC’s legitimacy. Biden personally demonstrated the hypocrisy when he criticized the prosecutor’s pursuit of senior Israeli officials while simultaneously supporting the ICC investigation of Russian crimes in Ukraine.

The only safe and conscientious American approach is what I have long called the “three noes”: no U.S. cooperation of any sort with the ICC, no direct or indirect financial contributions to the ICC, and no negotiations with other governments to “improve” the Rome Statute. We should continue and expand our efforts, especially with European Union members, to obtain Article 98 agreements to protect U.S. citizens. And we should continuously reexamine the adequacy of our weapons against ICC efforts to investigate American conduct.

This zombie organization cannot ultimately survive without American support. We shouldn’t give it oxygen.

This article appears as “Lawless in The Hague” in the September 2024 print edition of National Review.

John R. Bolton served as national-security adviser to President Donald Trump and as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush. He is the author of The Room Where It Happened.

This article was first published in The National Review on July 25, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

ABOUT JOHN BOLTON

Ambassador John Bolton, a diplomat and a lawyer, has spent many years in public service. He served as the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations in 2005-2006. He was Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security from 2001 to 2005. In the Reagan Administration, he was an Assistant Attorney General.