Filenews 18 June 2025
The world has set out to spoil Donald Trump's plans. In addition to the bad weather that threatened the smooth conduct of the military parade in Washington for his (and the military's) birthday, on June 14, there is also a transport storm in the east. Israel attacked Iran, potentially provoking another war or, at worst, involving the U.S. in it, thus destroying Trump's foreign policy.
The order given by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu embarrasses Trump and the United States, on many levels. First, Trump continues to claim that all the wars that broke out under his predecessor, Joe Biden, would never have happened if he had been in power, because he, that is, Trump, is so powerful and widely respected. And yet, the close U.S. ally, Bibi, ignored Trump's wishes, as he had done with Biden, triggering a new conflict.
In addition, Trump wants to go down in history for his negotiating skills and win a Nobel Peace Prize for his role as a "peacemaker." As the Russian president continues to reject his negotiating efforts for a ceasefire in Ukraine, Trump's best hope for success has been negotiating to establish new limits on Iran's nuclear program. (At the time of writing, the next round of talks between Trump's envoy, Steve Witkov, and the Iranians was still scheduled to take place in Oman on Sunday.)
Now an American victory at the negotiating table seems extremely difficult. How could Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, make significant concessions to the Americans while his regime is being hit by America's main ally in the region?
The nightmare scenario for Trump is that instead of bringing peace, he will end up fighting another war in the Middle East, which is exactly the opposite of what he promised to MAGA's electoral base. This could happen if the Iranians retaliate not only against Israel but also against U.S. bases in the region, where about 40,000 U.S. service members are stationed. (The U.S. began moving some of them to a safe location before the strikes began.) Marco Rubio, Trump's secretary of state and also national security adviser, has already warned Tehran to leave U.S. assets alone — Iran can follow his advice, as it has no interest in involving the world's most powerful military.
But not Bibi, who would love to fight on the side of the United States. After all, the U.S. has a lot of things that Israel doesn't have, including explosives that could get out of the way of the uranium centrifugal units buried deep in the Iranian mountains. As Iran counterattacks Israel, we can expect Netanyahu and the Bibi-friendly Jewish lobbies in the U.S. to pressure Trump to intervene.
Trump hoped to avoid this test. It cannot be seen that he is abandoning Israel to his fate, nor can he be led by Bibi into a war he does not want. For the same reason, it has already tried to distance itself from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, avoiding endorsing and stopping Israel's continued aggression in Gaza or the eventual annexation of the West Bank. In fact, Trump has even given up trying to find a viable solution: His ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, told Bloomberg that the U.S. no longer supports an independent Palestinian state, departing from two decades of official White House policy.
So instead of spending Saturday enjoying the grandeur of the U.S. armed forces from his platform, Trump is going in and out of the situation room with Rubio and his national security council. This is his next problem. In the first five months of his second term, Trump allowed all of his foreign policy, intelligence, and defense organs to plunge into various forms of chaos, strife, and incompetence.
The Pentagon — run by former Fox News anchor and Trump supporter Pete Hegseth — is being consumed in an internal war against inclusion policies (DEI) and woke, while top officials have resigned in frustration or have been forced to leave. The State Department is following a similar path, with a reorganization that, as I hear all the time, looks internally like a MAGA takeover. In addition, Rubio, the head of the department, is distracted from his other roles, most notably that of national security adviser. In the context of this function, the National Security Council has just been gutted, dismissing about a hundred policy experts and losing valuable know-how.
The irony is that Trump apparently fired his former national security adviser, Michael Waltz, in part because of Waltz's attempt to coordinate with Bibi on the attack on Iran. Trump did not like this manipulation. Now it's up to Rubio, with a staff still trying to figure out who does what and who knows what, to present options to a president who feels more comfortable with confirmation than analysis.
Israeli attacks on Iran may or may not succeed in halting Tehran's nuclear program, and they may or may not set fire to the wider region, as Hamas tried to do on October 7, 2023. But the attack certainly damages already troubled U.S.-Israeli relations and puts the U.S. president in the worst possible position. The aspiring peacemaker and strong man is now in danger of leading a war or appearing weak. Happy Birthday, Mr. President.
