During his first term, President Trump brokered the Abraham Accords.
I welcomed them.
Not because I suddenly believed the Middle East had discovered perpetual peace, but because I know the region well enough to appreciate even small steps in the right direction.
I have spent years living in several Middle Eastern countries. I speak reasonably good Arabic. I have worked there, travelled there and watched the region from the inside rather than through television studios and think-tank reports.
It is a part of the world I genuinely love.
That affection also makes me cautious.
The Middle East has a remarkable ability to turn optimism into expensive lessons.
So while many celebrated the Abraham Accords as a historic breakthrough, I remained sceptical. Hopeful, certainly, but sceptical. The agreements involved countries that had already grown tired of maintaining a largely theoretical conflict. Quiet cooperation had existed for years beneath the surface. Formal recognition was significant, but it also reflected realities that had been developing for quite some time.
Those were, relatively speaking, the easier agreements.
They involved parties already searching for a path forward.
The second term has been different.
The remaining conflicts are not disputes waiting patiently for someone to organise the paperwork. They are the accumulated weight of generations, identities, memories and grievances. They are arguments written not merely in treaties, but in cemeteries.
That is a very different landscape.
It is also where transactional politics reaches its limits.
President Trump approaches negotiation much as a successful real estate developer would. Find the leverage. Increase the pressure. Create momentum. Close the deal. Move on to the next one.
That approach can be remarkably effective.
When both sides ultimately want an agreement.
When interests overlap.
When the disagreement concerns price rather than identity.
International politics sometimes works exactly that way.
But not always.
Ukraine has already demonstrated that some conflicts refuse to conform to the logic of rapid deal-making.
The Middle East demonstrates it even more clearly.
Many of its conflicts are not fundamentally about territory.
They are about history.
Religion.
Memory.
Humiliation.
Honor.
Justice.
Identity.
Those are currencies that do not appear on balance sheets.
No negotiator, however talented, can simply package centuries of accumulated trauma into a document and expect reality to obey the signatures.
History offers uncomfortable lessons.
France and Germany eventually transformed one of Europe’s oldest rivalries into one of its strongest partnerships.
But they did not achieve that because somebody brokered a spectacular weekend agreement.
They arrived there only after centuries of warfare, repeated catastrophes and millions of deaths had exhausted both societies. The reconciliation was not created by diplomacy alone.
It was purchased with blood.
That is a terrible sentence to write.
It is an even worse reality to acknowledge.
Some conflicts do not end because somebody discovers the perfect formula.
They end because, eventually, the participants become too exhausted to continue.
Civilizations bleed until they no longer wish to.
It is brutal.
It is tragic.
It is profoundly unfair.
But history has rarely shown itself interested in fairness.
I would still like to see peace throughout the Middle East.
Perhaps more than most.
I have too many memories there not to.
But wishing for peace and understanding the conditions under which peace actually emerges are two very different things.
Hope remains essential.
Illusion is optional.
Confusing the two has always been one of humanity’s more expensive habits.
https://thehill.com/national-security/5930898-iran-strait-hormuz-us-surrender/