Trump's Middle East Pottery Barn problem
The Gaza ceasefire existed because he wanted it to; its collapse has his explicit endorsement.
President Donald Trump entered office in January with an accomplishment already on his résumé: brokering a Gaza ceasefire deal that seemed to promise a new chapter of regional calm. The January agreement halted 15 months of devastating warfare, froze Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, and appeared to position Trump as the dealmaker-in-chief he always claimed to be.
Fast forward just two months, and that peace has spectacularly unraveled. With Israel's bombs once again falling on Gaza, Houthi missiles sailing toward Tel Aviv, and American warplanes pounding Yemen, the question now isn't whether Trump can deliver Middle East peace, but whether he ever truly wanted it in the first place.
The ceasefire's swift collapse
The Israeli military expanded its ground operations across the Gaza Strip on Thursday as Hamas fired rockets at central Israel for the first time in months, in what looks increasingly like a slide back toward full-scale war. But this military escalation was preceded by something equally devastating: For nearly two weeks before the airstrikes, Netanyahu had already imposed a total blockade on humanitarian aid entering Gaza, cutting off food, medicine, and fuel. The move was transparently punitive—a "tool of extortion," as Saudi Arabia's foreign ministry described it, designed to pressure Hamas in ceasefire negotiations.
For weeks, Israel and Hamas had been locked in fruitless negotiations. The talks stalled because Hamas refused to release significant numbers of hostages unless Israel promised to permanently end the war—a commitment Netanyahu would not make unless Hamas agreed to give up power in Gaza. The potential endgame for this round of fighting remains far from clear. Israel and Hamas have set seemingly incompatible conditions, and the renewed Israeli assault has yet to force Hamas to accept its demands.
Gaza's descent into what aid organizations are calling a man-made humanitarian catastrophe is accelerating. During the ceasefire, an average of 600 trucks daily had brought desperately needed aid. Now, with the blockade and renewed fighting, UNICEF reports that one million children are "living without the very basics they need to survive—yet again." Community kitchens that once fed 40,000 people daily have scaled back to serving just 10,000.
Netanyahu's political calculation
Since the start of the war, Netanyahu has faced dueling, possibly incompatible pressures: Families of the hostages want him to cut a deal with Hamas to free them, while his far-right coalition partners want to continue the war in order to annihilate the militant group. On Tuesday, he appeared to cast his lot with the latter—and Trump's administration has backed Netanyahu's decision to unilaterally walk away from the ceasefire it took credit for brokering.
The politics here aren't subtle. The return to war bought Netanyahu something that almost certainly eluded him had he stuck with the ceasefire agreement: political survival. Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right lawmaker who quit the government in January in protest of the cease-fire deal, led his party back into the coalition on Tuesday, praising the military action as "the right, moral, ethical and most justified step."
The Trump doctrine
If there's a coherent Trump doctrine emerging in the Middle East, it appears to be "strategic incoherence." His administration seems gripped by a schizophrenic approach that's part Jared Kushner-style deal-making and part Dick Cheney-esque muscle-flexing. This bipolar foreign policy reflects the two competing camps battling for Trump's ear.
The "America First" isolationist wing, represented by figures like Vice President J.D. Vance and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, believes in solving problems "over the telephone" rather than with boots on the ground. Their pitch: The Middle East is a quagmire of other people's problems that Americans shouldn't die for.
Then there's the hawkish interventionist camp, led by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz (who once publicly fantasized about re-invading Afghanistan) and Secretary of State Marco Rubio (whose neoconservative credentials finally popped up for the first time since his MAGA makeover). Their message: American power must be unleashed, lest we appear weak.
Yet Trump, who once boasted that he'd make Gaza "inhabitable" with gleaming resorts, has silently acquiesced to policies that only deepen the territory's uninhabitability. His administration hasn't issued any statement about Israel's aid cutoff, nor urged Netanyahu to reconsider the blockade. What's clear is that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed Israeli officials "consulted with the Trump administration" before launching the strikes, noting that Trump "fully supports Israel" in its renewed offensive.
Wider war looms
After Israel blocked foreign aid shipments into Gaza, the Houthi movement announced that it would begin attacking Israeli shipping again. Trump not only resumed U.S. attacks on Yemen over the weekend but also took the opportunity to threaten direct war with Iran, which backs the Houthi government.
"Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN," the president warned on his Truth Social platform. "IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!"
Some Trump advisers may believe they can use the sledgehammer in Yemen to bludgeon Iran to the negotiating table. Good luck with that. Iran may be weakened, but Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is not going to negotiate at the point of an American weapon. Responding to news of a Trump letter to Tehran reportedly demanding a new nuclear deal within two months, Khamenei dismissed the idea of talking with the Trump administration in a meeting with students, saying, "When we know they won't honor it, what's the point of negotiating?"
Trump's ownership of the crisis
Whatever comes next in this rapidly deteriorating situation bears Trump's signature. Unlike his predecessor's inherited conflicts, this is now entirely Trump's show. The ceasefire existed because he wanted it to; its collapse has his explicit endorsement. There will be no blaming Biden or Obama for what unfolds in the coming weeks. The "I inherited a mess" card has been played and discarded.
Colin Powell's famous "Pottery Barn rule" has never been more applicable: You break it, you own it it. By both brokering the ceasefire and giving Netanyahu the green light to shatter it, Trump has placed his signature on the fragments. The Middle East that Biden handed over to Trump was certainly broken—but Trump claimed to have fixed it, only to let it crash to the floor again. Now he's left holding all the pieces with no apparent plan to reassemble them.
Earlier this month, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir declared that 2025 would be a "year of war" in Gaza and Iran. At the time, it appeared the Trump administration might restrain such ambitions. Now, Zamir's prediction seems less like a military assessment and more like the Trump administration's unofficial policy.
The greatest irony may be that Trump, who campaigned on ending foreign entanglements, appears to be sleepwalking into precisely the kind of open-ended Middle Eastern conflict he once scorned. Whether Trump has made a conscious decision to support escalation or simply surrendered to Netanyahu's war timeline remains unclear. What is certain is that America's role in the Middle East has shifted dramatically—from would-be peacemaker to active combatant—in a matter of weeks.
Trump's grandiose talk of leaving a "peacemaker" legacy has given way to a grim reality: he now owns a policy that allows Israel to blockade food and medicine from starving civilians while bombing them from above. When Palestinians look at the Gaza Trump once imagined as a "Riviera of the Middle East," they see only rubble, hunger, and graves—with Trump's tacit approval.
Does Hamas have any responsibility here? Are the reports of Hamas appropriating the humanitarian supplies for the support of the terrorists untrue? For the well being of their citizens, should not Hamas surrender? Have we not seen the barbaric treatment of Israeli captives?
How is Israel expected to convince Hamas to relinquish their ambition to destroy Israel and all Jews? They have tried to leave them to themselves. They let Hamas citizens work in Israel among other actions during the war to save enemy lives. Again- what responsibility does Hamas have?
Trump does own things now and has accepted it. But we cannot forget how we got here-- Biden's weakness and wrong philosophy.
Thank you for this insightful piece!