US President Donald Trump continues to empower his special envoy to the Middle East and Ukraine, Steve Witkoff, whom he considers among his closest confidants outside his family.
He believes Mr Witkoff’s experience in business negotiations will mirror itself in the political arena, yielding pragmatic results that tie investment returns to opportunities for redrawing conflict geographies. But reducing complex conflicts to binary deals focused on punishments and rewards is dangerous, especially as the Trump team overlooks the role of ideology to sustain governments and regimes.
Indeed, the Iranian establishment will do whatever it can to avoid confronting the essential question Mr Trump should raise: is it prepared to revise its revolutionary doctrine, which is premised on becoming a nuclear power in the Middle East and employing militias as armed extensions of the state in sovereign nations?
Iran’s leaders are not ready to explicitly relinquish this doctrine, nor even to moderate or amend it. On the nuclear front, they continue to deny any intention to reach the threshold of becoming a nuclear-armed state, yet they insist on continuing uranium enrichment – now at 60 per cent – in violation of previous agreements. They cling to their concealable centrifuges. They are adamant about limiting the ongoing talks, now in the fifth round, to the nuclear issue, refusing to include their ballistic missiles programme or their proxies.
It appears tare determined to drag out the negotiations, buying time, improving optics and avoiding American or Israeli military strikes on their facilities.
The Trump team has fallen into Iran’s trap, apparently delivering everything Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the ideological establishment have sought, including sparing the doctrine itself. So far, Mr Khamenei’s team has secured what it wanted from Mr Trump: continued enrichment, exclusion of regional issues from the talks, prolonged negotiations that serve as a shield against strikes, and US guarantees to Tehran that Israel will not attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Some seasoned American diplomats are warning of troubling consequences that could see the administration repeat the blunders of former US president Barack Obama – if Mr Trump continues conceding to Tehran’s insistence on its “right” to enrichment and its “right” to reject any discussion of its interventions in the Arab world.
The problem is that Mr Trump is desperate for a win – either by ending the war in Ukraine, or by striking a deal with Iran that contains its nuclear ambitions. However, both objectives appear out of reach at least for now.
Mr Trump’s personal relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin has soured significantly, having realised that Russia’s military establishment insists on continuing its war in Ukraine. Frustration has replaced warmth, and the prospect of additional sanctions against Moscow has grown.
On the other hand, Europe’s position on the issue seems to have gathered strength. Germany’s new Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is going to Washington at a time when there appears to be a new understanding on Ukraine based on a recalibrated approach between the Trump administration’s stance on Russia and Europe’s boldness in confronting the US over the war. For what it’s worth, European leaders have also pushed back against Mr Trump’s reservations regarding America’s role in Nato.
Mr Trump is in a hurry. He fears that the prolonged war in Ukraine could become a deep pit from which he cannot climb out – and one that renders his vow to end the war impossible. Mr Witkoff has tried everything to draw the Russian leadership to the negotiating table. But here, too – as with Iran and Hamas – Mr Witkoff’s lack of political experience has been exposed, revealing the limits of businessmen navigating strategic geopolitical terrain.
If efforts on Ukraine collapse, Iran stands to potentially benefit, as it could make Mr Trump even more desperate for a win. But the opposite could also be true: if a breakthrough is achieved on Ukraine, Mr Trump’s predisposition for falling into Iran’s trap might diminish.
The US President prefers not to be dragged into a military confrontation with Iran, warning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to take any action. He fears Mr Netanyahu might launch an operation knowing full well the US won’t abandon Israel. Conversely, the Trump team might allow limited Israeli operations within a division-of-labour approach to apply military pressure for negotiation leverage.
Either way, the core disagreement cannot be ignored: Israel, like Europe, insists that Iran’s ballistic missiles programme and regional behaviour be addressed now – not later, as Tehran wants.
No one denies the strategic breakthroughs that Mr Trump has achieved, particularly during his critical visit to the Gulf, but there are pitfalls that demand serious attention.
Syria remains in intensive care, despite all the celebrations over sanctions relief. Gaza is another minefield, as is the West Bank, making it even more urgent for the US to intervene by way of dismantling Israeli settlements under construction. There is a stalemate in Lebanon, thanks in large part to Hezbollah, which has dragged President Joseph Aoun into a dialogue that serves as a stalling tactic to benefit Tehran’s negotiations with the Trump administration while allowing the group to retain its weapons and evade the obligations of its ceasefire agreement with Israel.
All this suggests Washington must rethink its approach to dealing with the rest of the world. Indeed, there is an urgent need to stop fixating on the bluster of the Trump phenomenon and to return to some traditional norms of political conduct befitting a superpower like the US.
