How is all of Trump’s disruption — both the positive and the negative — unfolding in the Middle East?

President Trump has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams in shaking up the old world order during the first 100 days of his second term. Much of his game plan has stirred global consternation as he attempts to compel other nations to bend to his will. What drives his singular obsession with tariffs? How is all of Trump’s disruption — both the positive and the negative — unfolding in the Middle East? Should Israel be pleased, peeved, or a bit of both?

Jolting World Markets

Applying economic pressure on foreign nations to secure more favorable trade terms is a sound policy. Scaring the daylights out of the financial markets is unwise and could ultimately cost the federal government more revenue than it gains from tariffs.

The financial markets have voted thumbs-down on Trump’s tariff policies, with the major stock market indices posting double-digit losses. Markets were already overvalued, had reached record highs shortly after Trump took office, and were long overdue for a correction.

Having said that, what’s most disturbing about the recent losses is that Trump shared a video on his Truth Social media site titled “Trump is purposefully CRASHING the market” — seemingly endorsing a conspiracy theory suggesting he wanted the markets to tumble.

A few days later, without referring to the video, Trump appeared to walk this back. Forbes reported that Trump told reporters on Air Force One: “I don’t want anything to go down, but sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.”

How did all this get started? The theory goes like this: A significant stock market sell-off typically leads to a “flight to safety,” in which investors redirect their proceeds into fixed-income investments, such as US government bonds. This year, the US must refinance approximately $7 trillion of its $36 trillion national debt. An increase in bond demand would lower the interest rates the US will have to pay, benefiting the economy.

Although the stock market sell-off initially triggered this flight to safety, it proved temporary. Large hedge funds, and perhaps even China, have held off purchasing bonds and have instead been selling their bond holdings, pushing intermediate and long-term rates close to their 2023 highs during the peak of the inflation scare.

Any seasoned investor will tell you that trying to predict or influence investor decisions is playing with fire and can lead to disaster. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) put it best on X: “The stock market is comprised of millions of people who are simultaneously trading. The market indexes are a distillation of sentiment. When the markets tumble like this in response to tariffs, it pays to listen.”

Trump listened and moderated his tariff plan for all countries except China. However, that’s a major exception, and if it breaks out into a full-fledged trade war, we’ll see market turmoil unlike anything we’ve seen so far.

Betting on Iran

Trump has prioritized selecting loyalists to serve him this time around, even if they lack the requisite background. Trump’s appointment of Steve Witkoff, his golf buddy and fellow real estate developer, as chief negotiator for solving intractable conflicts and dealing with the world’s most ruthless and cagy autocrats, is both baffling and frightening, especially for Israel.

Witkoff is no Henry Kissinger, and even if he were, it’s too much to ask of any one person to negotiate an end to the Russia-Ukraine war, induce Iran to halt its development of nukes, and force Hamas to release all its remaining hostages.

Even assuming Witkoff is sincere about learning, throwing him into the same room with the duplicitous warlords that stalk the Middle East is like throwing him to the sharks off Palm Beach. Witkoff admitted to Fox News last month that Hamas might have “duped” him into thinking they had agreed to his bridging proposal to extend the ceasefire with Israel. If Hamas can dupe him, how will he get over on Iran?

Fox’s Sean Hannity expressed his skepticism while interviewing Witkoff last week, asking: “How do you have a conversation with people that believe in a caliphate, convert or die, and the notion that they have to wipe Israel and the US off the map? I don’t know if it’s ever going to be possible to get a deal with people who have that ideology and mindset.”

Witkoff replied that the conversation with the Iranians would center on two points, to ensure they don’t enrich uranium to percentages above what’s needed to produce nuclear power for peaceful energy needs (3.67%) and to ensure they don’t possess long-range missiles or the trigger mechanisms that could deliver a nuclear bomb.

“The devil will be in the details of the document and hopefully verification will be the key point that undergirds the agreement if we’re fortunate enough to get there,” Witkoff said.

Obviously, that answer did little to assuage Israel’s fears. Before Witkoff went to Rome on the seventh day of Pesach for his second meeting with the Iranians, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sent Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and Mossad chief David Barnea to meet with Witkoff in Paris talks to clarify Israel’s red lines.

Trump’s sudden decision to initiate talks with Iran caught Netanyahu by surprise. While Trump denied that he had “waved off” an imminent Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, he told White House reporters: “I am not in a rush to do it because I think that Iran has a chance to have a great country and to live happily without death...”

What would Sean Hannity say about that? To quote Jonathan Spyer, a leading Israeli-based expert for decades on Iran, Syria, and Lebanon, Iran has not thrown in the towel: “All of Iran’s setbacks, with the exception of the loss of the Assad regime [in Syria], are reversible. To reverse them — to rebuild, replenish, re-arm, and recruit — Iran needs only time.”

The negotiations with Iran are allowing them that time, and Iran will cheat on any deal they sign, so anything short of verifiably shutting down their nuclear facilities poses a threat that Israel can no longer ignore.

Beating Up the Houthis

For an administration set on avoiding foreign wars that don’t directly impact American interests, the US military campaign against the Houthis seems somewhat inconsistent with its stated game plan. The Houthis are a rebel group in Yemen that has threatened international shipping lanes with aggressive actions and fired over 20 missiles at Israel — mainly during the night and on Shabbos. They have been pounded by US Navy airstrikes over the past few weeks.

What’s America’s game?

The US stands to gain two advantages from confronting the Houthis. First, it supports Egypt. Trump was either unable or unwilling to persuade Egypt to agree to temporarily host displaced Arabs during Gaza’s reconstruction, so he has found another way to put Egypt in his debt. Houthi attacks on shipping lanes have forced shippers to redirect their vessels from routes through the Red Sea and Egypt’s Suez Canal. These diversions cost Egypt $7 billion in lost toll revenues in 2024.

Secondly, targeting the Houthis also plays into Saudi Arabia’s hands. The Houthis carried out numerous strikes on Saudi military positions and oil facilities from 2015 to 2022. Trump is planning to visit Saudi Arabia in May to negotiate a deal, which may include a US defense pact and approval for a peaceful Saudi nuclear program. He requires some leverage over the Saudis beforehand.

The Houthis represent relatively easy targets since they cannot effectively retaliate against the United States. Even if the US military eventually neutralizes them, they pose a comparatively minor regional threat compared to Iran and the highly trained and well-equipped Turkish and Egyptian armed forces, which are increasingly showing their military teeth.

Trump’s strategy is risky. If Egypt’s President al-Sisi hasn’t had to pay a price for spurning Trump’s Gaza plan, and also for canceling his White House meeting with Trump, why should they start giving in to Trump now?

Trump has only effusive praise for Turkish president Recep Erdogan, telling a White House news conference in the presence of Prime Minister Netanyahu: “I happen to like him [Erdogan] and he likes me,” before turning to Netanyahu saying: “Any problem that you have with Turkey, I think I can solve. I mean, as long as you’re reasonable. You have to be reasonable. We have to be reasonable.”

Doesn’t Erdogan have to be reasonable, too?

Remaking Lebanon and Gaza

Lebanon might be the only real bright spot so far for the Trump foreign policy team, and even here, much of the credit should go to Israel for standing firm against Hezbollah’s violations of the ceasefire agreements that the Biden administration negotiated between Israel and Lebanon in its waning days.

Usually, a ceasefire means that Israel ceases and the enemy fires, but this time, it’s been just the opposite. A decimated and demoralized Hezbollah seems unable or unwilling to retaliate.

Part of that is due to the Lebanese government’s efforts to restore order and disarm Hezbollah. It’s an uphill battle, and they have a long way to go in this chronically unstable country.

Credit should also go to Trump’s special envoy to Lebanon, Morgan Ortagus, whose no-nonsense approach sways the Lebanese and resonates in Israel.

With Ortagus, Trump selected a seasoned diplomat with a strong background. Ortagus is a veteran of US Naval Intelligence and an experienced political advisor and spokeswoman who has worked for the State Department and the US Treasury, focusing on North Africa and the Middle East. This includes a role in Saudi Arabia, where she helped monitor illicit cash flows to terrorists. When a Hezbollah leader went on one of his classic rants last week threatening Israel about how strong and determined they were despite all of their losses, Ortagus responded with a one-word answer on X: “Yawn.”

Her kind of clarity is notably absent in Gaza. Before taking office, Trump stated there would be severe consequences if Hamas did not release the hostages before his term began. However, he was not specific about whether he expected all hostages to be freed or if he was open to partial agreements. Furthermore, he did not back this statement up with military threats, like those aimed at the Houthis. Perhaps Trump anticipated that Israel would take action, but Israel’s reluctance to advance with its full-scale attack on Gaza made it appear as if Trump’s threats and Israel’s response were unrelated.

In the Middle East, if you don’t follow up on your threats, you quickly lose your credibility.

Looking Down the Road

No one can accuse the Trump administration of lacking energy. They are addressing almost every major trouble spot in the world, and, domestically, have achieved success in border security and immigration, which were top issues Trump campaigned on.

In the next 100 days and then the next 1,000 days, Trump must become more focused, set priorities, and disregard what is impossible.

One step in the right direction is Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s announcement that if Russia and Ukraine don’t sign a deal quickly, the US will have better things to do with its time. Next in line is limiting Iran talks to a strict and short time frame.

The administration must stop wasting its political capital unnecessarily antagonizing and alarming the world. America doesn’t need to control Greenland or retake the Panama Canal to become great again.

Trump’s posturing about annexing Canada was preposterous from the get-go and has backfired. Canada holds parliamentary elections on Monday, April 28.

Earlier in the campaign, Pierre Poilievre, a pro-Trump conservative modeled after the pro-Israel Stephen Harper, looked like a shoo-in. However, anti-Trump Canadians have rallied around Liberal Party leader Mark Carney, who, according to a Politico headline, has unveiled his plan to Trump-proof Canada. The Liberals have now come back to lead in election polls.

Across the ocean, Israel is playing a waiting game and is on edge. Israel has degraded, but not defeated, its principal enemies, and any possible confrontation with Turkey, Egypt, or Iran could make the battles against Hamas and Hezbollah seem like child’s play.

Prime Minister Netanyahu is shrewd and has learned to ride the waves at high and low tide with five US presidents, including Trump once before. However, he is not guaranteed to remain Israel’s leader after the November 2026 election (if not sooner).

Israel is and will remain, for the foreseeable geopolitical future, reliant on US military aid and political support to hold its ground. Israel cannot afford an open break with Trump, but it also can’t sit idly by while the administration negotiates deals with Iran, Saudi Arabia, and others with unknown consequences.

Israel hopes that the Trump administration settles in and settles down.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1058)