Donald Trump begins his presidency with ambitions of being a peacemaker. He laid out this vision in his inaugural address, declaring that his administration “will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars we end, and perhaps most importantly, by the wars we never get into.” Later that day, he basked in the success of the hostage cease-fire deal in Gaza, including by bringing the families of Israeli hostages to the inaugural parade. “We’re getting a lot of people out in a short period of time,” he proclaimed.
There is no doubt that Trump helped secure the cease-fire deal. But to be a peacemaker who transforms the Middle East, he has more work to do. The main issues he confronts are Gaza and Iran. In Gaza, Israel and Hamas have different views of what is required to achieve the second phase of the deal, which would save the remaining hostages and produce a permanent cease-fire. Iran, meanwhile, is accelerating its nuclear program—with its “foot on the gas pedal” according to Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Tehran thus continues to existentially threaten Israel. Both issues are likely to dominate upcoming talks between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
Trump can—and may have to—address each problem separately. Both are serious in their own right, and Iran’s nuclear program is one of the biggest threats to global security. Should Iran go nuclear, Saudi Arabia will likely pursue a bomb, as well, adding even more danger to what is already one of the world’s most volatile regions. But the easiest way to handle Gaza and Iran might just be to address them together. Netanyahu is hesitant to move toward a permanent cease-fire, in part because he fears it will cause his government to collapse and trigger early elections. But for the prime minister, there is no issue more important than stopping Iran from going nuclear. It has been the central purpose of his long political career. In Knesset remarks years ago, for example, Netanyahu declared that halting the Iranian nuclear program was the reason he gets up in the morning. The more Trump can show he is prepared to work with Israel on Iran, the easier it will be for Netanyahu to make difficult decisions on Gaza.
That hardly means Trump has to rush into using military force. He has indicated that he is willing to make a deal with Tehran, and he repeatedly promised on the campaign trail that he would pursue a maximum-pressure campaign to halt the Iranian nuclear program. He will likely try to use economic leverage to achieve an agreement. But it does mean that he should make it clear to Netanyahu and Tehran that he will support Israeli attacks on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure should diplomacy fail. By agreeing to support Israeli strikes, Trump will increase the odds that U.S. diplomacy with Iran will work, as Iranian leaders will understand the harsh consequence of failure. For Netanyahu, meanwhile, having a jointly agreed-upon U.S. approach for dealing with what he sees as Israel’s most important—even existential—threat will mean it is far easier for him to make the hard political decision to fully implement the hostage deal and push forward with the cease-fire. If successful, then, this approach will allow the Trump administration to bring a lasting end to the war, open up new opportunities for Israel’s relations with Arab countries, and, most important, address the threat posed by Iran, the United States’ and Israel’s most dangerous Middle Eastern foe.
WHO BLINKS FIRST?
The framework of the Hamas-Israeli cease-fire deal changed little from the version negotiated by the Biden administration in May 2024. But Trump’s insistence that the agreement be done before he was inaugurated is what secured it. Netanyahu did not want to say no to Steve Witkoff, Trump’s newly appointed Middle East envoy, believing that doing so would damage his relationship with Trump. Egypt and Qatar, meanwhile, saw delivering the agreement as an early opportunity to curry favor with the administration. They likely told Hamas that it was in the group’s interest to get the deal done, as they would never get a better deal under Trump, who posted on Truth Social on December 2 that there would be “hell to pay” if hostages were not released by the time he took office.
But concluding a deal is one thing; implementing it is another. The agreement has three phases, and the first, even though it is proceeding, has already been plagued by disputes. Hamas seems to be testing the limits of the deal. It delayed providing names of the hostages it planned to release and did not initially free Arbel Yehud, one of the hostages on its list. Israel responded by preventing the return of Palestinians to the north of Gaza. Though those issues were overcome and the agreement has continued to hold, Hamas may balk at Israel’s refusal to release some of the most prominent prisoners on its list, including Marwan Barghouti and Ahmad Saadat. The biggest question that remains is whether phase two of the agreement can be negotiated. If Hamas decides that the Israelis are not serious and vice versa, they may be unable to do so. With phase 2 negotiation scheduled to begin on February 3, their differences could yet complicate the completion of the first phase.
Netanyahu has told his coalition partners that he has not committed to ending the war in part because of threats by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to bring down the government if phase two proceeds. Netanyahu has also touted commitments from Trump and former U.S. President Joe Biden that Israel would be allowed to resume the war if Hamas did not negotiate seriously or violated the deal. Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser, confirmed this promise, guaranteeing U.S. backing.
Concluding a cease-fire deal is one thing; implementing it is another.
In other words, Hamas, by violating the deal, would allow Netanyahu to avoid the difficult choice of putting his government and his political career at risk to save the remaining hostages and permanently end the war. And it may just do that. After all, the Hamas lead negotiator, Khalil al-Hayya, made a militant speech the day the cease-fire was announced in which he extolled October 7 and its mass killings as a “source of pride,” implying it needed to be repeated.
But although no one should count on Hamas’s rational calculations to overwhelm its ideological instincts, it is possible that Hamas will see it has an interest in a permanent cease-fire—if only to give it a lengthier respite from fighting and thus a chance to recoup. No Israeli government (or the international community) can or should be willing to accept Hamas’ continued rule in postwar Gaza. Indeed, to ensure this never happens, and to make sure no vacuum is left behind, the Trump administration will need to work with Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and other Arab countries to create an interim alternative administration. The gradual return of a reforming Palestinian Authority to Gaza could support this temporary government. Yet Hamas may well agree to step aside—at least for now. The group may give low priority to the needs of Gazans, but recent events show that they are at least somewhat attuned to their public perception. After Palestinians grew palpably angry about not being able to return to the north, the group began to honor its side of the cease-fire agreement. Hamas also knows that, should it insist on staying in power at this time, clashes with Israel are guaranteed, and that Trump will likely back the Israelis. Hamas leaders might even welcome the chance for a regional and international administration for Gaza—with the real promise of relief and reconstruction. (In any case, Hamas may believe it can find ways to reconstitute in postwar Gaza.)
Netanyahu, for his part, should recognize that if Israel violates the agreement and Hamas doesn’t, there could be a price to pay, not only with the Israeli public, which broadly favors the deal because it would see the release of the remaining hostages, but also with Trump. The president has already claimed victory and will not want the deal’s failure to tarnish his image as a peacemaker. Resuming the war in Gaza would also make it nearly impossible for Trump to broker Saudi-Israeli normalization, as the Saudis have refused to move toward a peace agreement with Israel so long as it remains in Gaza.
PRESSURE POINTS
Netanyahu, of course, cares more about staying prime minister than he does about pleasing Trump. But there is one issue on which Netanyahu may be willing to risk his government and face an election: Iran and its nuclear program. Even more than normalization with Saudi Arabia, which has been a recent focus of his, preventing Iran from existentially threatening Israel has defined Netanyahu. His concerns about the country’s nuclear pursuit go back to his first term in the late 1990s, and he has called it his “Winston Churchill” issue.
An agreement with Trump that would see the United States aim to decisively set back the Iranian nuclear program would be worth a great deal to Netanyahu. Netanyahu may not risk his government over ending the war in Gaza. But he may be swayed if he feels that he has a strategic understanding with Trump that, one way or another, the United States will help ensure that Iran will not develop nuclear weapons.
In practical terms, Trump is likely to apply much greater economic pressure while also using the threat of Israeli force, backed by Washington, to convey a clear message to the Iranians: there can be a diplomatic solution, but Iran must seize it to avoid military strikes that would destroy the nuclear infrastructure that it has built up over the last 30 years. Such a message will certainly not reduce the Iranian incentive to talk. Indeed, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Vice President Mohammad Javad Zarif have indicated that Iran is prepared to speak with the Trump administration after refusing to deal directly with Biden, suggesting that Tehran is feeling the heat.
They have good reason to be nervous: the Islamic Republic has been dramatically weakened in the past year. Hezbollah, the crown jewel of its so-called axis of resistance, has been decapitated by Israel. With the fall of the Assad regime, Iran’s land bridge through Syria to Lebanon is largely gone—along with its major investments there. Iran’s strikes against Israel in April and October 2024 were largely blunted, and Israel’s retaliation in October destroyed Iran’s strategic and air missile defenses, along with 90 percent of its ballistic missile producing capability. The country has never been so vulnerable, from without and from within. The country is suffering from significant electricity shortages, and its currency is extremely weak. Morteza Afqah, an Iranian economist, has said that “without the lifting of sanctions, the country appears incapable of managing the economy sustainably.”
Iran still may not be prepared to agree to roll back its nuclear program and reduce its ballistic missile stockpile to the degree that Trump or Netanyahu require. After all, Trump walked away from the original Iran nuclear deal in 2018 because it only deferred the Iranian weapons option. But Iran needs to know that the threat of force is not an Israeli bluff. In our recent conversations with members of the Israeli security establishment who had previously not favored attacking Iranian nuclear sites, we were struck by how their views had changed. They had changed in part because of the trauma of October 7 but also because of Israel’s military successes in Lebanon and Iran. There is even an emerging belief that Iran’s regime is fragile and that the loss of its expensive nuclear infrastructure could trigger regime change.
THE ART OF THE DEAL
Still, Israeli officials who favor striking Iran’s program admit that an attack should not be done by Israel alone. Instead, they want U.S. material and diplomatic support, if not direct participation. This Israeli desire can certainly be raised by Trump in discussions with Netanyahu about how to handle the future of the cease-fire agreement, as well as a Saudi normalization deal.
It is possible that Trump, with his peacemaking aspirations, might be hesitant to tell the Israelis he will support them in a war. But given his advocacy for maximum pressure against Iran, he is likely to see the value of combining increased economic pressure with a credible Israeli military threat as the best way to secure a negotiated outcome. Netanyahu, for his part, would agree to hold off on military action while Washington figures out if Tehran is, indeed, ready to give up its nuclear weapons option. To keep the Israeli threat credible and preserve its leverage in any talks with Iran, the United States would provide Israel with the capabilities necessary to take out the Fordow fuel enrichment plant—the one site that Israel cannot destroy with its current weapons. Washington would need a firm prior commitment that Israel would not strike so long as Trump’s efforts at diplomacy still have a chance of succeeding. But if diplomacy failed and Israel does attack, U.S. forces would need to play a supportive role, with the United States once again helping to defend Israel against Iranian missile attacks, even as it refrains from any offensive combat missions inside Iran.
The lapse of the snapback mechanism—a provision of the 2015 nuclear deal that enables the United States to restore UN Security Council sanctions on Iran—in October 2025 could provide a deadline for U.S.-Iranian negotiations. Such a deadline would give Washington further leverage and prevent Iran from simply stalling while it stockpiles more uranium and diverts some to secret sites.
Trump now is well positioned to help end the war in Gaza, return the hostages, and blunt Iran’s nuclear ambitions. He could even normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia and create a pathway to Palestinian statehood, provided Palestinians meet a number of tangible benchmarks. He may be able to do it all without firing any shots. If he is serious about his peacemaking posture, he should propose this approach to Netanyahu. His efforts could ultimately fail, but the odds of success today are better than they have been in the past. It is rare that interests converge so neatly in foreign policy, and so Trump has an opportunity to do something his predecessors could only dream of.
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