The region’s many leaders have changed horses so many times that the horses are dizzy.

By Tom Arms

The Middle East has been called Byzantine, a snake pit and a political cesspit. It is a land where there are said to be no national interests, only interests. Where today’s enemy is tomorrow’s bedfellow and vice versa.

The region’s many leaders have changed horses so many times that the horses are dizzy.

All the above is especially true today when the region’s faraway overlord—the President of the United States—is likely to change his mind at the drop of a bitcoin, especially if the coin drops into his account.

This week Donald Trump has been touring the region and it has changed. The Arabs and the Turks are very happy with America. The Iranians may be coming around. The Israelis are—surprise, surprise—unhappy with the mercurial president.

One of the reasons that the Turks and Arabs are pleased is that the US is lifting sanctions on Syria. This became a certainty when Trump met with Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa and pronounced: “I think he has got potential.” Not so many months ago the US had a $10 million dead or alive bounty on his head.

Read: Trump’s Middle East tour showed the ‘art of the deal’ at its best and worst

Israel is totally opposed to lifting sanctions against Syria. They are terrified that Syria—their traditional enemy– is now governed by a former Al Qaeeda operative and have dispatched special units to undermine al-Sharaa and “Balkanise” Syria.

It should also be noted that when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan this week announced the end of hostilities between Ankara and the Kurds, standing alongside him was the new Syrian foreign minister.

Trump is all about business and one of the reasons that he loves visiting Saudi Arabia is that they have billions of petro-dollars to spend on American weaponry. This visit was no exception. Trump was able to announce an initial deal for $142 billion which he said could grow to $1 trillion.

Again, Israel was upset. The trip to Saudi Arabia and any big arms deals was supposed to coincide with the establishment of Saudi diplomatic relations with Israel. There was no way, however, that Saudi Arabia could recognize Israel after it broke the ceasefire and launched an even more vicious attack on Gaza and Trump needed a big cash deal for the folks back home to justify his mad economic policies.

Ten years ago the Gulf States were privately urging the United States to attack Iran and wipe out its nuclear facilities before a nuclear bomb was built. This time they pressed him to find a political solution.

There is still an underlying centuries-old enmity between the Arabs and the Persians, but the Gulf States have been reconsidering past position in the light of Israel’s increasing threats against Iran. They concluded that they would be the big loser in any war between the US and Iran or the US and Israel against Iran. Shipping in the Gulf would stop and the fighting would inevitably spread into their own territories.

Thus Trump has been encouraged to do a deal with Iran, and in Qatar the president announced that he and the Mullahs were close to an agreement. Apparently, it would involve Iran in scrapping any nuclear weapons program in return for the West lifting sanctions. This could only have infuriated Netanyahu who regards Iran as Israel’s public enemy number one. He will almost certainly do everything possible to sabotage any US-Iranian talks.

There are several other signs that the Trump-Netanyahu bromance of Trump’s first term is cooling. This week, for instance, the Trump Administration circumvented the Israelis to talk directly with Hamas to organize the release of Eden Alexander, the last American hostage in Gaza.

US diplomats also went behind Israeli backs to talk directly to the Houthis and organized a deal whereby American ships could sail safely pass the mouth of the Red Sea on their way to the Suez Canal. The Houthis, however, could continue to attack Israeli ships.

Much of the reason for the current cooling in US-Israeli relationship is that Netanyahu has embarrassed the American president. Trump’s Middle East negotiator Steve Witfkoff was the driving force behind the January three-stage Gaza ceasefire. Trump went out of his way to claim credit for the ceasefire and Netanyahu’s breach and even more vicious attacks have made Trump look foolish for trusting him. Trump does not like to look foolish.

World Review

Birth right citizenship coupled with the power of the courts v. the executive was up before the Supreme Court this week. And it looks as if the court is divided.

A decision will take time, probably a couple of months. But based on the questioning from the Bench it appears as if a decision could go either way, or be wrapped up in so much qualifying legal mumbo-jumbo as to be nearly useless.

Birth right citizenship and the courts v the president are two separate issues but they have been judicially linked because the lower courts have been blocking Trump’s plans to deport more than 5 million people who were born in the US to parents who were illegal aliens.

There are 94 District Courts in the US that hear cases involving the US constitution that are brought to them by people in their district. A ruling by one of the federal judges in those districts can be applied nationally. This means that one of Trump’s Executive Orders can be blocked until the Supreme Court finds time to make a final ruling. This could take many frustrating months—if not longer.

The Trump Administration wants the law changed so that a District Court’s judgements apply only to their district. This would, of course, substantially increase the power of the presidency and his Executive Orders, but could create a confusing judicial quilt of which laws apply where.

Birth right citizenship is enshrined in the The 13th Amendment of the US constitution. The amendment is a direct result of disputes leading up to the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery after it. In 1857 the Supreme Court ruled that African American slaves had no right to citizenship. That meant that when Lincoln issue the Emancipation Declaration on January 1, 1863, the slaves were freed but they were also stateless. The 13th Amendment was meant to correct that.

When it was passed in 1865, no one thought at the time that the amendment would become a loophole for illegal aliens to establish citizenship for their children and a moral right to residency for themselves. But it is still the law. And because it is in the constitution, it is a chiselled in legal granite law.

The only way it can be changed is by amending the constitution. This involves one of two processes. The most difficult is a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress followed by passage of the change by three-quarters of the state legislatures. The second, more usual route, is by ratifying conventions in three-quarters of the states. Both are difficult and time consuming and the reason why the constitution is rarely amended.

Trump likes moving at speed, which is why he is hoping that the Supreme Court will either find a way to declare the 13th Amendment null and void or come up with a work around that will allow him to circumvent it.

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Republican Congressmen and Senators are in a bind. Or at least they will be in November 2026 when all of the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate are up for election.

I keep hearing that a growing number of the Republican congressional club are fed up, appalled and seriously worried at the way that Donald Trump is riding roughshod over the constitution, destroying established trade patterns with his tariffs and jettisoning important allies.

But they feel trapped. If they speak up. If they oppose him. They risk losing their seats. And if they lose their seats they lose the platform from which they can oppose him if they can find a way to do so.

It has happened before. Liz Cheney was a highly respected, extremely conservative, Republican senator who vociferously opposed Trump because she thought he was a dictator in the making. Trump turned to his loyal MAGA base and told them to dump Cheney in the Senate primaries and support the far-right MAGA alternative. They did as instructed.

Cheney’s demise was an object lesson for ever centrist-minded Republican in Congress. Tow the Trump line are you are out. Hence the climate of Omerta which has descended on Capitol Hill.

But, Trump is falling in the approval stakes. The majority is starting to turn against the president. Not everywhere. In some states MAGA remains dominant. But enough states that the anti-Trump vote is like to return enough Democrats for the Republicans to lose control of the House of Representatives.

Republican anti-Trump lawmakers are thus caught in the middle between Trump and the MAGA crowd on one side and baying Democrats on the other. It may just be possible that moving against Trump now could win them enough centrist and Democratic votes to keep their seats. That, however, seems unlikely.

Anti-Trump Republicans still, have 18 months until the next election. Will they remember their oath to defend the constitution, rediscover their morals and fight against Trump’s increasingly corrupt authoritarianism? If they do—and lose—at least they will have the knowledge that they went down fighting.

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Donald Trump desperately wants the Nobel Peace Prize. One of his success v failure yardsticks is outdoing Barack Obama. Obama won the peace prize. Trump must have it too.

Personally, I think that anyone who has trampled all over the US constitution and brought the the world economy to the brink of collapse with his tariffs should be disqualified. But I do not know if the Nobel Peace Prize Committee (five members of the Norwegian parliament) will take that into account. They may just go for a single foreign policy achievement.

If that is the case then at the moment Trump has four routes to Oslo City Hall, a gold medallion and the million dollar cheque:

• Ukraine
• Israel/Gaza
• Kashmir
• Iran nuclear deal

We can forget about Kashmir. Trump tried to claim that he was the driving force behind the recent ceasefire, but India dismissed the suggestion that Trump, Vance or Rubio had anything to do with ending Indo-Pakistan hostilities.

Trump tried successfully to interject himself into the Gaza ceasefire talks. And Joe Biden was not backwards in giving him credit. But that ceasefire has fallen apart. Benjamin Netanyahu is ordering more military action, more air strikes, more humanitarian blockades, and it seems as if Trump is either unwilling or unable to dissuade him.

Trump does, of course, have massive leverage on Israel. American military aid keeps the Israel Defense Force afloat. But cutting—or even threatening to cut–that aid would be a step too far for Israel’s chief ally.

That leaves Iran and Ukraine. In Iran, Trump also has substantial leverage. He has the power to hold back Netanyahu who is desperate to launch an attack on Iran. He can lift sanctions which are definitely hurting the Iranian economy. And finally, Trump knows that Iran is in a mood to settle after its losses in Syria, Gaza and Lebanon coupled with growing discontent on the domestic front.

Sanctions are the only leverage that Trump has with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. So far, the Russian leader has done better than expected in replacing Western investment and keeping the economy going. But there are questions about how long he can keep it up. The problem is that Trump’s leverage over Putin is weakened by the obvious admiration that Trump has for the Russian leader’s strong man image and tactics.

Trump has far more leverage over Ukraine’s Volodomyr Zelensky. The Ukrainians are heavily dependent on American military and intelligence aid. The Europeans are starting to fill the gap, but it will be years before they can replace America. This explains The Americans’ rudeness to the Ukrainian leader.

Trump could probably push through a deal which left Russia in charge of Donbas. Ukraine might accept this if the truce included NATO and EU membership, or at the very least, iron-clad security guarantees and the right to maintain and strengthen its military. Putin is against any arrangement which leaves Ukraine in charge of its own destiny which means no to NATO, the EU, Ukraine army and any security guarantees of any substance.

Anything less would quite rightly smack of appeasement. The Norwegians are unlikely to hand out the Nobel Peace Prize for appeasement.

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Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and the author of “The Encyclopedia of the Cold War” and “America Made in Britain.”

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