David Ignatius

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Firefighters work at the site of a garment production factory in Kharkiv, Ukraine, hit by a Russian missile on Friday. (Reuters) (Stringer/Reuters)

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Frustrated with his inability to conjure a quick peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, President Donald Trump said he’s ready to “take a pass” if Russia and Ukraine can’t agree soon on a settlement — even though that retreat from diplomacy could have disastrous consequences for Ukraine and Europe.

Trump’s impatience was evident as he discussed a peace process he vowed during the 2024 campaign would be easy to navigate. “If for some reason one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just going to say: ‘You’re foolish, you are fools, you’re horrible people, and we’re going to just take a pass,’” he said.…  Seguir leyendo »

President Donald Trump with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Group of 20 Summit in Hamburg in July 2017. (Evan Vucci/AP)

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President Donald Trump appears far more eager for a peace deal in Ukraine than does Russian President Vladimir Putin. That’s the obvious takeaway from Tuesday’s two-hour call between the two leaders.

Trump comes across as an avid suitor in his brief, upbeat readout of the conversation, describing the talks as “very good and productive”. Putin is more guarded in the longer Kremlin version, friendly but unyielding on his basic demands. He agreed to a 30-day pause in “attacks on energy infrastructure facilities”. Ukraine had endorsed Trump’s proposal for a ceasefire on all fronts for that period.

This wasn’t a telephonic version of Yalta, in short, despite the ballyhoo that preceded the call.…  Seguir leyendo »

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky talks with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance in the Oval Office on Friday. (Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

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“This is going to be great television”, said President Donald Trump at the end of his shouting match with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office on Friday. Thus is the fate of nations decided in this administration’s cage-fighting version of diplomacy.

As someone who has visited Ukraine multiple times since the war began, watching Friday’s car wreck was sickening. I think of the horribly wounded Ukrainian soldiers I’ve met, or the civilians I’ve seen in shelters waiting for the all-clear. The idea of an American president extorting Kyiv in exchange for maintaining a lifeline to help it resist Russian aggression seems to me a betrayal of what the United States should stand for.…  Seguir leyendo »

A protest at the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 5 against the Trump administration's decision to virtually shut down USAID. (Drew Angerer/AFP/Getty Images)

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Representatives of humanitarian organizations that are saving lives around the world were summoned on Feb. 13 to a “listening session” at the State Department with Peter Marocco, the Trump administration political official who took control of USAID this month and, to many of its supporters, appears bent on destroying it.

Marocco began the meeting by asking the several hundred people packing the Loy Henderson Auditorium to rise and say the Pledge of Allegiance, according to several people who were there. That doesn’t happen often at a Washington gathering. Then he described the political criteria that will now shape the distribution of foreign aid so that it will “deliver results for the American people”.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Amid all the White House commotion, the world barely seemed to notice last week when President Donald Trump threatened an American and Israeli military action against Iran if it doesn’t agree to scrap its nuclear weapons program.

Trump, who ran on a promise to stop wars around the world, surely doesn’t want another Middle East conflict. But he’s being pressured by Israel, which sees Tehran at a period of maximum vulnerability after the defeat of its allies in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria — and the devastating Israeli attack on its air defenses and missile production sites in October.

Israel wants to seize the moment, American and Israeli officials told me.…  Seguir leyendo »

A man in Kyiv walks past the site of a Russian missile strike this week. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)

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Now that President Donald Trump has launched negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, the big question is whether he will sell out the Ukrainians to get peace. On that critical issue, there were mixed signals on Wednesday — with some indications that Trump might support sensible steps that would protect Kyiv.

The White House whirlwind accelerated with Trump’s Truth Social post announcing that he had agreed in a “lengthy and highly productive phone call” with Russian President Vladimir Putin to “start negotiations immediately”. A Kremlin statement said Putin had “agreed … that a long-term settlement could be achieved through peaceful negotiations”.…  Seguir leyendo »

President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrive for a news conference in the White House on Tuesday. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images)

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President Donald Trump, who said he wanted to end Middle East wars, is stumbling toward a dangerous new entanglement with his talk of expelling Palestinians from Gaza and seizing the territory for the United States.

Concerns about the jaw-dropping proposal were so swift and sharp on Wednesday that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt rushed to clarify that Trump didn’t plan to pay for that project or send in U.S. troops. If that’s true — and no other country in the region appears ready to offer financial or military support — then the proposal is the foreign policy equivalent of an empty suit.…  Seguir leyendo »

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The Gaza ceasefire and hostage release agreement announced Wednesday is joyous news that hopefully marks an end to this terrible conflict. But a speech this week by Secretary of State Antony Blinken shows just how hard it will be to make a new beginning toward Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Leaving a job allows you to say exactly what you think about intractable problems. And that’s what Blinken did Tuesday in unusually blunt remarks about the Middle East. He talked about obstacles rather than breakthroughs. If speeches could bleed, this one would be dripping red.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the yoke worn by every secretary of state I have covered, back to George Shultz in the 1980s.…  Seguir leyendo »

A rebel fighter in Nubl, Syria, north of Aleppo, on Monday. (Mahmoud Hassano/Reuters)

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Before last week’s explosive resurgence of Syria’s civil war, the Biden administration and Arab allies were quietly exploring a deal with Damascus to block Iranian delivery of weapons to the militant group Hezbollah, in exchange for a relaxation of U.S. sanctions, according to a source familiar with the negotiations.

The back-channel contact, conducted in the past weeks through moderate Gulf states, appears to have been derailed by the Syrian opposition’s startling offensive and its capture last weekend of Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city. Though the diplomatic foray appears dead for now, it was a sign of the dizzying changes in Middle East following Israel’s assault on Hezbollah, Hamas and other Iranian proxies.…  Seguir leyendo »

President Donald Trump with Pete Hegseth at the White House in April 2017. (Andrew Harnik/AP)

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American voters gave Donald Trump a solid win on Election Day. But they didn’t give him a wrecking ball to destroy the country’s military and intelligence agencies.

That’s what’s so scary about Trump’s nominations of Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard as secretary of defense and director of national intelligence, respectively. Neither is remotely qualified for two of the most important management jobs in government. They’re polemicists and ideologues — wreckers, to be blunt, rather than builders. If confirmed, they would do more to doom Trump’s presidency than Democrats ever could.

Trump is a disrupter, and this latest set of nominations (including Matt Gaetz for attorney general) has shown that he hopes to overturn what he imagines as the “deep state”.…  Seguir leyendo »

Lebanese army members gather at a damaged building following an Israeli military strike in Beirut's southern suburbs on Saturday. (Wael Hamzeh/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

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A company of Lebanese soldiers assigned to maintain order in this anxious wartime capital is gathered at its headquarters 100 yards from the Mediterranean. I make the blunder of asking their commander how many of his men are Shiites, Sunnis, Christians and Druze.

“We don’t talk about this in the army!” he snaps back. This is a forbidden topic for a military that is a precious symbol of national unity in a religiously fragmented country. The mission of the Lebanese Armed Forces, or the LAF, as it’s known, is to transcend sectarian identities and build a sovereign country.

So I try another question: Is the LAF ready to take control of southern Lebanon and implement the Biden administration’s plan for a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah?…  Seguir leyendo »

An Israeli soldier walks among rubble in Kibbutz Kfar Aza after Hamas’s attack on Oct. 7, 2023. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)

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As Israel moves ever closer to all-out war with Iran, newly released Hamas documents suggest that this broad regional conflict is precisely what the group’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, had dreamed about when he planned the savage Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

Hamas’s cunning — and its desire to involve Iran and Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, in its war to destroy Israel — is captured in internal documents published last weekend by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and The Post. They provide a stunning account of the deception that hid Sinwar’s wildly ambitious plans.

The documents appear to have been leaked by the Israeli military, which perhaps hoped to show Iran’s complicity on the eve of likely reprisal attacks from Israel.…  Seguir leyendo »

Israel’s Iron Dome defense system intercepts missiles over the city of Ashkelon on Tuesday. (Amir Cohen/Reuters)

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After nearly a year of bloody combat, Israel appears to have overcome the trauma of Oct. 7 and gained what military strategists call “escalation dominance” over Iran and its proxies: striking its adversaries at will and suffering only minor damage in response.

After decapitating Hezbollah in Lebanon last week, Israel had braced for a big Iranian retaliatory attack. But shortly after Iran fired a volley of some 180 ballistic missiles Tuesday night, President Joe Biden told reporters “the attack appears to have been defeated and ineffective”.

Expect Israel to ratchet its campaign against Iran up another notch after Tuesday night’s barrage, with what knowledgeable officials say will be a military strike.…  Seguir leyendo »

Hezbollah supporters wave flags in front of a poster of the group's leader, Hasan Nasrallah, during a rally in a southern suburb of Beirut in 2006. (Marwan Naamani/AFP via Getty Images)

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Hasan Nasrallah wanted to live and die as a fighter, and he got his wish Friday, when Israeli bombs pulverized his underground lair in Beirut. Hezbollah will surely seek to avenge Nasrallah’s death, but he was the rare leader who was close to irreplaceable.

I met Nasrallah in October 2003 in a fortified bunker in the southern suburbs of Beirut, not far from where he died. For a man who ordered the deaths of so many Israelis and Lebanese, he was surprisingly soft-spoken. He was a charmer, not a shouter; his legitimacy came from his clerical study in Najaf, Iraq, and his riveting sermons, televised during Muharram and other religious holidays.…  Seguir leyendo »

A poster of Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at right, and slain Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh is seen in Tehran on Saturday. (Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images)

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With Israel and Iran on the edge of a devastating regional war that neither country seems to want, the United States is playing a risky game of brinkmanship — massing a military force to defend Israel and, if it fails, perhaps join in an attack on Iran.

For Biden administration officials who have tried for months to de-escalate the conflict in Gaza, it’s a scary moment. “Multiple red indicator lights are now flashing”, writes Norman Roule, a former top CIA expert on Iran. “I’ve never seen the region so fragile and on the cusp of so many conflicts”.

Wars often result from a fundamental conflict of national interests.…  Seguir leyendo »

Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed in Iran on Wednesday, in 2018 in Gaza City. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)

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The United States is a superpower. Yet for nine months it has been unable to broker a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. Now, with the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Wednesday, the blood feud between the two appeared to deepen, with American peacemakers standing on the sidelines.

Israel didn’t comment on the death of Haniyeh in Tehran, but it didn’t need to. Since the Israel-Gaza war began, it’s been clear that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would take unilateral measures, regardless of American advice, to repay Hamas for its ghastly Oct. 7 attack on Israel. His goal isn’t making peace with Hamas, but destroying it.…  Seguir leyendo »

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv on July 13. (Nir Elias/Pool/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

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As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was preparing his Wednesday speech to Congress, his top diplomatic emissary was quietly exploring, with the United Arab Emirates and United States, some innovative proposals for “the day after” in Gaza.

The diplomats have discussed a role for a “reformed” Palestinian Authority in inviting Arab, European and developing-world countries to provide forces under a “stabilization mandate” in Gaza. They also discussed a list of possible new PA leaders, topped by former prime minister Salam Fayyad.

Given Netanyahu’s past denunciation of the PA and his refusal to offer detailed day-after plans, these discussions are potentially significant. But as with every other aspect of the Gaza tragedy, the effort could raise false hopes that a breakthrough is near — when the reality on the ground remains brutal combat.…  Seguir leyendo »

Children walk through rubble from a destroyed home following an Israeli airstrike in Al Nusairat refugee camp on Tuesday. (Mohammed Saber/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

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It’s an iron law of Middle East conflict that the closer you get to a cease-fire, the more last-minute disputes arise. That appears to be happening now with the Biden administration’s push for a truce in Gaza.

Israel on Monday “affirmed its full support for the deal as outlined by President Biden and endorsed by the UN Security Council, G7, and countries around the world”, according to a White House readout of a meeting that included Ron Dermer, who is perhaps the closest adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Hamas, too, is said by U.S. officials to have accepted the plan by agreeing in early July to drop its demand for a guarantee that the initial cease-fire would mean a permanent cessation of hostilities.…  Seguir leyendo »

Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike in the central Gaza Strip on Wednesday. (Abdel Kareem Hana/AP)

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After months of agonizing negotiation, the Biden administration appears close to a cease-fire deal that would halt major fighting in Gaza, release some Israeli hostages and surge humanitarian aid to desperate Palestinian civilians.

A senior U.S. official told me Wednesday that “the framework is agreed” and the parties are now “negotiating details of how it will be implemented”. To forge the deal, Middle East adviser Brett McGurk and CIA Director William J. Burns have been shuttling among regional capitals since November.

Officials caution that although the framework is in place, a final pact probably isn’t imminent, and the details are complex and will take time to work through.…  Seguir leyendo »

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant greets U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin this week at the Pentagon. (Michael Reynolds/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

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As the Israel-Gaza war grinds on, the political jockeying in Israel is growing more intense, testing the survival skills of the wily but increasingly embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu lobbed a political grenade at the Biden administration this month, claiming that the United States was delaying major arms shipments to Israel. But the bomb was defused this week by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who visited Washington for talks that both Israeli and American officials told me resolved the problem.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu was blasted in op-ed columns by two former prime ministers, Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert. Barak and other prominent Israelis said Netanyahu should be disinvited from speaking to Congress next month because he doesn’t represent most Israelis, and Olmert told me he agreed.…  Seguir leyendo »