The Donald really should get the Nobel Peace Prize, even though it’s crap
ALEX PHILLIPS
It was 13 minutes to 1 in the morning on the 3rd of January, 2020
After a delay at Damascus International Airport – for unknown reasons – an Airbus A320 Cham Wings touched down in Baghdad, where the VIP passengers were ferried in a Toyota and Hyundai towards Downtown. Little did they know an MQ-9 Reaper drone had been lurking in the area, awaiting its target. The two vehicles were struck and engulfed in flames as the missiles sought their prey.
That was the end of Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force, one of five branches of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Iranian Regime’s brutal overseas terror outfit. Soleimani was considered the second most powerful man in Iran, only subordinate to the Supreme Leader, and considered Khamenei’s right hand.
Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama had both rejected targeting Soleimani, reasoning that it would escalate into a full-scale war. Instead, Obama followed a policy of renegotiating the JCPOA, the abysmal Iran Nuclear Deal that had emboldened Tehran to doggedly pursue Uranium enrichment, arm its proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis, while evading the blight of sanctions against them, even importing what to my amateur eye seem very suspicious products from the West – including Britain.
Get ready for a WTF moment when you look at 2024 trade stats:
Oh defo no lenses for drones nor weapons making and enrichment components here!
I digress.
Trump 1.0 decided, rightly, that facing up to Iran’s duplicity and destruction was essential.
He pulled out of the Nuclear Deal and proved America could, and would, take out malign operatives anywhere in the world. He also set about drawing up the Abraham Accords with predominantly Sunni Arab nations, endeavouring to begin normalising relations between the (Sunni) Muslim world and Israel, while further deepening the wedge between (Shia) Iran and its neighbours, which would prove vital after October 7th, 2023.
What then happened of course was Biden. Appeasement through naivety, the shambolic exit from Afghanistan, a zombie President who not only destroyed any concept of American Might, but through corrosive identity politics and wokery, allowed pernicious, malign forces, funded and manipulated by The West’s enemies, to start rotting society from the inside out.
It is of little surprise that Hamas chose to strike when they did.
October 7th had been a long time in the making, but provoked the sort of grievance-rooted Marxo-Islamist international outrage it was designed to ignite, made all the more possible by Leftist Western governments expediting the rot from within. The Pro-Palestine marches began gouging out already jeopardised societal cohesion while gorging extremists on rabid narratives. By the time Trump came to power, the West was so crippled by its own internal tensions it was effectively castrated when it came to being assertive on the world stage.
Rather than fully support Israel in fighting extreme terrorism, as had been the approach towards ISIS ten years prior, most Western nations either played coy, so as not to upset the burgeoning fifth column on their streets, or actively stymied Israel’s abilities to fight the seven fronted war. Mass hysteria and media bias took the driving seat, over cold, rational, determined diplomacy.
There was a lot of tidying up to do.
And do it Trump did. And his multi-pronged response has been proven genius.
Make no mistake – the Ceasefire could not have been achieved without Trump
His fierce confrontation of Iran second time around, dropping bunker buster bombs into subterranean nuclear sites and stationing American warships and bombers on the doorstep, went some way into putting Khamenei back into his box. Making the duel ‘Kinetic’“, something his predecessors feared, was a sanguine gamble. Iran was easily out-armed.
But a response would be inevitable. And that had been factored in, too.
When the missiles, rockets and drones were launched from Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, a buffer zone of interception was already lying in wait.
Western jets took off from airbases in the Gulf while Saudi, Jordan and Qatar all played their part in intercepting the payload.
Trump making his very first diplomatic visit in 2025 to MBS in Saudi was no accident. The message was clear.
This is utmost respect prioritising you. You are the Big Dog of the region. And I am going to need your help if my agenda is going to work out.
In fact, the deepening of diplomatic relations with Gulf states will be essential to the realisation of Trump’s 20 point agenda.
Let’s look at parts 9, 10 and 11.
- Gaza will be governed under the temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee…made up of qualified Palestinians and international experts, with oversight by a new international transitional body, the “Board of Peace”, headed and chaired by President Donald J. Trump, with other heads of State to be announced…to set the framework and handle the funding for the redevelopment of Gaza… to create modern and efficient governance that serves the people of Gaza and is conducive to attracting investment.
And
- A Trump economic development plan to rebuild and energize Gaza will be created by…a panel of experts who have helped birth some of the thriving modern miracle cities in the Middle East.
And
- A special economic zone will be established with preferred tariff and access rates to be negotiated with participating countries.
Which directly leads to perhaps the most important element of the plan, number 15.
- The United States will work with Arab and international partners to develop a temporary International Stabilization Force (ISF) to immediately deploy in Gaza. The ISF will train and provide support to vetted Palestinian police forces in Gaza, and will consult with Jordan and Egypt who have extensive experience in this field. This force will be the long-term internal security solution.
The Gulf and neighbouring states are set to take over from Israel in deradicalising Gaza and policing it, in return for an enticing slice of real estate pie. Far more palatable to the Muslim world than Israel governing Gaza. As Muslim nations that have largely eradicated fundamentalists themselves – to usher in progress and prosperity – they are knowledgeable partners, who also have regional clout. And for these brokers, money and influence talk.
Guess what…I wrote about this potentially being Trump’s best hand to play back in February
https://open.substack.com/pub/alexphillips/p/trumps-riviera-of-the-middle-east
I love to say I told you so!
Add to the strategic play in the immediate region – what about the Hamas Refuge States?
Qatar has long been home to Hamas, precisely because the CIA demanded it. Give them shiny penthouses in Doha, and with USAF bases up the road, we can keep “eyes on”. Doha complied. (I have little doubt that the recent direct strikes by Israel on Hamas operatives in situ in Doha, publicly condemned by America and Qatar, were done in cooperation and intelligence sharing between all three, despite what is professed and protested, publicly and politically.)
America has managed and mollified all three Hamas Refuge states of Qatar, Egypt and Turkey, masterfully. Ripening them all to be in a position where withdrawing sanctuary to international terrorists would have the Hamas negotiators backs against the wall. Point 6:
- Once all hostages are returned, Hamas members who commit to peaceful co-existence and to decommission their weapons will be given amnesty. Members of Hamas who wish to leave Gaza will be provided safe passage to receiving countries.
Unless you build a Golden Bridge for the enemy, do not expect them to give up the fight.
Finally, with all the pieces on the board where they needed to be, it was up to Trump to tell Israel the time was now. And that seems to be something only Donald can do. Say what you will, when Trump speaks, people listen.
At the same time he made clear to Hamas non compliance meant he was firmly on Israel’s side and all hell would break loose. Less of the lily livered vacuous gestures of Starmer and Macron. I would like to think that there was a predetermined good cop, bad cop, situation, but allowing indicators in Britain, at least, derobe that hypothesis.
“Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table” – George Schultz (Reagan’s Secretary of State)
This is potential peace in the Middle East.
Trump-style.
This article (Peace In The Middle East. Trump style) was created and published by Alex Phillips and is republished here under “Fair Use”
See Related Article Below
Trump has dealt a devastating blow to Israelophobia
His peace deal has left the West’s Israel-haters with nowhere left to hide.
BRENDAN O’NEILL
The silence is unsettling. It’s 12 hours since President Trump announced that Israel and Hamas have assented to the first phase of his peace plan, paving the way for a ceasefire. And yet the ‘Ceasefire now’ lobby is eerily schtum. The people who’ve been noisily clamouring for an end to the war in Gaza are either mute or they’re moaning. Don’t trust that snake Benjamin Netanyahu, some say. If I thought a genocide was being executed in Gaza, a crime as cataclysmic as anything the Nazis did, I’d be on the streets celebrating this morning. Yet these people can barely be arsed to put a thumbs-up on Instagram.
We know why: it’s because Trump has called their bluff. In fact, this could prove to be one of the most consequential bluff-callings of modern times. Trump hasn’t only managed to get two mortal enemies to sign on the dotted line of a deal. He has also, as a side effect, torn off the veil of pacifism worn by Israel’s legion loathers in the West and compelled them to come clean. He has created a situation where the true aim of this army of Israel haters – the dismantling of the Jewish State – will have nowhere left to hide. It might be a peace plan but it delivers a possibly fatal blow to the cult of Israelophobia.
There are many reasons for normal people – those of us who have not fashioned an entire personality from a frothing contempt for the Jewish nation – to feel hopeful about the events of the past day. The first phase of the deal compels Hamas to release all the Israeli hostages. That could happen as soon as Monday. In return, Israel will set free hundreds of Palestinian prisoners – a risky move, for sure, given many of them are Islamist terrorists with much blood on their hands. Israeli troops will then withdraw to an agreed line and more aid will go into Gaza. The fighting would stop.
It’s a little early to sing ‘Kumbayah’. This is only the first phase. The latter phases – especially the essential demand that Hamas lay down its arms and surrender itself into non-existence – remain a sticking point for the Islamist tyrants of Gaza and their craven apologists in the West. But what sweet relief it would be, for the grief-stricken people of Israel and the war-weary civilians of Gaza, to see the fighting stop. To see the return of the Jews so violently seized on 7 October 2023. To see something approximating peace somewhere on the horizon.
And yet from the self-styled peaceniks, nothing. You’d think the people who are hoarse from yelling ‘Ceasefire!’ would be pleased at the prospect of a ceasefire. Seems not. At the time of writing, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign has said nowt. Which isn’t surprising, given it has already madly rejected Trump’s deal as a ‘continuation of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people rather than a plan to end it’. The ‘ceasefire’ folk who have spoken over the past 12 hours seem oddly downbeat. It’s a ‘nightmare deal’, says one. What a weird thing to say about a deal that might bring to an end what you insist is a ‘genocide’. Meanwhile, actual Gazans are cheering Trump’s announcement.
That’s because where the exhausted civilians of Gaza really want a ceasefire, the privileged despisers of Israel who clog up our institutions here in the West want something quite different. They desire not peace, but destruction – the destruction of the Jewish State. They long not for the return of normalcy to Gaza but for the denormalisation of Israel. The shunning of it, the criminalisation of it, and at some point in the future, the deconstruction of it. In moving Israel-Gaza closer to a ceasefire, Trump has stolen that word from the faux-peace lobby and left them with the toughest of choices: either to fess up about their sick dream of Israel’s violent erasure or to shut up once and for all.
To some of us, it’s long been clear that the contagion of Israelophobia plaguing our cultural establishment had little to do with securing peace in the Middle East. But that became super clear over the past 10 days. Israel accepted Trump’s peace deal on 29 September and yet still its shrill haters beat the streets to say ‘Ceasefire now’. Why were they still haranguing the Jewish State after it had agreed to a ceasefire, and Hamas had not? Because they desire more than Israel’s laying down of arms. They want it to lay down its entire existence. Nothing less than Israel’s capitulation to its racist enemies in Hamas and its self-righteous haters in the West will satiate their unhinged animus for the Jewish homeland.
The protest in London on Saturday gave the game away. A vast banner hung in Trafalgar Square. ‘Disarm Israel’, it said. There it was, the true meaning of ‘Ceasefire now’ – not peace, not a deal, but the confiscation of all weapons from the Jews of the Holy Land. The seizing of their guns and rockets so that they might be more nakedly exposed to the ‘just’ punishments of the Palestinian people. The disarming of Israel is a feverish obsession of the activist class, for they understand that in order for Israel to be replaced ‘from the river to the sea’, in order for this sinning settler-colonial nation to be scrubbed from humanity’s records, first its Jews must be denuded of all means of self-defence.
They’re iffy about Trump’s plan for some one simple reason: it leaves the Jewish State intact and it demands the surrender of Hamas. It thwarts their dystopic dream of dragging the Middle East back to 1948, before the modern state of Israel existed. Everyone can now see that what falsely presented itself as a peace movement was in truth a ruthless campaign of delegitimation, demonisation and even destruction waged against the world’s only Jewish nation by our post-reason elites.
The failure of Hamas and its Western simps to erase Israel ‘from the river to the sea’ is a wonderful moment for humanity. We should celebrate both the possibility of peace in Gaza and the miracle of Israel’s survival. In the face of hostile Arab armies, Iranian plotting, neo-fascist militias and the obsessive defamations of our own cultural establishment, Israel stubbornly survives and thrives. That is a testament less to Trump’s ‘art of the deal’ than to the valour and self-belief of Israel’s people, in particular its young soldiers who took the fight to Hamas after 7 October. We cannot know what will happen next, but we know that Israel lives, in glorious defiance of the unholy alliance of murderous Islamists and woke nihilists who long for its annihilation. I’ll raise a glass to that today.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. His latest book – After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation – is available to order on Amazon UK and Amazon US now. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy
This article (Trump has dealt a devastating blow to Israelophobia) was created and published by Spiked Online and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Brendan O’Neill, Spiked Chief Political Writer
Featured image: thestatesman.com
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