Like Woody Allen’s Zelig, the fictional celebrity who emerged in different places as an entirely different person, journalist Jeffrey Goldberg found himself among Donald Trump’s aides as they prepared to bomb Yemen.
Goldberg’s company, unlike Zelig’s, was virtual, a smartphone chat group. And even more unlike Zelig, whose chameleon-like appearances reflected a mental disorder, Goldberg is a perfectly normal guy who emerged where he did not belong not because of himself but because National Security Advisor Michael Waltz added him to the group that now – to Goldberg’s bewilderment – exchanged lines like:
“I just hate bailing out Europe” (VP Vance), and “I fully share your loathing of European freeloading” (Defense Secretary Hegseth), and “We soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return” (SM, apparently Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff), as well as details of the American attack on the Houthis two hours before it was launched.
Fortunately, thanks to Goldebrg’s civic responsibility, this leakage did no harm, and is thus more farce than tragedy. Unfortunately, that cannot be said about the broader picture of Donald Trump’s Middle Eastern conduct which – judging by his second term’s first two months – is less Ronald Reagan and more Barack Obama.
TRUMP HAS made two very ambitious statements so far concerning our region’s travails. The first was about Gaza, and it came Monday, February 10, when he gave Hamas a televised ultimatum about the hostages: “They ought to be returned by 12 o’clock on Saturday, and if they are not returned, all of them – not in dribs and drabs, not 2, and 1, and 3, and 4, and 2 – Saturday at 12 o’clock; after that, I would say all hell is going to break out.”
That Saturday has long come and gone, along with its 12 o’clock deadline, but as of this writing, 59 hostages remain in Gaza, and hell never broke loose.
The second statement was about Yemen and Iran, and it was posted on Truth Social last Sunday. “Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of Iran, and Iran will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences,” warned the president.
If the Iranians were impressed, they failed to transmit their impression to the Houthis. The ballistic missile that sent millions of Israelis to the bomb shelters last Monday was the fifth that the Houthis fired at us since Trump’s brave warning.
Recalling Obama
Well, sorry to make this rude analogy to a man who is actually trying to defend us, but we have already been to this movie, and it starred Barack Obama. Responding to the Syrian Civil War’s escalating violence, the American president warned then-Syrian president Bashar al-Assad:
“I want to make it absolutely clear to Assad and those under his command… The use of chemical weapons would be totally unacceptable. If you make the tragic mistake of using these weapons, there will be consequences, and you will be held accountable.”
That was in December 2012. In August 2013, Assad’s forces waged a gas attack on the town of Ghouta killing 281 civilians according to moderate estimates, and more than 1,700 according to others. For Obama, it was time to deliver on his threat. He never did that.
Having first sought congressional approval to send Assad a hail of Tomahawk missiles – an operational decision for which an American president needs no one’s approval but his own – Obama then negotiated with Russia a Syrian agreement to shrink its chemical weapons arsenal.
The Middle East understands Trump's message
Across the Middle East, all understood the message from Washington. Obama will always talk and never fight. Assad thus returned to massacre his people, and Russia built from scratch the airbase in western Syria from which its jets would help Assad butcher them.
Now, having failed to deliver on two very loud and sharp warnings in two corners of the Middle East, Trump is convincing the same Middle East that his rhetoric, like Obama’s, is hot air.
There is another way.
THE PRESIDENT of Iran was in the middle of denying – in a speech at the United Nations – Washington’s accusation that the Islamic Republic was mining the waters of the Persian Gulf.
The date was Tuesday, September 22, 1987, and the president was today’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. On Saturday, September 26, the US Navy captured an Iranian vessel while it was laying mines in the Gulf, part of Tehran’s efforts at the time to disturb Kuwaiti shipping. “Our sailors,” recalled then-secretary of state George Schultz, “removed the crew and sank the ship.”
The incident reminded Shultz of what a sergeant told him during his basic training in the US Marines as he handed the young soldier his first rifle: “This is your best friend, take good care of it. Never point the rifle at anybody unless you are willing to pull the trigger.” (George Shultz, “The Danger of Empty Threats,” Hoover.org, October 11, 2016.)
Trump apparently disagrees.
Striking Houthi targets in Yemen is obviously useful, and Trump should be commended for acting there.
And yes, his team’s comments, about Red Sea shipping being much more important to Europe than it is to America, are valid. Yet so is Trump’s insight that the Houthis are but a sideshow in a movie scripted and directed in Tehran.
Moreover, once the threat to Iran has been made, it must be realized. Otherwise, everyone from Sanaa, Gaza, and Tehran to Moscow, Beijing, and Pyongyang will conclude that Trump is a paper tiger who thinks bravado will earn him respect, obedience, and fear.
“When you have to shoot,” said Tuco (Eli Wallach) in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, “shoot – don’t talk.”
www.MiddleIsrael.net
The writer, a Hartman Institute fellow, is author of Ha’Sfar Ha’Yehudi Ha’Aharon (The Last Jewish Frontier, Yediot Sefarim 2025), a sequel to Theodor Herzl’s The Old New Land.