You’re fired!

U.S. President Donald Trump took office with effects on other worlds worthy of his narcissistic arrogance. From Palestine to Israel, Syria and Iran, everybody is indexed to Trump.

Before he even assumed office, he angered the radical-fascist crowd by unleashing his special envoy Steve Witkoff on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and securing a ceasefire in Gaza. On his first day in the Oval Office, he made the same crowd happy by lifting sanctions against Jewish settlers terrorizing Palestinians in the West Bank. And everyone in the fight expects something from this kind of inconsistency.

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On the one hand, he plans to keep Witkoff in the region for a few months to rein in Netanyahu who is determined to return to the war. On the other hand, he says, “I'm not sure if the ceasefire will hold.”

He wants calm, but not because he cares about the Palestinians. He dreams of expelling the Palestinians and making Gaza a paradise for rich snobs.

When every normal person looks at Gaza, they see cities razed to the ground by bombardments, masses of people left thirsty and hungry, grieving people searching for bodies under the rubble or picking up skulls and bones scattered here and there. People that Israel has not been able to scrape out of the ground... What Trump sees is an excavation site where towers will be erected, hotels will be built, entertainment centers will be constructed. In a dialog with reporters in the Oval Office, he said, “I looked at a picture of Gaza. It needs to be rebuilt in a different way. It has a great location by the sea and a great atmosphere. A lot of good things can be done there.”

He wants to clear the mines in order to bring the Saudis into the Abraham Accords and get closer to Gulf-Israeli economic projects. He probably sees Netanyahu and his fascist ministers as mines as much as the resisting Palestinians. But he is also making reckless decisions or appointments that could disrupt the calm he seeks. For example, he appointed Elise Stefanik, who sees Israel's occupation of the West Bank as a “biblical right” and calls the UN an “anti-semitic rot,” as Permanent Ambassador to the UN. During her confirmation hearing in the Senate, Stefanik did not hesitate to say that she agrees with the views of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who said, “If there is no return to war, I will overthrow the government,” and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who resigned over the genocide pause.

It is also contrary to UN Security Council resolutions and the US policy. Trump's ties to the establishment are tenuous. During his first presidential term, he recognized the occupation and annexation of the Golan Heights. It would not be surprising if he now supports the annexation of the West Bank. Or if, after Dec. 8, he adopts a policy that allows Israel to remain in the occupied territories in Syria!

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Speaking of Syria, the two blocs that are destined to face each other at the end of the day are HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Julani and SDF commander Mazloum Abdi, who both sent congratulatory messages to Trump. One hopes for a partnership between Syria and the US, while the other looks forward to continued cooperation. “This is not our war,” Trump said, and since he has not yet taken a stance, it is difficult to know what he will do.

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Besides expanding the Abraham Accords with economic projects, Iran is the most important agenda in the Middle East. There, too, the signals are confusing. Influential Trump supporters like Senator Lindsey Graham are pushing for the bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities on the assumption that Iran is weakened after the results achieved in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. Trump's magic formula is a strategy of maximum pressure to make Iran go broke and bring it to its knees. This way, Iran will scrap its nuclear program, stop developing ballistic missiles, and stop supporting movements like Hamas, Hezbollah and Ansarullah!

According to Israeli and American sources, Netanyahu sent Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer to Trump in November to ask for support for an attack on Iran. Trump said his priority was the nuclear deal. Netanyahu's team cautiously concluded that “Trump will support striking Iran”. But in fact, Dermer returned empty-handed from his meetings with both Trump and Biden. Had it been otherwise, Israel would have acted in Biden's final days.

It seems that Trump believes that diplomacy reinforced by the threat of military strikes will make a deal with Iran possible.

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Some of Trump’s choices in appointments are remarkable. He is keeping away from the White House the John Bolton type, whose head has turned into a flamethrower with the words “bomb Iran, bomb Iran.” The first thing he did was to cancel Bolton's Secret Service protection. Trump fired Bolton as National Security Advisor in 2019.

It is also unclear whether Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, who gloated that it was the right time to attack Iran while Lebanon was being turned into hell, will return to the White House. (But his father, Charles Kushner, who financed illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank, is becoming ambassador to Paris).

Beyond that, he made some choices that lowered the prospects for a military confrontation with Iran.

For example, he fired Brian Hook, the former special envoy to Iran and director of policy planning. During Trump's first term, Hook was obsessed with regime change in Iran, blocked negotiations and did his best to pursue a strategy of maximum pressure. He also purged those who were not hostile enough to Syria and friendly enough to Israel. Moreover, in the second term, he was leading the transition process in the Department of State. There were even rumors that he might become the Secretary of State. Hook joined the ranks of those who saw the “YOU'RE FIRED!” remark on social media.

On the other hand, he has appointed someone in a key position at the Pentagon, who differs considerably from the new Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and National Security Advisor on Iran and Israel. Michael P. Dimino, a CIA officer, will become the Defense Department's Middle East policy chief. Dimino advocates restraint against Iran and criticizes Israel's military policies. On the other hand, Joel Rayburn, who is close to Hook on the hawkish side, will head the State Department's Middle East desk.

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In any case, Iran, like Russia, is waiting for the negotiating table amid uncertainties.

In this context, the two countries greeted Trump's return with a strategic partnership. A strategic weave that resists Western isolation by empowering each other, but keeps the channels of normalization open with the American-led bloc by not sponsoring each other's wars or spooking the mules of skeptical friendly countries.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an agreement in Moscow on Jan. 17. The 20-year agreement aims to develop relations in areas such as economy, trade, investment, finance, transportation, energy, science, technology, security and media. It envisages technology sharing in the field of oil and gas and further cooperation in nuclear energy. Cooperation on terrorism, cyber security, border security, military personnel training, joint exercises, defense industry, and military-technical cooperation, as well as intelligence sharing against common threats. There is also talk of developing a common position against destabilizing interventions by third countries in the Caucasus, Caspian, Central Asia, and the Middle East.

However, the agreement excludes a commitment to mutual defense. So there is no military alliance. It only says that “if one party is attacked, the other will not provide assistance to the aggressor.” In other words, there is no military partnership agreement with Iran similar to the one Russia has with Belarus and North Korea.

In fact, neither side has much desire for this. Although Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei is nowadays saying, “Do more business with Russia and China,” Iran's traditional motto of “neither east nor west” precludes joining any bloc. Apart from opposition to the West, Russia and Iran's agendas do not overlap in many places. Sometimes they compete and clash. Iran does not consider the territories annexed by Russia outside its internationally recognized borders as Russian territory. Russia does not support Iran's claim to sovereignty over the islands it disputes with the UAE.

Russia's deepening cooperation with Iran in defense and nuclear technology is damaging relations with the Gulf. That is why a meeting was held with the ambassadors of Arab countries in Moscow to reassure them that the deal with Iran would not jeopardize relations.

Russia does not want to be part of Iran's showdown with Israel and is distancing itself from its agenda in the Middle East. Iran, for its part, does not want to take the bait in the Russian-Western showdown by denying the weapons it sent to Russia for the Ukraine war. Still, rapprochement between American adversaries, especially military partnerships, is cause for alarm in Washington. This can either encourage negotiations or provoke investments.

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Before the gates of hell opened on Oct. 7, Iran was seeking to resurrect the nuclear deal (JCPOA) with the United States and get rid of sanctions. Vice President Javad Zarif said in Davos: “We did not know about October 7. On October 9th, we were planning to meet with the Americans to renew the JCPOA, but the operation ruined that.”

Hezbollah's blow has emboldened Israel to strike Iran. An ally like Syria is gone. Iran's playing field in Iraq has narrowed. These developments have pushed Iran to strengthen its internal front to avoid intervention and collapse scenarios, to eliminate its defense deficits and to increase its search for dialogue with the West. This environment reinforces Trump's belief that negotiations will yield results.

But arrogance that erodes Iran's red lines will not yield results. By saying “I don't want to be enemies with Iran, I would love to get along with them, but they can't have nuclear weapons,” Trump is signaling the threshold for military action. But Iran is not at that threshold. If they move to the military option because there is no deal, the scenario that the Americans have been avoiding could be triggered: Iran, under threat of attack, could change its doctrine prohibiting the acquisition of nuclear weapons to maintain deterrence. Moreover, attacks on deep underground nuclear facilities may delay progress for a year or two, but they cannot destroy capacity. Even if it lacks the capacity to defend its strategic facilities, it can deliver blows with ballistic missiles as well as the blows it receives.

At his inauguration, Trump said, “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end — and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into. My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier. That’s what I want to be: a peacemaker and a unifier.”

Big words! The question is how will he fulfill his promise to avoid war? His team is full of misfits, crazies and spineless like him! He can easily dismiss those who don't fit in by saying “You're fired.” Therefore, it is pointless to get too hung up on the profiles of those in the team. He has built a team in a way that limits the influence of the institutions on the White House. He literally became the boss.

Trump wants calm, but he himself is noisy. He's against war, but he's a war-monger. The tide is rising once again, good luck!