Trump’s Gaza Dreaming

February 10, 2025

Donald Trump’s remarks on the Gaza Strip after his February 4 meeting with Israeli Prime Minster Bibi Netanyahu precipitated enormous controversy and confusion. They were not idle musings, but written in advance. Typically, Trump wandered off-script, speculating about using US military force in Gaza, which White House handlers walked back the next day. Trump himself then promptly walked back the walk-back, insisting he was serious about American control of Gaza, although without force. (For the record, I have never advocated deploying the US military in Gaza.)

The ensuing furor has obscured the reality that Trump addressed two vastly different issues. First, and most bizarrely, he asserted that Israel would hand control of Gaza to the US, which would “own” it, and make it “the Riviera of the Middle East.” Second, and far more important, was Trump’s contention that resettling Gaza’s population in the Strip was the wrong way forward, at least near-term. This distinction is critical to evaluating Trump’s statements, until changes positions again, perhaps while you read this article.

Trump’s first idea is not going to happen. It springs from no underlying philosophy, national-security grand strategy, or consistent forward-looking policy. It derives instead from his first-term pitch to North Korean leader Kim Jung Un that his country’s untouched beaches could become major resort areas. That did not materialize, but the dream never died.

Wild as it was for North Korea, it is even more so in Gaza. The aphorism “capital is a coward” is directly applicable. Because of the ongoing cease-fire/hostage exchange, Hamas is reasserting control in Gaza, suggesting it may not be as debilitated by Israeli military action as initially thought. In turn, that means Israel will likely resume hostilities, rightly so, when the exchanges end. Until Gaza is fully secure, capital and labor necessary to build the Middle East’s Riviera, will be few and far between. “Gaza” itself is an historical accident, reflecting military reality at the end of the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948, simply a part of the ancient Mediterranean path leading to Egypt. Standing alone, it is not economically viable as far as the eye can see.

Trump’s second suggestion about Gaza’s future is not new, having emanated from multiple sources long before his February 4 comments. If adopted, it would fundamentally, permanently alter the Middle East. Among other things, it would be the final death knell for the “two-state” solution. Well before Hamas’s barbaric October 7 attack, the two-state solution had become simply an incantation. Afterwards, in Israel, it all but disappeared as a serious proposition. Nonetheless, absent any serious effort to create an alternative, the mantra has remained the default position.

Those days are over. The fundamental problem with the putative Palestinian “state” was its artificiality, a legacy of radical Arab leaders like Egypt’s Gamal Abdul Nassar; its lack of any economic basis; and its susceptibility to terrorist control. Nonetheless, if the two-state concept is dead, we must find an alternative. I once proposed a “three-state” solution: returning Gaza to Egypt, with Israel and Jordan dividing sovereignty over the West Bank. This approach would safeguard Israeli security while also settling Palestinians in viable economies, with real futures.

Palestinians, however, have for decades been so abused by the region’s radical, post-colonial ideologies that neither Cairo nor Amman welcomed having potentially subversive populations come under their jurisdictions. But the palpable difficulty of resolving the Palestinian issue should not lead regional states and concerned outside powers to fall back to reconstructing high-rise refugee camps in Gaza. So doing, involving enormous costs in clearing the rubble and unexploded ordnance, not to mention eliminating the Hamas tunnel network, and then reconstruction itself, would inevitably lead to another October 7. That is obviously unacceptable.

There is an alternative, however, namely changing the way Palestinians have been treated for over seven decades. UNRWA, the UN’s Palestine relief agency, which is functionally an arm of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, should be abolished, and responsibility for Palestinian refugees transferred to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. In turn, UNHCR should follow its basic humanitarian doctrine, under which refugees are either repatriated to their country of origin, or, if that is not possible, resettled in other countries. There is nothing forcible about UNHCR resettlement, since both refugees and recipient countries must agree. But it is also true that, unlike UNRWA, UNHCR refugee camps do not last forever.

This is not to the detriment of Palestinians. Exactly the opposite. It means they will receive the same humanitarian treatment as every other refugee population since World War II. As difficult as switching to the UNHCR model may be, Trump’s comments, the first such by a major world leader, may finally ignite the debate that must occur to find a lasting home for the Gaza Palestinians.

This article was first published in the Daily Telegraph on February 10, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

Ignore Trump’s Gaza distraction. Focus on Iran

February 05, 2025

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with President Donald Trump, the first post-inaugural White House visit by a foreign leader, could shape the Middle East for generations. Pre-meeting speculation centered on how the leaders would handle the Hamas-Israel war.

Stunningly, Trump’s comments just before and then after his meeting with Netanyahu focused on the U.S. taking control of the Gaza Strip while Gaza’s residents are resettled elsewhere in the Middle East. There is little point in commenting seriously on this “idea,” which appears to be entirely Trump’s own.

The most important strategic issue in the real Middle East remains Iran’s existential threat to Israel. Tehran’s ayatollahs can only be delighted if the Trump administration expends any time and effort at all on the Gaza idea rather than addressing their nuclear weapons program. Restoring the “maximum pressure” campaign from Trump’s first term is a sound decision, but still only the beginning of an effective strategy.

Since Hamas’s barbaric Oct. 7, 2023, attack, Israel, with U.S. assistance, has dealt Iran and its “ring of fire” strategy major blows. Hamas and Hezbollah have been decimated but not destroyed. Iran’s ballistic missile production facilities and its sophisticated, Russian-supplied, S-300 air-defense systems have been all but eliminated. Syria’s Iran-friendly Assad regime has fallen, and its S-300 systems and other military assets have been destroyed. Unfortunately, the Houthis in Yemen, West Bank terrorists, and Iranian-controlled Shia militias in Iraq are only wounded, and not severely.

The job is unfinished, but enormous progress has been made to diminish Iran’s overall threat, especially its terrorist surrogates. The existential danger remains: Its nuclear program is essentially intact, with only one location, the Parchin weaponization facility, attacked. Looking ahead, the central issue remains how to destroy Tehran’s nuclear weapons efforts, which threaten not only Israel but also constitute a major proliferation threat to America and the world.

Eliminating this menace is Netanyahu’s real top priority, but it should not be solely Jerusalem’s responsibility. The United States is the only country that can stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (chemical and biological as well as nuclear). For America and Israel, there has never been a better time to do just that, using carefully targeted force against Iran’s nuclear arms facilities.

Accordingly, Israeli-American objectives should be victory against both Iran’s nuclear and terrorist threats. In World War II, Prime Minister Winston Churchill explained to his countrymen why this was the only acceptable outcome: “victory; victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.”

The real debate is between those advocating victory and those advocating the Obama-Biden approach: endless negotiations on an elusive deal to return Iran’s government to civilized behavior. There are certainly legitimate questions about the timing of striking Tehran’s nuclear facilities. Most important is reducing Iran’s capacity to retaliate against Israel, friendly Gulf Arab states, and deployed U.S. forces in the region. In Lebanon, Hezbollah likely retains tens of thousands of Iranian-supplied missiles, and Iran itself still has significant numbers of missiles and drones. The clock is running. Tehran is racing to repair the production facilities Israel leveled in October 2024 to replenish its missile stockpiles.

Another mutual priority is achieving Israel’s objective of eliminating the political and military capabilities of Hamas and Hezbollah, as Netanyahu stressed yesterday. Although Israel has enjoyed remarkable success in Gaza and Lebanon, the recent Gaza hostage releases were staged to portray Hamas as a viable fighting force, with considerable support among Gaza’s civilians. Yet under former President Joe Biden’s ceasefire deal, which Trump’s pre-inaugural pressure on Netanyahu ironically brought to fruition, Israeli negotiations with Hamas over Gaza’s future are due to start. Yet this is precisely what Netanyahu wanted to avoid and why Biden failed for seven months to close the deal. Just because it is now Trump’s deal does not improve it substantively.

Hamas can have no part in any future Gaza, whatever it looks like, nor can Hezbollah have any future in Lebanon. Only by removing these cancers can Gazans and Lebanese have any prospect of normality. And so long as the ayatollahs rule in Tehran, they will do their best to rearm their terrorist proxies, even under “maximum pressure” against Iran.

Following their summit, Netanyahu and Trump must demonstrate the resolve to persevere, as Churchill said, however long and hard the road may be. Watch what happens on Iran.

This article was first published in the Washington Examiner on February 5, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

Trump and the Middle East

January 28, 2025

History in the Middle East is moving very fast these days. The long-overdue fall of Syria’s Assad regime is only the latest evidence, and Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration will accelerate the pace. The central question is whether the principal players seize opportunities now open for lasting regional peace and security before they quickly close. Of course, there are massive, daunting uncertainties, but leaders should remember the Roman saying, “fortune favors the bold.”

Surprisingly, one of the major uncertainties could be Trump. In his first term, he was viewed as automatically pro-Israel, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over disputed territory in the Golan Heights. It would be wrong for several reasons, however, to assume reflexively that this pattern will recur during his second term.

For example, Trump’s private view of Netanyahu is far more negative than generally perceived, exemplified by Trump’s anger when Netanyahu congratulated Biden on winning the 2020 presidential election(https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-jerusalem-israel-middle-east-iran-nuclear-d141ca03a5e38bfb60b37f94a38ecda8). To most of the world, this was hardly noteworthy, but Trump’s fixation never to be perceived as a loser forced him to argue that the Democrats stole the election, which mythology Netanyahu violated. Even before that, Trump said in an interview that he thought the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas wanted peace more than Netanyahu(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lq1seiWI8ro), which hardly expresses confidence in the Israeli leader. Moreover, Netanyahu is an expert politician, far more astute than Trump, which undoubtedly also inflames Trump’s vanity.

Moreover, Trump’s obsession to seek a deal on anything and everything, even with Iran’s ayatollahs, may come to dominate his Middle East actions. As I previously recounted in The Room Where It Happened, Trump came remarkably close to meeting Iran’s then-Foreign Minister, Javid Zarif, at the August, 2019, G-7 summit in Biarritz, France. French President Emmanuel Macron suggested such an encounter to Trump immediately upon his arrival in Biarritz, and he was initially inclined to agree. Conferring in Trump’s hotel room with Jared Kushner and White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvanery, I urged against meeting with Zarif. Trump ultimately did not see Zarif, but, as the Duke of Wellington said of Napolean’s defeat at Waterloo, it was “the nearest run thing you ever saw.”

Trump’s pre-Inauguration intervention in Joe Biden’s long effort to obtain a cease-fire/hostage-release deal between Hamas and Israel is also noteworthy. After seven months of failure, Trump’s pressure on Israel resulted in Netanyahu finally accepting Biden’s deal, or at least its first phase. Trump wanted to take credit for the hostage releases, hearkening back to the start of Ronald Reagan’s administration, when Iran returned US embassy officials taken hostage during the 1979 Islamic Revolution. On that level, Trump succeeded where Biden failed. But whether Trump understands Biden’s plan has other phases is far from certain, as are the prospects that even the first phase will conclude successfully, let alone those that follow.

Improbably, however, there have been signs, before and after Trump’s Inauguration, that he may believe that the Gaza war has actually ended. Steve Witkoff, his family friend and now a special Middle East envoy, has stresses that “phase two” of Biden’s deal, which involves further negotiation between Israel and Hamas, should begin promptly. This can hardly be what Israel expects. In addition, Witkoff’s Trumpian “zeal for the deal” mentality, and his inexperience, reflected in naïve public comments(https://www.foxnews.com/media/trump-envoy-says-gaza-ceasefire-could-pave-way-mideast-normalization-deal-inflection-point), are factors that could militate against Israel in the immediate future. Impressed by Witkoff’s performance to date, Trump may have decided to give him a role in Iran matters, although that remains unclear(https://www.axios.com/2025/01/23/trump-witkoff-iran-diplomacy-nuclear-deal). Nonetheless, both have said they favored diplomatic options to resolve Iran’s nuclear threat.

If true, this creates a dilemma for Netanyahu. Right now, Israel and America have the best opportunity ever to destroy Iran’s nuclear-weapons and missile programs. Israel has already massively damaged Iran’s missile-production facilities(https://www.axios.com/2024/10/26/israel-strike-iran-missile-production) and at least one target involved in weaponizing highly enriched uranium(https://www.axios.com/2024/11/15/iran-israel-destroyed-active-nuclear-weapons-research-facility), not to mention flattening Iran’s sophisticated, Russia-supplied, S-300 air defense systems(https://www.voanews.com/a/israel-s-attack-on-iran-has-left-tehran-offensively-and-defensively-weaker/7848701.html). Additional attacks in Syria after Assad’s overthrow have opened an air corridor allowing direct access from Israel to Iran. The path is clear.

Obstacles remain, notably Iran’s and Hezbollah’s remaining ballistic missiles, which would enable either retaliatory strikes against Israel, or even a pre-emptive strike to foreclose Netanyahu’s options. Israel, Jordan, and nearby Arab states must also worry about the current regime in Damascus, led by the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (“HTS”) terrorist group. Having shed his nom de guerre, and changed from combat fatigues to suits and ties, HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa is doing his best to convince outsiders that he now simply seeks responsible government in Syria. Whether this is true remains unclear, as do Turkish aspirations in Syria and across the region. The Biden administration(https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/01/24/us-syria-intelligence-hts-isis/) reportedly went so far as to share intelligence with HTS about ISIS, although whether Trump will continue this risky business is unknown.

What is inescapable is that while Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities have never been more vulnerable, Trump’s new administration seemed undecided on its future course. His first term may not be an accurate prediction of his second. There is no Trumpian grand strategy at work here since he does not do grand strategy. Instead, he is transactional, episodic, and ad hoc, often making decisions based on whatever the last person he consults with recommends. This may be the real future of America’s policy in the Middle East.

This article was first published in Independent Arabia on January 28, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

Negotiating Advice for Ukraine Supporters

January 13, 2025

During the 2024 campaign, candidate Donald Trump said he could resolve the Ukraine war in twenty-four hours by getting together with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky to thrash things out. At a January 7 press conference, President-elect Trump conceded it could take up to six months. Call that learning.

Trump fundamentally wants the war to disappear. He has said repeatedly it would never have occurred had he been President, as he has also said about the ongoing Middle East conflict. Of course, these statements are, by definition, neither provable nor disprovable, but they reflect his visceral feeling that the wars are Biden’s problem and should disappear when Biden does.

Neither war will disappear so quickly, but Trump’s comments strongly suggest that he is indifferent to the terms on which they end. That is likely bad news for Ukraine, though it could be good news for Israel in its struggle against Iran’s “ring of fire” strategy. As Inauguration Day nears, there is precious little information publicly available about what Trump will actually do. And, because he has neither a coherent philosophy nor a strategic approach to foreign affairs, what he says in the morning may not apply in the afternoon.

Accordingly, those concerned for Ukrainian and Western security should focus clearly on what is negotiable with Moscow and what is not. Early decisions on the central components of potential diplomacy can have far-reaching implications that the parties will inevitably try to turn to their benefit. Ukraine especially must make several key decisions about how to proceed. Consider the following.

Although a cease-fire linked to commencing negotiations may be inevitable because of pressure from Trump, such a cease-fire is not necessarily in Ukraine’s interest. Talking while fighting was a successful strategy for the Chinese Communist Party in its struggle against the Kuomintang during and after World War II. It could work for Ukraine today under certain conditions. Most important, of course, is the continued supply of adequate military assistance, which is questionable with Trump in office.

But a cease fire can be more perilous for Ukraine than for Russia: the longer negotiations take, the more likely it is the cease-fire lines become permanent, a new border between Ukraine and Russia far into the future. As negotiations proceed, the absence of hostilities will provide opportunities for Moscow to seek full or at least partial easing of economic sanctions, which many Europeans seem poised to concede. Moreover, once hostilities stop, they are far harder politically to resume, which is also likely to Ukraine’s disadvantage. Although Russia would probably win an indefinite war of attrition, it also needs time to rebuild its debilitated military and economy. A cease fire affords that opportunity, and thereby buys time for Russia to heal its wounds and prepare the next attack. Russia waited eight years after its 2014 offensive, and can afford to wait again until the West is distracted elsewhere.

If Trump insists on a cease-fire-in-place and contemporaneous negotiations, Ukraine must be careful to avoid having the talks aim at a permanent solution rather than a temporary accommodation. Russia will see any deal as temporary in any case, no matter what it says publicly. Vladimir Putin obsesses over reincorporating Ukraine into a new Russian empire, and each slice of territory Russia takes back brings that goal closer. Negotiating an “end” to the war plays into the Kremlin’s hands, since it provides the false impression to gullible Westerners that there is no risk of future aggression.

Both the cease-fire issue and the duration of any deal raise two other questions: should there be “peacekeepers” along the cease-fire line, and should Ukraine insist on “security guarantees” from the West (NATO or otherwise) against future Russian aggression?

Peacekeeping is operationally complex, and rarely successful in any sense other than helping prolong a military stalemate. That is nearly the uniform outcome of UN peacekeeping. Peacekeeping forces (like UNIFIL in Lebanon or UNDOF on the Golan Heights) simply become part of the landscape, in peace or war. The Security Council loses interest in resolving the sources of the underlying conflict. The peacekeepers become irrelevant, as recent developments along the cease-fire line between Israel and Syria demonstrate. In short, peacekeepers are essentially only hollow symbols.

Indeed, it is the recognition of UN ineffectiveness that has likely inspired calls for deploying NATO peacekeepers along the Ukraine-Russia line-of-control. But does anyone expect Russia to agree meekly? Will Moscow not suggest peacekeepers from Iran or North Korea along with NATO? Moreover, there has been little discussion about what a peacekeeping force’s rules of engagement would be, whether deployed by the UN or NATO. Would these rules be typical of UN operation, where the peacekeepers can only use force only in self-defense? Or would the rules be more robust, allowing force in aid of their mission? Really? In aid of their mission, NATO peacekeepers would be allowed to use force against Russian troops? Or Ukrainian troops? In such circumstances, potential troop-contributing countries would make themselves very scarce.

Future security guarantees for Ukraine, which it is insisting upon, are unfortunately likely to be blue smoke and mirrors. Russia has repeatedly said that NATO membership — the only security guarantee that really matters — is a deal-breaker. European Union security guarantees? Good luck with that. Security guarantees by individual nations? That was the approach of the Budapest agreements on returning Soviet nuclear weapons to Russia; they didn’t work out so well. In short, “security guarantees” are mellifluous words, but evanescent without US and NATO participation, which Trump seems unlikely to endorse.

Negotiations are looming primarily because Trump wants the war to go away. Europe is too tired and too incapable of charting a different course. Contemplating these depressing scenarios, therefore, Ukraine and its supporters may have little choice but to acquiesce in talks on unfavorable terms. For that very reason, Kyiv should be very cautious on what it agrees with Trump.

This article was first published in 19fortyfive on January 12, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

Trump risks hamstringing Marco Rubio

January 08, 2025

Turf-fighting is a way of life at the State Department, as in much of the federal government. The department’s complex and varied responsibilities have, over time, led to an organizational chart that has defied multiple attempts at rationalization. Its internal culture has simultaneously grown more entrenched. The Foreign Service is perhaps the government’s strongest civilian bureaucracy, buttressed by the department’s civil-service employees.

This is not the “deep state” so attractive to conspiracy theorists but a species of bureaucratic culture possessed by every federal department and agency and well-explored in public-choice economics. The State Department’s cadres instinctively resist political direction and control, trying to emulate the centuries-long insulation from politics of Europe’s foreign ministries. My own experience led me to conclude in Surrender Is Not an Option that the only solution to the department’s formidable bureaucracy is a “cultural revolution,” one that will take years to accomplish since the culture itself took many decades to evolve.

Every secretary of state, therefore, faces massive obstacles to giving new directions to their bureaucracy, especially Republicans, including President-elect Donald Trump’s secretary of state nominee, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). Worryingly, however, Trump has announced multiple appointments that could add serious complications to Rubio’s leadership and ability to successfully implement the administration’s foreign policy.

None of these Trumpian decisions are fatal, nor are further confusion, obstructionism, turf-fighting, backbiting, leaking to the press, and a generally Hobbesian foreign-policy involvement. Perhaps sweetness and light will prevail. However, the risk is palpable that Rubio’s enormous responsibilities will be considerably more difficult because of assignments and personalities he may have had a precious little role in deciding.

Trump’s practice is superficially similar to prior administrations: The White House routinely makes political appointments, while the State Department proposes career ambassadors. Critically different, however, are the natures of the positions being filled (or created), the unprecedented reality that some are already performing their “duties,” and whether they have direct access to Trump. By contrast, Rubio has kept a low-profile since being tapped, the customary approach before Senate confirmation.

For example, Trump chose Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) as his U.S. ambassador to the United Nations before announcing Rubio, similar to 2016 when Trump picked Nikki Haley before Rex Tillerson. That did not turn out felicitously, either for Tillerson or his successor, Mike Pompeo. Whether or not our U.N. ambassador has Cabinet rank (and my view has always been “should not”), there can only be one secretary of state. Other opinions are welcome, but the department can only have one boss. Take my word. You have to watch those U.N. ambassadors.

Matt Whittaker, tipped for senior Justice Department roles (and perhaps still Plan B for FBI director), is to be our NATO Ambassador. Trump’s negative views on NATO are well-known, whereas Rubio has always been a strong NATO advocate. Will Whitaker report directly to Trump or to Rubio, and with what effect?

There is no doubt Keith Kellogg will have a direct line to Trump in his coming, newly-created role as assistant to the president and special envoy for Ukraine and Russia. Assistants to the president serve in his executive office, not at the State Department or another department. Trump once told me, “You know I wanted [Keith] as national security adviser after [H.R.] McMaster. He never offers his opinion unless I ask.”

This is the very paradigm of the fealty Trump wants from subordinates. Who knows what role Rubio will have in Ukraine policy?

The list of newly-concocted positions goes on: Massad Boulos, Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law, as senior adviser to the president on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs, and Steve Witkoff, a Trump family friend, as special envoy for the Middle East. Ever since Henry Kissinger and then Jim Baker, those roles have been for the secretary of state personally. Two more newly-forged, ambassadorial-style positions will go to first-term alumni: Richard Grenell as presidential envoy for special missions, “including Venezuela and North Korea,” and Mauricio Claver-Carone as the State Department’s special envoy to Latin America, which presumably still includes Venezuela. However, with Ukraine covered by Kellogg and two envoys already working in the Middle East, Grenell’s exact role is unclear.

Perhaps for belt-and-suspender purposes, the president-elect has not only nominated Warren Stephens, a respected investment banker, to be ambassador to the United Kingdom but just weeks later named Mark Burnett, producer of the former president’s television show The Apprentice, as special envoy to the U.K. Donald Trump said Burnett would “work to enhance diplomatic relations, focusing on areas of mutual interest, including trade, investment opportunities, and cultural exchanges,” which sounds suspiciously like the ambassador’s job.

Of course, all these appointees could also complicate the National Security Council’s interagency process, so Rubio will not likely be the only top-level Trump official wondering, “Who’s on first?” There may be more: Donald Trump hasn’t even taken office yet.

This article was first published in the Washington Examiner on January 8, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

Trump can turn Syria opportunity against Iran

January 06, 2025

Last month’s rapid collapse and fall of Syria’s Assad dynasty surprised the world, starting with Bashar Assad himself. Led by the radical Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al Sham and likely galvanized by Israel’s mauling of Hamas and Hezbollah, the rebel victory represents Iran’s third catastrophic defeat in trying to implement its anti-Israel “ring of fire” strategy.

HTS and its leader, Ahmed al Sharaa, are struggling to consolidate power within long-fractured Syria. Their main priority is convincing Arab and Western states that they are no longer terrorists, nor controlled by Turkey, which labels HTS as terrorist but has nonetheless aided it for years. Sharaa has shed his terrorist nom de guerre and even his combat fatigues, now appearing at media events in Western attire. Whether his transformation from radical terrorist is real or merely cosmetic remains to be seen.

Iranian Leader Ali Khamenei attends a program at the Imam Khomeini Hosseini meets with Iran Air Force commanders and Iran Air Defense Force officers at the Imam Khomeini Husayniyya in Tehran, Iran on February 05, 2024. (Iranian Leader Press Office / Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Still, this is no time for the United States to say “hands off.” We have two critical national security interests flowing from Assad’s downfall. First, cooperating with Israel and Arab allies, we must ensure that Syria does not become another terrorist state, threatening our regional allies and possibly Europe and America. Second, Washington and Jerusalem should seize the opportunity of swiftly moving events in the Middle East to increase pressure on Iran, including destroying or substantially weakening its nuclear weapons program.

On the antiterrorism front alone, the U.S. has compelling reasons to prevent another Afghanistan. Nearly 2,000 of our troops remain in northeastern and eastern Syria, supporting primarily Kurdish forces who helped eliminate the Islamic State territorial caliphate in 2019, and who are now guarding thousands of dangerous Islamic State fighters held prisoner. The Kurds are threatened not only by HTS but by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s neo-Ottomanist aspirations, long-standing irredentist objectives in northern Syria, and his vindictive campaign against the Kurdish people. Northeastern Syria is today relatively calm. Any U.S. withdrawal or assent to Turkish demands to “relieve” us would only contribute to longer-term instability.

Inside the remainder of Syria, numerous ethnic and religious minorities, some favored under Assad, some not, worry about their fate under radical Sunni Islamist rule, as possibly dangerous as the Shia Hezbollah terrorists in next-door Lebanon. The disorder in Syria compounds the already widespread fragmentation created during the Arab Spring struggle to overthrow Assad. These anarchic conditions are conducive for existing and newly arriving foreign terrorists to establish a significant presence in Syria, as in Afghanistan, which would pose substantial dangers regionally and globally.

For Washington, the possibility that HTS might push Russia out of its naval and air stations at Tartus and Hmeimim, respectively, is a major upside. HTS has reportedly called for all Russian forces to withdraw. Widespread reporting indicates that some removals of troops and equipment are underway, perhaps slowed by the sinking of a Russian cargo ship in the Mediterranean, which Moscow blames on terrorism. But if HTS did, in fact, expel the Russian military from Syria, that could be promising evidence that HTS wanted to foster stability and reject adventurism by unhelpful foreign assistance.

As to Iran, Assad’s overthrow substantially damaged its hegemonic ambitions, and not just in Syria. By cutting off land supply routes to Hezbollah in Lebanon, HTS severed the most efficient, economical route used by Tehran for years to supply its terrorist proxy. HTS has warned Iran against “spreading chaos in Syria,” which, typically, Iran denied doing.

Israel wasted little time after Assad fled to Moscow, attacking Syrian air, land, and naval military facilities; chemical and biological weapons targets; and temporarily occupying the entire U.N. Golan Heights demilitarized zone and some additional Syrian territory. Although criticized pro forma by Gulf Arab states, Israel’s preventive action was justified by Syria’s instability and the risk of terrorists seizing government control in Damascus. Even the Biden administration acted militarily, bombing significant Islamic State targets to prevent its resurgence, or allowing HTS to absorb Islamic State fighters and assets.

With Syrian air defenses degraded, as Iran’s have been by prior Israeli strikes, the way is now largely open from Israel to Iran should Jerusalem and Washington decide to strike the heart of Tehran’s nuclear program. There may never be a better opportunity.

The Biden administration has consistently and erroneously pressured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to eliminate Iran’s nuclear menace. However, core U.S. national security interests, notably our long struggles against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and global terrorism, all justify eliminating Tehran’s existing capabilities. Diplomacy has manifestly failed.

History is ready for the making in Syria and the Middle East. The incoming Trump administration should go for it.

This article was first published in the Washington Examiner on January 6, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

Presidents Expect Loyalty. Trump Demands Fealty.

January 05, 2025

Mr. Bolton was the longest-serving national security adviser in the first Trump administration and an assistant attorney general for the civil division at the Justice Department in the Reagan administration. He is the author of “The Room Where It Happened.”

Four years ago this Monday, Donald Trump pressured Mike Pence to pursue a surreal interpretation of the vice president’s constitutional role in counting the Electoral College’s votes. Mr. Pence refused, igniting Mr. Trump’s fury for not subordinating either philosophical or constitutional principles in service to him, thereby showing “disloyalty.” Thus ended Mr. Pence’s usefulness to Trumpworld, albeit honorably for Mr. Pence.

Now Mr. Trump is selecting key personnel for his second term. Although the prospective appointees vary in philosophy, competence and character, one requirement for them is unfortunately consistent: the likelihood that they will carry out Mr. Trump’s orders blind to norms and standards underlying effective governance, or perhaps even to legality.

Mr. Trump’s obsessiveness stems purportedly from an unhappy first term, when too many senior advisers were not “loyal” to him. These officials had separate agendas, Mr. Trump’s advocates say, undermining, frustrating, even reversing the president’s decisions and thereby illegitimately usurping his power. Such usurpers were considered denizens of the “deep state,” Republicans in Name Only, conspiratorially linked by a desire to cripple Mr. Trump’s presidency. Not this time, say his consiglieri, notably his eldest son; they want only loyalists.

But what exactly is “loyalty” in the executive branch, and indeed in Congress, where senators have a constitutional advise-and-consent role regarding significant numbers of (but not all) senior officials? To most citizens, loyalty is rightly seen as a virtue. Indeed, a major tenet of first-term veterans of Mr. Trump’s administration is that they did what was customary, which was to swear loyalty to our Constitution, not the man. Former officials like Mark Esper and Mark Milley have persuasively made precisely this point, which the Trump transition team conveniently ignores, fearing correctly that asserting personal over constitutional loyalty would produce nuclear-level blowback.

In fact, Mr. Trump, whose understanding of the Constitution is sketchy, really wants his appointees to display fealty, a medieval concept implying not mere loyalty but submission. Berating and demeaning cabinet officials before their colleagues, as he did to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, among others, and then keeping them in office is disturbing yet typical for Mr. Trump. At Britain’s 2023 coronation of King Charles, Prince William pledged that he would be his father’s “liege man of life and limb.” That’s fealty, publicly affirmed, the kind of personalist link that Mr. Trump expects will elide constitutional obligations.

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This is indisputably damaging to a free society, but it is a well-established Trump habit. Neither kings nor presidents, nor their countries, are well served if they are surrounded by sycophants and opportunists. Truly strong presidents are not afraid of advisers with strong views.

At his first formal cabinet meeting in June 2017, with the media present, Mr. Trump solicited his team’s praise, something even old Washington hands could not recall having seen.

In the current transition, potential Trump appointees say they have been asked whether they believe the 2020 election was stolen (to which there is only one right answer, one contrary to fact) and how they view the events of Jan. 6, 2021. (When Mr. Trump finally leaves the political scene, it will be interesting to see how many nominees claim they never believed he won in 2020 or that Jan. 6 was an innocent walk in the park, not an unlawful riot.) Kissing Mr. Trump’s ring to gain the highest government ranks is one thing, but the real crunch for the new appointees, especially those without prior government experience, will come after they actually begin work. That is one reason the Constitution checks the president’s appointment power.

The framers strove to make their Constitution lasting. They were not naïve. They had lived through “times that try men’s souls.” Alexander Hamilton, for example, saw the Senate’s advice-and-consent role in the most practical terms. As he wrote in Federalist 76, the idea that the president “could in general purchase the integrity of the whole body would be forced and improbable. A man disposed to view human nature as it is, without either flattering its virtues or exaggerating its vices, will see sufficient ground of confidence in the probity of the Senate, to rest satisfied not only that it will be impracticable to the Executive to corrupt or seduce a majority of its members; but that the necessity of its cooperation in the business of appointments will be a considerable and salutary restraint upon the conduct of that magistrate.”

Asking the Senate to perform as Hamilton envisioned is not hard. Recently, 38 House Republicans dealt Mr. Trump his first legislative loss as president-elect by defeating a continuing resolution he backed. Surely senators are at least as independent as House members.

How does fealty work in office? This is the real test of appointees’ personal integrity, evidencing whether their loyalty is to the Constitution or to Mr. Trump. In the Defense Department, for example, where military officers are obligated not to follow illegal orders, what happens if Mr. Trump orders a domestic deployment that violates the Posse Comitatus Act? Will Pete Hegseth, whom Mr. Trump has chosen to be the secretary of defense, urge rescinding the order or just pass it along to the armed services? Will uniformed officers, perhaps advised by government lawyers, demur? How deep into the chain of command could this chaos extend, and what lasting damage might it cause?

Analogous illegal orders could cause significant crises across the intelligence community, which is considered the dark heart of the deep state by many, Mr. Trump among them. But the federal departments and agencies most at risk are law-enforcement agencies, especially the Justice Department. If Mr. Trump orders that his choice for attorney general, Pam Bondi, prosecute Liz Cheney for potential subornation of perjury before the House’s Jan. 6 committee, what will Ms. Bondi do? She could say there is no prohibition on members of Congress encouraging witnesses to tell the truth in legislative hearings and no evidence that Cassidy Hutchinson or other witnesses perjured themselves.

Or Ms. Bondi could instruct Mr. Trump’s pick for deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, who represented the president-elect in several criminal cases, to investigate not only Ms. Cheney but also Ms. Hutchinson and other witnesses. Mr. Blanche will be an interesting test case. He is a former federal prosecutor. He knows the rules. Will he uncritically follow Ms. Bondi’s order, at the risk of his own legal ethics and possible disciplinary action from the bar association? If Mr. Blanche passes the order down to the assistant attorney general for the criminal or national security division, or directly to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, what then? And once presented to career trial attorneys, what will they do, with their own professionalism at stake? All these questions and decisions also apply to F.B.I. staff members and other investigators, who will face scenarios comparable to those at the Justice Department.

As a result, there could be a Justice Department in continuing crisis. Whatever happens there and at other agencies, however, I believe the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts, and especially the trial courts, will not long tolerate the sort of malicious prosecutions Mr. Trump is considering in his retribution campaign. The example of district court judges in the District of Columbia, whether appointed by Republican or Democratic presidents, handling Jan. 6 defendants is instructive, especially their sentencing decisions. They may not all have been like Watergate’s “Maximum John” Sirica, an appointee of President Dwight Eisenhower, but they were tough. There’s nothing like the judiciary’s life tenure, compared with serving “at the pleasure of the president for the time being.”

Of course, just the cost of legal representation during investigations or prosecutions can be daunting, especially since Mr. Trump will be using tax dollars if he decides to wage lawfare against political opponents. He may not be expending his personal resources, but his targets will. Nor will they have the extent of official immunity that presidents have, criminally or civilly, something for office seekers to think about in advance.

Mr. Trump’s appointees should carefully note his expertise in escaping the consequences of his actions, whereas his loyal supporters often do not. Ask Michael Cohen and Rudy Giuliani.

This article was first published in the New York Times on January 5, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

A U.N. Reform Plan for Trump and Stefanik

December 26, 2024

The new administration should reject mandatory ‘assessments’ and fund only programs that work.
Elise Stefanik, Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has her work cut out for her. Fortunately, she’s already aware of the U.N.’s flaws. In a September op-ed for the Washington Examiner, she applauded Mr. Trump for withdrawing from the “corrupt and antisemitic” Human Rights Council and defunding the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, the U.N.’s permanent refugee organization for Palestinians, during his first term. She also praised House Republicans for voting to impose sanctions on the International Criminal Court.

Ms. Stefanik joins a long line of U.S. officials dismayed by the U.N.’s profound failings, including its deep-seated bias against Israel. As one of those officials, my contributions to U.N. reform include implementing President George W. Bush’s decision to remove America’s signature from the treaty establishing the ICC, advising Mr. Bush to vote against creating the Human Rights Council and then casting the vote, and leading the effort to repeal the U.N.’s infamous “Zionism is racism” resolution. Years later, in 2018, I recommended that Mr. Trump withdraw from the Human Rights Council and defund Unrwa.

But the job is far from over. No one should underestimate the difficulties that lie ahead or the effort that will be required to achieve real, lasting U.N. reform. A major obstacle is our own State Department. Its bureaucracy historically has been unwilling to do the heavy lifting required to muster support for transforming the U.N. That burden will fall not only on U.S. missions to U.N. components but also on the State Department’s regional bureaus, which are responsible for bilateral relations with the other 192 members. For decades, the regional bureaus have found reasons not to engage, pleading that innumerable bilateral issues be given higher priority. Secretary of State-designate Marco Rubio will need to crack the whip for reform to succeed.

The new administration should prove to U.N. members that its goal of reform isn’t merely rhetorical. Washington’s most important weapon will be its wallet—decisions about how much it financially contributes, or doesn’t contribute, to the U.N. Current spending is out of control. In 2022, the most recent year for which we have accurate data, the U.S. contributed more than $18 billion, accounting for roughly one-third of total U.N. funding. As the Heritage Foundation reported, “the U.S. provided more funding to the U.N. system than 185 other U.N. member states combined.” That year we forked over 8.5 times the amount that China, the second-largest donor, contributed.

Funding for U.N. components falls into two categories: mandatory “assessed” contributions and voluntary contributions. Assessments are calculated by opaque “capacity to pay” formulas, which have historically made America the largest contributor. After decades of negotiation and legislation, U.S. assessments are capped at 22% for most contributions and 25% for peacekeeping operations. On a one-nation-one-vote basis, bodies like the General Assembly decide agency budgets, and members then pay their percentage shares.

Assessments therefore amount to taxation of America by other U.N. members. A majority of member governments tells us what we owe, on pain of losing our vote in U.N. governing bodies if we don’t pay up. That alone is sufficient reason to reject the concept of assessments, since it isn’t our votes in these bodies that matter. The only vote that matters is our Security Council vote (and veto), our main shield against one-nation-one-vote majorities U.N.-system-wide. Our permanent seat in the council and its vote are written into the U.N. Charter, and we can veto changes to the charter. The potential negative consequences of ending assessed contributions, then, are essentially nil.

U.N. bureaucrats, U.S. officials and nongovernmental organizations assert without evidence that America gets enormous credit for its contributions to the U.N. and warn that America’s influence would diminish worldwide if those contributions were significantly reduced or eliminated. These assertions are false. Special-interest advocates simply take our current level of funding for granted, complain that it’s inadequate and demand more. It’s time they get their comeuppance.

The U.N. Charter doesn’t require assessed contributions. The charter says merely that the organization’s expenses shall be “apportioned by the General Assembly,” but requires no specific approach. The assembly could make contributions entirely voluntary, as is the case already with some U.N. agencies and programs. The Trump administration simply needs to resolve against the U.N. system’s longstanding reliance on assessments until the totally voluntary approach prevails and other members acquiesce.

Shortly after taking office, Mr. Rubio and Ms. Stefanik should announce that the U.S. no longer accepts the concept of assessed contributions. Henceforth, we will pay only voluntary contributions, which we will decide by evaluating the performance of each U.N. agency and program. We may zero out some programs; we may voluntarily fund others at or near our current assessed level; we may even increase funding for others. But we will decide. And every other U.N. member will have the same prerogative.

This approach rests on the revolutionary assumption that we fund the U.N. based on its performance, paying only for what we want and insisting that we get what we pay for. U.N. agencies that are funded entirely by voluntary donations, such as the World Food Program, generally tend to outperform those funded by assessments. Because they have to prove their worth annually, they have an incentive to sustain and even boost their performance. If voluntarily funded programs fail or falter, we should reduce their funding accordingly.

Ultimately, some agencies will prove unreformable, and America should simply withdraw from them. The U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization immediately comes to mind, as it did for President Ronald Reagan, who withdrew the U.S. from Unesco in 1984. The country rejoined in 2003 under Mr. Bush, Mr. Trump withdrew in his turn, and Joe Biden rejoined. Doubtless Mr. Trump will withdraw again—and rightly so.

Using America’s money as an existential threat will rock the U.N. system. While many other reforms are possible, they won’t match the power of unilaterally controlling our contributions. Besides, we need a much larger defense budget; reducing contributions to the U.N. is a good start to find the necessary funding.

This article was first published in the Wall Street Journal on December 26, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

The Fall of Assad

December 17, 2024

History is moving fast in the Middle East, raising the possibility, for well or ill, of massive changes throughout the region. The collapse of Syria’s Assad-family dictatorship took everyone by surprise, starting with Bashar al-Assad himself, and certainly including Russia and Iran. Arab and Western intelligence services missed the regime’s vulnerability, particularly the weakness and disloyalty of its military and security services.

The brutal dictatorship is gone, but what comes next? Most importantly, Assad’s removal is yet another massive defeat for Iran’s ruling mullahs. Following Israel’s thrashing of Hezbollah and its near-total dismemberment of Hamas, this is the third major catastrophe for Tehran’s anti-Israel “ring-of-fire” strategy. While Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu agreed to a cease fire with Hezbollah, he has made clear it lasts for only sixty days, ending just after the Joe Biden leaves office. Hezbollah will be in further dire trouble if its overland supply route through Iraq and Syria is permanently blocked. There is no cease fire with Hamas, meaning both terrorist proxies could face further Israeli decimation.

As for Iran itself, the situation could hardly be worse. With three major pillars of its regional power already fallen or on the way, the ayatollahs are now at great risk both internationally and domestically. Recriminations and finger-pointing among top leaders of the Revolutionary Guards and regular Iranian military(https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/12/09/iran-armed-forces-at-war-with-themselves-fall-assad-syria/) has already spread widely in the general population(https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/world/middleeast/iran-syria-assad.html).

Disarray and fragmentation in the senior ranks of authoritarian governments are often the first signs of regime collapse. Popular discontent in Iran was already extensive due to long-standing economic decline, the opposition of young people and women generally, ethnic discontent, and more. If the Revolutionary Guard and regular military leaderships begin to come apart, the potential for internal armed conflict grows. Assad’s collapse showed that a façade of strength can mask underlying weakness, with surprisingly swift collapse following.

Externally, Iran’s regime has not been this vulnerable since the 1979 revolution. Jerusalem has already eliminated Tehran’s Russian-supplied S-300 air-defense systems, seriously damaged its ballistic-missile capabilities, and destroyed elements of the nuclear-weapons program(https://www.axios.com/2024/11/15/iran-israel-destroyed-active-nuclear-weapons-research-facility). Netanyahu has never had a better opportunity to obliterate all or vast swathes of the entire nuclear effort. So doing would make Israel, neighboring states, and the entire world safe from the threat of Iran’s decades-long nuclear-proliferation threat, which has long contravened the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Israel, with US assistance if requested, should go for the win on the nuclear issue. Not only would that eliminate Tehran’s threat of a nuclear Holocaust, it would simultaneously strike yet another domestic political blow against the mullahs. In addition to the tens of billions of dollars wasted in supporting Iran’s now-decimated terrorist proxies, but the billions spent on nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles would also be seen as squandered. Iran’s citizens would be perfectly entitled to conclude that the ayatollahs had never had their best interests at heart, and that their removal was now fully justified.

Russia is the next biggest loser. Distracted and overburdened by its unprovoked aggression against Ukraine, now about to enter its third year, the Kremlin lacked the resources to save its puppet in Damascus. Vladimir Putin’s humiliation is reverberating globally, and it will also have corrosive impact inside Russia, perhaps finally stimulating more-effective opposition to the ongoing burdens the Ukraine war imposes on Russia’s citizens and economy.

Even more significant losses may be coming. The Kremlin’s main interests in Syria are its Tartus naval station and its Latakia air base. These are Moscow’s only military facilities outside the territory of the former Soviet Union. They are vital to Russia’s position in the eastern Mediterranean. If forced to evacuate these bases, Moscow’s ability to project power beyond the Black Sea would be dramatically reduced, as would be the threat to NATO across the Mediterranean. Although there were early indications Russia might to retain the bases, recent commercial overhead photography indicates it may be preparing to withdraw some or all of its forces. The situation remains fluid(https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/12/13/world/syria-news).

Without doubt, Turkey, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) terrorists, and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army are the big winners so far. However, Syria’s internal situation is far from settled. American troops remain in northeastern Syria assisting the largely Kurdish Syrian Defense Forces in the anti-ISIS campaign, and at al-Tanf. The Kurds should not be abandoned, especially to President Recep Erdogan’s neo-Ottomanist aspirations to expand Ankara’s control and influence in Arab lands It would be a mistake, at this point, to remove HTS from Washington’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, although, unwisely, the Biden administration is reportedly considering doing so(https://www.politico.com/news/2024/12/09/us-debates-lifting-terror-designation-for-main-syrian-rebel-group-00193367).

While eliminating Assad is a critical contribution to reducing the Iranian threat, neither Israel nor neighboring Arab governments nor the United States have any interest in seeing another terrorist state arise, and this one on the Mediterranean. Delicate diplomacy lies ahead. In the meantime, Biden was right to bomb ISIS weapons storage depots in eastern Syria to deny those assets to HTS, and Israel is justified in eliminating the Assad government’s military assets for the same reason.

Importantly for the region and beyond, urgent efforts are required to locate and secure all aspects of Assad’s chemical and biological weapons programs(https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/12/12/syria-chemical-weapons-search-mustard-sarin/). Assaad used chemical weapons against his own people as recently as 2017 and 2018, so there is no question whether these capabilities exist.

Thus, while there is considerable good news surrounding Assad’s ouster and exile to Moscow, circumstances in Syria still pose serious threats to peace and security in the Middle East and globally. This is no time to relax or turn away, especially for the incoming Trump administration.

This article was first published in Independent Arabia on December 17, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

Kash Patel Doesn’t Belong at the FBI

December 10, 2024

At the NSC, he was less interested in his assigned duties than in proving his loyalty to Donald Trump.
The president’s constitutional obligation to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” requires evenhanded action in the national rather than his personal interest, a distinction Donald Trump doesn’t grasp. His oft-stated intention to seek retribution against opponents, if implemented, facially contravenes the Take Care Clause.

Too many of Mr. Trump’s personnel selections evidence his assiduous search for personal fealty, not loyalty to the Constitution. Kash Patel’s nomination as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation squarely fits this pattern.

Rep. Devin Nunes pushed Mr. Patel for the National Security Council staff after Republicans lost the House in 2018. Notwithstanding Mr. Patel’s lack of policy credentials, the president ordered him hired. NSC staff has long been divided into directorates responsible for different policy areas. Charles Kupperman, my deputy, and I placed Mr. Patel in the International Organizations Directorate, which had a vacancy.

Some five months later, we moved him to fill an opening in the Counter-Terrorism Directorate. In neither case was he in charge of a directorate during my tenure as national security adviser or thereafter, as he contends in his memoir and elsewhere. He reported to senior directors in both cases and had defined responsibilities. His puffery was characteristic of the résumé inflation we had detected when Mr. Trump pressed him on us. We found he had exaggerated his role in cases he worked on as a Justice Department lawyer before joining Mr. Nunes’s committee staff. Given the sensitivity of the NSC’s responsibilities, problems of credibility or reliability would ordinarily disqualify any job applicant.

He proved to be less interested in his assigned duties than in worming his way into Mr. Trump’s presence. Fiona Hill, NSC senior director for Europe, testified to Congress during Mr. Trump’s first impeachment hearings that Mr. Patel, at that time assigned to the International Organizations Directorate, participated in a May 2019 Oval Office meeting on Ukraine, and that he had engaged in various other Ukraine-related activities. Whatever he did on Ukraine while an NSC staffer, at least during my tenure, was unrestrained freelancing. (He has denied any communication with Mr. Trump on Ukraine.)

In August 2019, when I was overseas, Mr. Trump called Mr. Kupperman and White House counsel Pat Cipollone to the Oval Office. They arrived to find Mr. Patel already there. The subject of the discussion was making him an administration enforcer of presidential loyalty. Messrs. Cipollone and Kupperman strongly objected to any such role, whether in the NSC or the counsel’s office, and the issue disappeared. I resigned in September 2019.

According to former Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s memoir, during an October 2020 hostage-rescue mission, Mr. Patel, then in the Counter-Terrorism directorate, misinformed other officials that a key airspace-transit clearance had been granted. In fact, Mr. Esper writes, the clearance hadn’t been obtained, threatening the operation’s success, and his team “suspected Patel made the approval story up” but wasn’t certain. Typically, Mr. Patel’s version of this episode in his memoir denies any error—though, ironically, it also boasts of his acting beyond the authority of NSC staffers. Then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also knew the day’s details, including about the clearance issue. He hasn’t spoken publicly about the incident. He should.

Last week Olivia Troye, who served as counterterrorism adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, elaborated on these concerns, tagging Mr. Patel with “making things up on operations” and lying about intelligence. His lawyers responded by threatening to sue her for defamation, writing that “at no point did Mr. Patel ever lie about national intelligence, place Navy Seals at risk, or misinform the Vice President.” What Mr. Esper and Ms. Troye accuse Mr. Patel of lying about is the airspace-transit clearance, the lack of which would have made transit by U.S. forces though the airspace of the country in question an act of war.

These are but a few of many cases that touch directly on Mr. Patel’s character and his consistent approach of placing obedience to Mr. Trump above other, higher considerations—most important, loyalty to the Constitution. His conduct in Mr. Trump’s first term and thereafter indicates that as FBI director he would operate according to Lavrenty Beria’s reported comment to Joseph Stalin: “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.”

Mr. Patel has frequently called for investigations of journalists, comments he has since tried to walk back. He has been accused of seeking to declassify sensitive information for political rather than legitimate national-security reasons. During Mr. Trump’s first term, both Attorney General William Barr and Central Intelligence Agency Director Gina Haspell threatened to resign if Mr. Patel was forced on them as deputy FBI or CIA director, respectively.

Mr. Trump claims to have been unfairly, even illegally, targeted by partisan Biden prosecutors. That may or may not be true. But if illegitimate partisan prosecutions were launched, those responsible should be held accountable in a reasoned, professional manner, not in a counter-witch-hunt. The worst response is for Mr. Trump to engage in the prosecutorial conduct he condemns. Simply threatening to do so politicizes and degrades the legal process and the American people’s faith in evenhanded law enforcement. A president possessed of civic virtue wouldn’t launch retribution against opponents, and he certainly wouldn’t appoint an FBI director who saw himself solely as the president’s liege man.

If Mr. Trump is determined, wrongly, to remove Christopher Wray as FBI director, there are previous examples of appointees who restored faith in a battered Justice Department and FBI. In 1975 President Gerald Ford selected Edward Levi, dean of the University of Chicago Law School, as attorney general, and in 1978 President Jimmy Carter named Judge William Webster, a Republican, to be FBI director.

Mr. Patel is no Ed Levi or Bill Webster. To resolve questions over his integrity and fitness, a full-field FBI investigation, as prior nominees have undergone, is warranted. With more facts available and less rhetoric, the result will be clear. I regret I didn’t fully discern Mr. Patel’s threat immediately. But we are now all fairly warned. Senators won’t escape history’s judgment if they vote to confirm him.

This article was first published in the Wall Street Journal on December 10, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

By John Bolton