One month ago, while announcing US airstrikes targeting Iran’s nuclear program, President Donald Trump said that he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had worked together as a team “like perhaps no team has ever worked before.” This was notable because Trump had just publicly discouraged Israeli strikes against Iran almost up until the moment that they began, and because — as I wrote in May — in the first few months of his administration, the US and Israel often did not appear to be on the same page about regional conflict. And then there was the ongoing effort, in the face of heavy Israeli skepticism, to reach a new nuclear enrichment deal with Iran — an effort that came to an end, at least for now, with the Israeli and American bombing campaign. At the urging of allies in the Gulf, the US has gone all in on normalizing relations with Syria’s new government, including the once-unthinkable meeting between Trump and President Ahmad al-Sharaa, a former rebel leader who was once a member of al-Qaeda, in May.
Author: Joshua Keating
Published at: 2025-07-21 22:15:00
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