Seymour Hersh on Trump, Ukraine, Israel

Seymour Hersh after decades of digging up interesting news is still doing the same. He looks at Trump’s first (almost) one hundred days on Ukraine and Israel policy. (1)

Like most reporters following the Trump 2.0 diplomacy on the Russia-Ukraine War, Hersh sees the negotiations as a mess, like pretty much his entire second term so far:

But there seemed to be, if not a plan, at least a clear presidential voice on foreign policy. Trump was a self-declared friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and together they would settle the Ukraine War. There were communications between Trump and Putin and talk about possible Trump resorts in Russian-occupied Crimea and Donbass. There was discussion of American investments in Russia’s oil and gas fields and rare earth mines. Despite their hatred of Putin and fear of Russia, the European members of NATO would have no choice but to come along.

A negotiating team was assembled, led by Vice President JD Vance and Army General Keith Kellogg, to head the talks with the Russians. It has not worked out. Putin apparently was not interested in dealing with the Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, although he has continued to meet with various emissaries from Washington. [my emphasis]

Hersh suggests that Trump is basically ready to toss up his hands on those negotiations:

There were some members of the US negotiating team who thought that Trump would not keep up an endless commitment to negotiate a settlement, if one did not come easily. “At some point,” I was told, “he will turn it over to the UN and offer help in enforcing whatever they can work out.”

But the “some members” may have been hoping for something like divine intervention. If the US and Russia can’t agreement on a substantive settlement in Ukraine, why would the UN – where both Russia and the US would have to agree in the Security Council for any substantive action to take place – be able to conclude a deal? Russia is extremely unlikely to sign on to any agreement not endorsed in some clear way to the US. And they also see, like every government on the planet, that what Trump agrees to today, he may just toss out the window tomorrow.

Trump is clearly only interested in diplomatic deals that do one of two things and preferably both: (1) increase his personal wealth, and/or (2) make him look good on television for a day or two. Countries like Ukraine and Russia, who both have seriously high stakes in the outcome of the war, aren’t going to agree to something that doesn’t meet their substantive national security needs as they understand them.

This is an interesting observation, which Hersh doesn’t elaborate further in his piece:

In fact, as [as involved American] official had earlier told me, the American negotiators have long been following the recommendation of a few senior officers in the Russian Army that the focus should be on a ceasefire “and do not let Putin turn the talks into details of a ‘final’ settlement which will be endless. Stop the killing now.” [my emphasis]

Hersh argues, “Any vague notion of Trump being a rational figure in international diplomacy was blown apart” on Wednesday, April 24, when Zelenskyy publicly rejected the latest obviously unserious Russian proposal for a settlement. Which prompted Trump to issue his sad, pathetic “Vladimir, STOP!” message on his social media platform.

Until that public blast, the official said, there had been no sign from Trump that Zelensky’s ability to garner support and promises of military aid from European leaders, along with favorable press coverage, was a reason [for Trump’s frustration]. But the official told me that he had predicted that Zelensky’s glowing European press coverage would eventually lead to trouble. “A fairytale gone bad,” he said. “Prince Charming’s slipper didn’t fit the evil step-sister.”

Given the fog of bizarre TrumpThink in which Trump 2.0 functions, fairy tales are as good a guide to explaining his actions as anything else. More appropriate, even.

Historian Anne Applebaum, who is married to current Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, recently discussed the current Ukrainian situation: (2)

On the Bibi Netanyahu front, Hersh seems to think Trump has been somewhat less cooperative with him than expected. Netanyahu, he writes, “has been complaining bitterly about the collapse of his relationship with Trump.”

Then again, Netanyahu always complains bitterly when US Presidents don’t jump to comply the moment he demands that they do something he wants. He’s been trying for two decades to get the US into a direct war with Iran and has so far been disappointed. How Hersh comes to the following conclusion is a mystery: “[Netanyahu] has been able to be direct and often challenging to other US presidents, especially Joe Biden, but he does not dare say no to Trump.”

Hersh also does state the obvious here, though: “In past years he was able to come to Washington and give a talk to a joint session of Congress in which he took on an American President with no fear of retribution.”

But Trump’s willingness to support Israel’s ongoing war on civilians in Gaza doesn’t indicate that Netanyahu and Israel have little reason to fear anything remotely resembling “retribution” from the Trump 2.0 regime.

And US war with Iran is still a live possibility:

A powerful explosion occurred on Saturday at Shahid Rajaei port in the southern Iranian city of Bandar Abbas, wounding over 500 people, according to Iranian media reports. The port was reportedly targeted by an Israeli cyberattack in 2020. …

The Iranian fuel company announced that the explosion did not affect energy facilities in the country. The blast occurred as the third round of talks between Iran and the United States on a nuclear agreement are taking place in Oman's capital, Muscat. (3)

Peace President Trump isn’t sounding entirely defiant against Netanyahu’s demands on Iran:

On Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump said he was not concerned about the possibility of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dragging him and the United States into a war with Iran."He may go into a war, but we're not getting dragged in," Trump said. "I may go in very willingly if we can't get a deal."

Trump reiterated statements he has made several times recently that an attack on Iran is a possible scenario and added that he did not say no to an Israeli strike.

Trump’s Inauguration stunt of getting Israel to agree to a ceasefire which now has long since ended created a useful PR position for the Peace President:

The agreement held firm for two months, during which Hamas released 33 Israeli hostages, 25 of them alive. But just before the second stage of the deal, during which Hamas was supposed to release all the remaining hostages, with Israel withdrawing its forces from Gaza, everything fell apart. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to enter negotiations over the withdrawal from Gaza and tried to impose new terms on Hamas for a deal in which only a handful of hostages would be released, with the cease-fire prolonged for several weeks instead of becoming permanent.

More than a month has passed since Netanyahu's failed attempt to renegotiate the agreement that he himself signed, and so far, not one of the 59 hostages still in Gaza has been released. The renewal of the war, against loud, heartbreaking protests by the families of the hostages, hasn't made Hamas budge in its refusal to accept partial or temporary agreements. …

Though Israel isn't officially part of the nuclear talks, Netanyahu and [Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron] Dermer have put forward their own demands. They want the "Libyan model" implemented in Iran – a complete dismantling of the country's nuclear infrastructure, both military and civilian. But since the man who signed on to this model, Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi, was lynched – even if for other reasons – this model is never going to be adopted by Iran's extremist rulers. Its very introduction is nothing but an attempt to kill the negotiations. (4)

One seeming diplomatic accomplishment of the Trump 1.0 Administration was the Abraham Accords, which was aimed at improving relations between Israel and Arab countries while leaving the Palestinians to their fate at the hand of the Israelis. But even that concrete achievement of the Peace President isn’t working out so will in that regard:

Even as recently as February, news reports and commentaries on a potential Saudi-Israel normalization deal continued to surface, despite mounting anger across the region. Brokered by Washington, the proposed peace effort would aim to secure a defense pact between the United States and Saudi Arabia in exchange for normalizing ties with Israel. U.S. decisionmakers insisted that a deal was in its final stages, and recently, a giant billboard appeared in Washington, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv depicting Trump and Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) shaking hands with an Israeli flag in the background. The sign proclaimed, “Israel is ready.”

However, news of the negotiations has grown sparse, likely due to the resumption of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza and explicit plans to ethnically cleanse the enclave that have only escalated public outrage in Saudi Arabia. Thus to the extent that talks are ongoing, they are volatile and fragile, and will remain closely guarded by the Saudi leadership — as the kingdom continues to call out Israel’s actions in Gaza and position itself as a champion of the Palestinian cause. [my emphasis] (5)

And the Peace President’s ongoing diplomatic incompetence isn’t playing a constructive role in that situation, either:

Saudi Arabia’s patience was nearly completely eroded when Trump, in a meeting with Netanyahu at the White House on Feb. 4, proposed that the United States should take over Gaza and permanently displace the Palestinian population. To make matters worse, Trump claimed that Saudi Arabia was not demanding a Palestinian state as a precondition for normalizing ties with Israel.

Branko Marcetic summed up the Peace President’s foreign policy so far in an April 9 essay:

It’s not just that all of the wars that were going on under Biden - Ukraine, Yemen, and Gaza - are still going under Trump. That last one, incidentally, Trump had first forced a cease-fire on before, in a Biden-like move, he capitulated to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and let him restart the war and the accompanying siege of Gaza and escalate seizure of Palestinian land.

This is all for the goal, according to Netanyahu, of fulfilling Trump’s wish to clear the territory of Palestinians and put it under US control - an idea Trump just reiterated again this week, and which would put US lives at risk to permanently occupy hostile Middle Eastern land in intimate service of a bloody ethnic cleansing campaign.

If that weren’t all, the Trump administration is now looking to add new wars to this slate. After restarting the Biden administration’s aimless and illegal bombing of the Houthis with no success, the administration is now reportedly mulling backing a ground invasion of Yemen whose aim would be regime change - which, if it happens, will be reviving another former Washington forever war that had actually seemed to wind to a close under Biden. Besides that, Trump’s CIA is looking seriously at bombing Mexico, the president has refused to rule out military force to capture Greenland, and the White House has inched slowly but surely toward war with Iran … [my emphasis] (6)

Other than that, the Peace President is making the world more peaceful by the minute!

Notes:

(1) Hersh, Seymour (2025): One Hundred Days of Chaos. Seymour Hersh Substack 04/24/2025. <https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/one-hundred-days-of-chaos> (Accessed: 2025-26-04).

(2) Top Historian: How the Ukraine War is Going to End. The Jordan Harbinger Show YouTube channel 04/19/2025. <https://youtu.be/tKdpLFvxJxg?si=K3h_udHIDWne4xr3> (Accessed: 2025-26-04).

(3) Khoury, Jack & Reuters (2025): Over 500 Reportedly Wounded in Port Explosion in Southern Iran's Bandar Abbas. Haaretz 04/26/2025. <https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/2025-04-26/ty-article/close-to-300-reportedly-wounded-in-port-explosion-in-southern-irans-bandar-abbas/00000196-7198-d41c-a7ff-fdffe0440000> (Accessed: 2025-26-04).

(4) Tibon, Amir (2025): Netanyahu Killed Trump's Gaza Cease-fire. Now Will He Sabotage the U.S.-Iran Talks? Haaretz 04/20/2025. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-04-20/ty-article/.premium/netanyahu-killed-trumps-gaza-cease-fire-now-will-he-sabotage-the-u-s-iran-talks/00000196-537d-d1c7-a3b7-5fffae280000> (Accessed: 2025-26-04).

(5) How Gaza’s horrors turned Israeli normalization into a Saudi domestic crisis. +972 Magazine 04/24/2025. <https://www.972mag.com/saudi-israeli-normalization-gaza-crisis/> (Accessed: 2025-26-04).

(6) Marcetic, Branko (2025): Donald Trump Is Doubling Down on All of Joe Biden’s Failures. Jacobin 04/09/2025. <https://jacobin.com/2025/04/trump-biden-inflation-wars-censorship> (Accessed: 2025-26-04).