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When Donald Trump takes office on January 20, his campaign promises to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours and Israel’s war on its neighbors almost as quickly will be put to the test. His picks so far for his new administration, from Secretary of State Marco Rubio to National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, Pete Hegseth As Secretary of Defense and as UN Ambassador, Elise Stefanik maintains a rogues gallery of saber rattlers.

The only conflict for which peace negotiations are on the agenda is Ukraine. In April, both Vice President-elect J.D. Vance and Senator Marco Rubio voted against Military aid bill of $95 billion, $61 billion of which goes to Ukraine.

Rubio lately appeared “I think the Ukrainians have been incredibly brave and strong in standing up to Russia,” he said on NBC’s Today Show. “But ultimately what we are financing here is a stalemated war and it needs to be brought to a conclusion… I think there needs to be some common sense here.”

On the campaign trail, Vance issued a statement: controversial proposal He said that the best way to end the war is for Ukraine to give up the lands seized by Russia, to establish a demilitarized zone and for Ukraine to become neutral, that is, not to enter NATO. He has been roundly criticized by Republicans and Democrats, who argue that supporting Ukraine is vital to U.S. security because it would weaken Russia, which is closely allied with China.

Any attempt by Trump to stop U.S. military support for Ukraine will undoubtedly face fierce opposition from pro-war forces in his own party, particularly in Congress and perhaps the entire Democratic party. Two years ago, 30 progressive Democrats in Congress wrote a letter to President Biden asking him to consider encouraging negotiations. The upper echelons of the party were so enraged by the lack of party discipline that they came down on the progressives like a ton of bricks. Within 24 hours, the group made the uncle cry and canceled the letter. Since then, they all voted to give money to Ukraine and did not say a word about negotiations.

So Trump’s effort to cut funding to Ukraine may face a bipartisan congressional effort to continue the war. Let’s not forget the efforts of European countries and NATO to keep the USA in the war. Yet Trump can stand up to all these forces and push for rational policy that will restart the conversation and stop the killings.

But the situation is even more difficult in the Middle East. During his first term, Trump showed his pro-Israel cards when brokering the Abraham Accords between many Arab countries and Israel; US moves its embassy in Jerusalem to a location in partially occupied territory outside Israel’s internationally recognized borders; It recognized the occupied Golan Heights in Syria as part of Israel. Unprecedented signals that the United States would provide unconditional support for Israel’s illegal occupation and settlements helped set the stage for the current crisis.

Trump seems less likely to cut off US weapons against Israel than Biden. opinion polls such a halt and the recent UN human rights report It shows that 70 percent of those killed by US weapons are women and children.

Meanwhile, shrewd Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is already busy preparing for Trump’s second presidency. On the day of the US election, Netanyahu fired defense minister Yoav Gallant, who opposed Israel’s permanent military occupation of Gaza and at times argued that the lives of Israeli hostages should be prioritized rather than killing more Palestinians.

The new defense minister and former secretary of state, Israel Katz, is more hawkish than Gallant and offer He accuses Iran of smuggling weapons from Jordan to the West Bank.

Other strong voices, national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir and finance minister Bezalel SmotrichAlso the “Minister of the Ministry of Defense”, he represents extreme Zionist parties publicly committed to territorial expansion, annexation and ethnic cleansing. Both live in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

That’s why Netanyahu has deliberately surrounded himself with allies who support his ever-escalating war. They are certainly developing a war plan to exploit Trump’s support for Israel, but primarily they will use the unique opportunity of the US transition of power to create facts on the ground that will limit Trump’s options once he takes office.

The Israelis will undoubtedly redouble their efforts to expel as many Palestinians as possible from Gaza, confronting President Trump with a catastrophic humanitarian crisis in which Gaza’s surviving population is squeezed into an incredibly small area, with virtually no food or shelter. , diseases are running rampant, and tens of thousands of horribly injured and dying people lack access to necessary medical care.

Israelis will likely trust Trump to accept their proposed final solution of driving Palestinians from Gaza to the West Bank, Jordan, Egypt and further afield.

Israel threatened to do the same thing to Lebanon as it did to Gaza. Israeli forces encountered fierce resistance, suffered heavy casualties, and were unable to advance further into Lebanon. But as in Gaza, they use bombing and artillery fire to destroy villages and towns, kill people or drive them north, hoping to effectively annex the part of Lebanon south of the Litani river as a so-called “buffer zone”. Once Trump takes office, they may want more U.S. involvement to help them “get the job done.”

The biggest wild card is Iran. Trump’s first term in office was marked by his policy of “maximum pressure” against Tehran. He unilaterally withdrew America from the Iran nuclear deal, imposed heavy sanctions that devastated the economy, and ordered Iran to withdraw from the nuclear deal. assassination of the country’s top general. Trump did not support a war against Iran in his first term, but it should have been supported. spoke General Mark Milley and the Pentagon attacking Iran in their final days in office.

Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, recently described According to Chris Hedges, he was thinking about how disastrous a war with Iran would be, given the US military war games in which he was involved.

Wilkerson predicts that the US war against Iran could last a decade, cost $10 trillion, and still fail to capture Iran. Air strikes alone will not destroy Iran’s entire civilian nuclear program and ballistic missile stockpiles. That is, once unleashed, the war will most likely become a war of regime change involving US ground forces; In a country with three or four times the land and population of Iraq, more mountainous terrain and thousands of kilometers of coastline, it will be swarming with missiles. Sink US warships.

But Netanyahu and his extreme Zionist allies believe that if they want to realize their vision of a sovereign Greater Israel, they must sooner or later engage in an existential war with Iran. And they believe that the destruction they have wreaked on Palestinians in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, including the killing of their top leaders, gives them a military advantage and a convenient opportunity to settle scores with Iran.

Trump and Netanyahu as of November 10 reportedly Netanyahu, who has spoken on the phone three times since the election, said that they “are of the same mind about the Iranian threat.” Trump already hired Iran hawk Brian HookWho helped sabotage the JCPOA nuclear deal with Iran in 2018 to coordinate the formation of his foreign policy team.

So far the team Trump and Hook have assembled appears to offer hope for peace in Ukraine, but little to no hope for peace in the Middle East and the growing danger of a US-Israeli war against Iran.

Trump’s expected National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, is known as a China hawk. He voted against military aid to Ukraine in Congress but recently he tweeted Israel must bomb Iran’s nuclear and oil facilities, which is the surest path to full-scale war.

Trump’s new UN ambassador, Elise Stefanik, has led moves in Congress to equate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. aggressive The presidents of Harvard and Penn resigned after American university presidents were questioned in a Congressional anti-Semitism hearing.

So while Trump may have some advisers who support his desire to end the war in Ukraine, there will be few voices in his inner circle urging caution about Netanyahu’s genocidal ambitions in Palestine and his determination to cripple Iran.

If President Biden wishes, he can use his last two months in office to reduce conflicts in the Middle East. It could impose an embargo on offensive weapons against Israel, press for serious ceasefire negotiations in both Gaza and Lebanon, and work to reduce tensions with Iran through U.S. partners in the Gulf.

But Biden is unlikely to do any of this. When his administration sent a letter to Israel last month threatening to cut off military aid if Israel did not allow increased humanitarian aid to Gaza within the next 30 days, Israel responded by doing the opposite, actually reducing the number of trucks. He was allowed in. State Department claims Israel is “taking steps in the right direction” and Biden rejected to take any action.

We will soon see whether Trump can make progress moving the Ukraine war toward negotiations, potentially saving the lives of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians. But between the disaster Trump will inherit and the war hawks he has chosen for his cabinet, peace in the Middle East seems further away than ever.