Victor Davis Hanson: ‘Trump Is Trying to Thread the Needle’ with Israel-Hamas War

🚨I asked @VDHanson what he thinks about rumors of Netanyahu-Trump friction. Here's what he told me and what he predicts will unfold in the next few months:

"It's hard to know. … Where you get the tension is in two sections. The Israelis say: 'We have emasculated, for a year or two, Hamas and Hezbollah. We're both working on the Houthis. We have demonstrated you can go into Iran with impunity and destroy their air defenses.'

'We have a brief window. It's now time to take out all of these nuclear facilities. They'll lie about it, they'll lie about it, they'll lie about it. But you cannot deal with these people.'

And the Trump administration is saying to them: 'We agree, but this is contrary to the MAGA covenant. The MAGA covenant we ran on said: no optional Middle East wars, no foreign entanglements, and it's always better to jawbone than to go to war.' That's the JD Vance/Tucker Carlson group.

So what Trump is trying to thread the needle.

So he's saying to Israel: 'Let's just get six or seven months of negotiation.' And the Israelis say: 'It's a waste of time. They'll not honor it. And they'll never give up this thing.'

So [he's saying]: 'Well, then if they won't give up, we'll negotiate to the point where they have to shut up or put up. And if you're right…then we have a case to be made to our MAGA base. We can say: 'Do you want a nuclear weapon with these people? They're going to threaten Europe. They're going to threaten Israel. They'll eventually threaten us. And they're close with the Russians and Chinese, and they're vulnerable now. And we tried to have peace with them. And we tried to have negotiations with them. And they shut the door.'

So I think that's what the Trump administration is saying: 'We have to go through the motions. You may be right.' And the Israelis say it's a waste of time.

And I think sometime in the late summer or fall they're going to conclude that you can't deal with the Iranians. But they made the effort and that was good public relations.

And either we or the Israelis—or both—are going to take them out.

I think that's what will happen, and that's going to be very controversial."

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