{"id":136187,"date":"2025-09-11T21:57:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T21:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/136187\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T21:57:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T21:57:08","slug":"dealmaker-donald-trump-powerless-on-world-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/136187\/","title":{"rendered":"Dealmaker Donald Trump powerless on world stage"},"content":{"rendered":"

The vast bulk of Donald Trump\u2019s presidential playbook centres on deal-making. On matters as diverse as trade and foreign policy, the approach seems broadly consistent: sweep away such guardrails as global rules of free trade or geopolitical alliances, and reduce matters to a suite of country-by-country agreements. In this way, there is no need for the US even to feign consistency, or fealty to any set of overarching principles. Trump doesn\u2019t need a coherent philosophy on tariffs or democracy, sovereignty or even war. In this world, there are no rules, or doctrines. There is only leverage.<\/p>\n

In this way, the US president hopes to achieve everything from the enrichment of America to a Nobel Peace Prize. The early signs are not encouraging, especially on the world peace front given both Russia\u2019s war on Ukraine and Israel\u2019s annihilation of Gaza are only continuing apace, apparently impervious to the art of Trump\u2019s dealing. But Israel\u2019s bombing of Qatar<\/a> this week, targeting Hamas officials, represents something even deeper. At issue now isn\u2019t merely whether Trump will succeed in making deals. It\u2019s whether other nations will any longer see much reason to bother trying.<\/p>\n

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Illustration by Simon Letch.<\/p>\n

Trump has condemned what he has described as \u201cunilaterally bombing inside Qatar \u2013 a sovereign nation and close ally of the United States, that is working very hard and bravely taking risks with us to broker peace\u201d. The crux of Trump\u2019s ire is the last point he raises: Qatar is central to Trump\u2019s deal-making. Specifically, it is a key player in any ceasefire or peace deal that would, in addition to halting the carnage in Gaza, return the remaining Israeli hostages home. Indeed, there can be such no deal without Hamas, and Qatar can bring them to the table.<\/p>\n

Yet among those Israel killed was the son of Hamas\u2019 top negotiator. This could only have been an attempt to kill the father. That is, Israel is ostensibly engaging in peace negotiations with Hamas, while attempting to kill the very people with whom it is negotiating.<\/p>\n

At this point there are two possibilities. One is that this was a relatively spontaneous attack, perhaps in response to this week\u2019s terrorist attack on a Jerusalem bus<\/a>, as Israel\u2019s defence minister has said. If so, Israel has chosen the very moment Hamas was considering Trump\u2019s most recent ceasefire proposal \u2013 whose terms Trump said Israel had already accepted. To that end, Hamas\u2019 chief negotiator held talks with Qatar\u2019s prime minister this week. To try to kill that negotiator while he\u2019s formulating his response is a strange way to pursue a peace deal.<\/p>\n

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The more likely scenario \u2013 confirmed by Israeli sources<\/a> \u2013 is that this attack had been in planning for months. In that case, Israel can only have been negotiating under false pretences during that time. That would render the negotiations a charade, while the Netanyahu government\u2019s forever war rolls on: a war that is now its own end, having proceeded well past what the Israeli army deems sound military objectives. And if those negotiations were a charade, then Donald Trump, Dealmaker in Chief, has been presiding over nothing.<\/p>\n

It is not even four months ago that Israel bombed Iran, declaring an intention to degrade or destroy Iran\u2019s nuclear program. This, too, occurred while Trump was holding negotiations, this time with a view to preventing Iran from developing a nuclear bomb. In that case, Israel attacked mere days before a scheduled US-Iran meeting. And while those talks had shown signs of becoming unproductive, Trump was proceeding with them all the same. And here, too, Israel targeted a leading Iranian negotiator (unsuccessfully, it later turned out). Needless to say, whatever else Israel\u2019s bombs destroyed, Trump\u2019s negotiations were among the rubble.<\/p>\n

In the lead up to this, Trump had always said publicly he opposed Israeli strikes on Iran. In the aftermath, he claimed he had allowed them, and Iran had been given a negotiation deadline that expired the day before Israel struck. That is hard to square with the fact a meeting was still scheduled for the coming days, but either way, Trump had gone from opposing a strike and trying to strike a deal, to supporting one and joining the war in a matter of days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The vast bulk of Donald Trump\u2019s presidential playbook centres on deal-making. On matters as diverse as trade and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-136187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}