The United States is now involved, to varying degrees, in three hot wars: in Iran, Ukraine and Gaza/Palestine. We’re a principal party to the war with Iran, having initiated it in late February. We’re allied with Israel’s military determination to destroy Hamas in Gaza. And we’re supposedly helping Ukraine repulse Russia’s invasion and annexation of at least the eastern portion of that nation, although recently we appear to be slow-walking our efforts.
Each of the three is a slog — for us, and/or for our allies, and/or for our opponents. In each case the United States must bear some of the responsibility for that. It’s too late to go back to the beginning of our involvements to repair that damage. Instead, we need to take stock of where we are in the ongoing wars. and recalibrate how we proceed toward resolution.
UKRAINE AND RUSSIA
Russia seized the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine and invaded the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine in 2014. Today Russia occupies 90% of the Donbas (the oblasts, or provinces, of Donetsk and Luhansk), after ramping up its effort to full-scale war against Ukraine starting in February 2022.
At that time Joe Biden was President of the United States, and he gradually increased military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, as well as imposing strong sanctions against Russia. When Donald Trump became President in January 2025, he continued the aid, but at a lower level and with more strings attached. Trump has been more set on achieving an end to the war through negotiations and Ukraine’s relinquishing control to Russia of at least parts of the Donbas. He has given Russia more leeway to work its will in Ukraine.
Trump for years has held long conversations with Putin, including during Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. The current American President has said that Ukraine should not have started the war, and that Ukraine needs to hold new presidential elections. He has strongly implied that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky should be more interested in ending the war than in preserving Ukrainian control over the Donbas.
Zelensky is determined to continue the fight against Russia, and the vast majority of polls in America agree with him. Trump has taken a different approach, one that strays from American traditions.
An example: after signing a recent strong sanctions bill against Russia that passed with impressive bipartisan support in Congress, Trump a month later issued an executive order waiving the sanctions through next April, and allowed Russia to sell nearly 36 million barrels of diesel to the world market, including the United States. The financial benefit of those actions to Russia provides funds for Putin to maintain Russia’s fighting strength, directly counter to what the sanctions were designed to do.
American policy should return to the course Biden followed in cooperation with European NATO countries, and which Congress had recently ordered: Continue vital aid to Ukraine and clamp down on sanctions against the Russian economy to put weaken Putin’s military aggression.
ISRAEL AND GAZA-PALESTINE
The terrorist group Hamas which had governed Gaza, a small Arab enclave on the eastern Mediterranean coast south of Israel, launched a vicious surprise invasion into southern Israel in October 2023, two years ago. About 3,000 Hamas militants killed more than 1,300 Israelis, mostly civilians, in the attack and took more than 200 Israeli hostages back into Gaza. Nearly half of the hostages died while in captivity.
Israel responded with massive military force, with Gaza civilians paying a heavy price during Israel’s retaliation against Hamas forces. At least 70,000 residents of Gaza have been killed under Israel’s bombardment and military incursions into Gaza, more than half of them women and children.
The war in Gaza is at least the sixth conventional war involving Israel and neighboring Arab peoples, as well as numerous regional campaigns and insurgent clashes, in the 78 years of Israel’s existence. Since its birth in 1948, millions of Arabs have considered Israel to be an illegal interloper, and the land it occupies to rightfully belong to the Arab Palestinian people.
When the United Nations designated land in coastal Palestine to be the new Israeli nation in 1948 following the close of World War II, the founding document envisioned an equally viable state for Palestinians to the east and south of Israel.
Those arrangements are still officially on the books, but neither Israelis nor Palestinians accepted the proposal. At times initial steps have been taken by both sides, but they quickly fell apart.
For many years America officially sought a two-state solution for the region. But President Trump has all but abandoned that concept, refusing to commit to it and instead deferring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the future of Gaza and accepting Israel’s transfer of its capital to Jerusalem, a city that since 1948 had been partitioned between Israel and Palestinians.
A two-state solution, while it would not completely pacify the area, would ease tensions and provide some self-government for Palestinians. But Israel appears bent on expansion of its dominance and its territory, continuing to build Israeli settlements on Palestinian land east of Israel and decimating Gaza’s infrastructure. Some powerful members of Netanyahu’s government openly declare their intent to return Israel outward to its biblical borders.
Trump is complicit with Netanyahu in much of that plan. Trump has declared his desire to take over Gaza, level it, and remake it as a prime real estate development. Netanyahu praised the idea as “creative.” The future of Gaza Palestinians would be uncertain.
That kind of thinking is totally out of keeping with American traditions and values. Congress needs to put a complete stop to such plans and bring the Presidency back into line. Nearly all of western Europe would agree.
IRAN
In 2015, after months of tough bargaining, Iran signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China, also known as the Iran nuclear deal. The agreement was led by President Obama.
The plan decimated Iran’s centrifuges for 10 years, reduced its low-enriched uranium stockpile by 97% for 15 years, dismantled Iran’s nuclear program, and provided access for international investigators to continuously monitor Iran’s nuclear efforts. In return, the western participants, including the U.S., lifted existing sanctions on Iran and unfroze billions of dollars in Iranian assets overseas.
In 2018, after Trump became President, he unilaterally ended American participation in the plan and declared it void. Thereupon Iran restarted its nuclear program.
The JCPOA did not restrict Iran’s ballistic missile program or its support for terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. It was designed to halt Iran’s nuclear program. That’s the same reason Trump cites for the war he began with Iran in February of this year: to guarantee that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.
Trump promised that he would accomplish his goals vis-a-vis Iran in a few weeks. Hasn’t happened. It’s been eight months, and the results have included Iran’s closing of the crucial Strait of Hormuz, the only exit from the Persian Gulf, through which in peacetime passes 20% of the world’s oil supply.
Consequently retail gasoline and diesel prices have skyrocketed, as well as the price of agricultural fertilizer. Since transportation is a major factor in the prices of goods, those have climbed as well. Negotiations between Iran and the United States have been underway off and on for several months but show little progress.
Israel and Iran are mortal enemies, and it appears more and more likely that Netanyahu strongly influences Trump’s Middle Eastern policies. The Obama nuclear deal had put the West in control of Iran’s nuclear future; if that is truly Trump’s reason for going to war with Iran, he could have retained the Obama agreement. It may be too late to resurrect it, but that would be worth a try.
We need to Make America Great Again in our foreign policy: return to strong alliances with friendly nations around the world against aggressors; provide aid to weaker peoples so that their progress toward prosperity eases international conflicts; and increase international trade to benefit both Americans and their friends. Doing so would boost the well-being of Iowa residents as well as those around the world.
That should be a major focus of Congress after the midterm elections. It will require putting a leash on Trump’s appetites. The American people should hold their duly elected congressional lawmakers to account.
Rick Morain is a reporter and columnist with the Jefferson Herald.
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