In the early days of the Hamas-Israel war, a mural appeared in Israel portraying Joe Biden as Captain America with the word DON’T in large letters spraypainted underneath his shield. It was a reference to President Biden’s warning to other Iran-backed militaries not to expand the war. As we know, those militaries ignored the president.
Yesterday in Tel Aviv, a new billboard went live, apparently thanks to the Tikva Forum, a hostage-advocacy group. It has a picture of Donald Trump with his fist raised in the air after a bullet grazed his ear at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. It calls for “all” the hostages to be returned by January 20, the date of Trump’s inauguration. Next to that graphic are the words “OR THE FIRE OF HELL WILL OPEN.”
It’s not subtle. It’s also not exactly what Trump has been saying word-for-word, but close enough. At a chest-thumping press conference at Mar-a-Lago yesterday, the president-elect repeated a version of it: “If they’re not back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East.”
Trump was not actually at the microphone at that moment. His incoming Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff, was taking questions on the region and Trump had moved a few feet away to give Witkoff the floor. A reporter asked Witkoff if he thinks Hamas might be waiting for Trump to take office to make a deal, and Witkoff said “No. I think they heard him loud and clear. It better get done by the inaugural.”
Another reporter then asked Trump directly what he meant by “all hell will break loose” and the president-elect took back the podium, repeating his threat and adding a vote of confidence for Witkoff: “Great negotiators are very rare, like a great surgeon.”
He also reminded the assembled press that Hamas started this war and is still holding Americans hostage. He told of meetings at which grieving parents ask him to get their son or daughter’s body back from Gaza.
There was a higher-than-usual amount of bluster sprinkled throughout Trump’s presser yesterday. At one point, he said he could not promise that he wouldn’t deploy troops to reclaim the Panama Canal and annex Greenland, and he joked that the Gulf of Mexico will soon be known as the Gulf of America.
But the threat to Hamas over the hostages is the one with the clock on it, and it’ll end one of three ways: 1. Trump is bluffing; 2. Trump isn’t bluffing; 3. We’ll never know because a deal is struck before the inauguration.
The best outcome for Trump is number 3, because he’ll take credit for the deal and claim his threats were what loosened the pickle-jar lid for Biden’s negotiating team.
In a way, this is almost a cooperative venture, Biden and Trump playing good cop/bad cop. It probably helps Biden’s team to have Trump playing the madman card, and both men certainly benefit from a deal before the inauguration.
But if a deal doesn’t come through by then, Trump is going to have a decision to make. He’s been laying down markers throughout the transition period, and he insists “all hell will break out” is self-explanatory. “Do I have to define it for you?” he asked yesterday. Well no, not yet, anyway.
Does the president have an off-ramp here if he gets cold feet? The classic politician’s move is to take some limited action and claim that it had its intended effect. Trump did something like this in Syria, ordering strikes against the Assad regime when it went too far.
But Gaza isn’t Syria, and the U.S. isn’t going to strike Gaza. So what could it mean for hell to break out?
One possibility is that Trump tells Israel to ignore humanitarian-aid concerns and finish off Hamas. But that seems to be Trump’s likely stance either way.
Another possibility is that the warning to Hamas is actually a warning to Iran. The Islamic Republic’s defenses are down, having been destroyed by Israel. They won’t stay down forever, and therefore not finishing off Iran’s nuclear program while this window is open would be arguably more dangerous than sending the bombers to take out the underground nuke facilities. But that’s true even if a hostage deal is reached in the next two weeks.
And that’s the larger point in all this. It is well past time for the tail to stop wagging the dog. The West cannot continue to let geopolitics be at the whims of Hezbollah or the Houthis or Hamas or whoever the Iranians are activating on any particular day. The theme of Trump’s presser yesterday was that the U.S. is back to calling the shots. With American credibility on the line, he better mean it.