Trump Wants To Emulate Reagan In The Middle East. He Must Avoid Reagan's Errors (Daled Amos) ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Thursday, January 23, 2025

Trump Wants To Emulate Reagan In The Middle East. He Must Avoid Reagan's Errors (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan are being compared. Both of them influenced hostage deals negotiated before they took office. The agreement that ended the Iran hostage crisis gave Reagan a boost as he took office, and might have given Carter a boost in the elections if a deal had been concluded earlier. The current cease-fire gained momentum thanks to Trump's threat of consequences and he started his four-year term on the right foot.

And both men know how to deal with Iran.

Reagan took decisive military action when Iran sabotaged US ships:

In 1987, President Reagan ordered the reflagging of Kuwaiti tankers. Shortly after, the SS Bridgeton, a reflagged tanker, struck an Iranian mine. Mir-Hossein Mousavi, today considered a reformist leader, commented it was “an irreparable blow on America's political and military prestige.” Iranian bluster increased until, the following year, President Ronald Reagan ordered Operation Praying Mantis after the Samuel B. Roberts struck a mine. That skirmish escalated into one of the largest surface naval engagements since World War II, resulting in the decimation of the Iranian Navy and Air Force.

As for Trump, on January 3, 2020, Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian major general, was killed in an American drone strike under orders from President Trump.

But there is a whole other side to Reagan and his dealing with terrorism. Recall that Operation Praying Mantis was conducted in 1987. The years leading up to 1987 were very different. Norman Podhoretz, former editor-in-chief of Commentary Magazine writes about Reagan's failure to fight terrorism in his 2004 article, World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win. He sees much of Reagan's years as president as one failure in the war against terror after another.

According to Podhoretz's list of US appeasement under Reagan, there was no retaliation for terrorist attacks:

April 1983: Hizbollah sends a suicide bomber who blows up a truck in front of the American embassy in Beirut. 63 employees--including the Middle East CIA director--are killed and 120 are wounded. President Reagan and the US did nothing.

October 1983: Hizbollah sends a suicide bomber to blow up an American barracks at the Beirut airport. 241 US Marines are killed and 81 are wounded. Reagan signs off on a plan to retaliate but then allows Secretary of Defense Weinberger to cancel the plan, rather than risk damaging US relations with the Arab world. Reagan pulls the Marines out of Lebanon instead.

March 1984: William Buckley, CIA station chief in Lebanon is kidnapped by Hizbollah and murdered.

According to Podhoretz:

Buckley was the fourth American to be kidnapped in Beirut, and many more suffered the same fate between 1982 and 1992 (though not all died or were killed in captivity).

Reagan, who swore never to negotiate with terrorists made a deal trading arms in exchange for hostages. According to Podhoretz, 1,500 antitank missiles were sent--some through Israel. However, though the understanding was that the ayatollahs of Iran would use their influence with Hizbollah to have American hostages released, others were seized.

The Iranians could now claim to have humiliated two American presidents in hostage cases and to have driven the American military out of Lebanon.

September 1984: The US embassy annex near Beirut is hit by a truck bomb, traced to Hizbollah. At first, Reagan allows retaliation through Lebanese intelligence agents. When a similar operation against the cleric assumed to be the head of Hezbollah misses its target, killing 80 others instead, the plan is called off.

December 1984: In another Hizbollah strike, a Kuwaiti airliner is hijacked. Two Americans employed by the US Agency for International Development are murdered. The Iranians storm the plane after it lands and promise to try the hijackers. Instead, the hijackers are allowed to leave the country. Reagan offered $250,000 for information that would lead to the arrest of the hijackers. There are no takers.

June 1985: Hizbollah operatives hijack TWA flight 847 and force it to fly to Beirut. The plane is held for 2 weeks. An American naval officer on board is shot and his body hurled onto the tarmac. Israel releases hundreds of terrorists in exchange for the release of the other passengers.

Podhoretz writes:

Both the United States and Israel denied that they were violating their policy of never bargaining with terrorists, but as with the arms-for-hostages deal, and with equally good reason, no one believed them. It was almost universally assumed that Israel had acted under pressure from Washington. Later, four of the hijackers were caught but only one wound up being tried and jailed (by Germany, not the United States).

While Trump sent a strong message to Iran with the attack on Soleimani in 2020, he did disappoint the Saudis when the Houthi attacked their oil facilities in September 2019. Trump limited himself to the fiery rhetoric of being "locked and loaded," but in the end did not take action.

Will Trump do more for Israel in its war with Hamas than he did for the Saudis in their conflict with the Houthis? This time around, he did not threaten to come in "locked and loaded," but he did threaten that there had to be a hostage deal or there would be "hell to pay." But is this cease-fire deal what he had in mind?

For Reagan, Iran released all the hostages at once.
For Trump, Hamas will release 33 of the nearly 100 remaining hostages, over the next 42 days and so far released 3 of them.

This is not Reaganesque.

Dealing with terrorists is not the same as dealing with military targets and negotiating with them is even messier. The fact that Israel is going to release close to 2,000 Palestinian terrorists does not look like a strategic victory for Israel. But this is also the deal made in response to Trump's threat.

Reagan was tested by Iran and the Hezbollah terrorists multiple times in the course of his 2 terms in office. During the next four years, this will be just one of the tests that Trump will face. The next test could be negotiating the second phase of the cease-fire deal. A lot will depend on whether the second phase can be negotiated, and on what will happen if--as many suspect--the cease-fire collapses when the next phase cannot be negotiated.

At that point, Trump may not like the comparisons between him and Reagan.