Violence in Yemen, Gaza, and Iraq Isn’t Coincidental, Even Though the White House Wishes it Was

“As Arab world rallies around Palestinians and bloodshed mounts, Trump-era peace deals fade from view,” blared a Washington Post headline on May 14, the fourth day of the most recent round of fighting between Israel and Hamas. The headline encapsulated the conventional wisdom of many journalists as well as of the Washington “peace processors,” those in the Biden administration included. To them, last month’s coordinated terror assault on Israel by Hamas and Islamic Jihad was the inevitable byproduct of the previous administration having ignored the Palestinian cause, defunded Palestinian institutions that support terror, and attempted to broker Arab-Israeli peace in the absence of a Palestinian state.

The White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki summed up this view when she told reporters, “Aside from putting forward a peace proposal that was dead on arrival, we don’t think [the Trump administration] did anything constructive, really, to bring an end to the longstanding conflict in the Middle East.”

But that’s not how Israeli security officials, or those of its new Arab allies, see things. They know all too well that U.S. policy under the Trump administration did not spark Palestinian violence. In Jerusalem and Riyadh, a sober analysis of the last few months in the Middle East leads to one conclusion: an emboldened Islamic Republic of Iran is directing its terrorist proxies to use similar tactics to attack Arabs and Israelis alike. From Gaza to Yemen, Tehran’s fingerprints are easy to detect. And whatever the Washington Post might think, these events have only strengthened the logic of the Abraham Accords.