Trump, Reluctant to Pressure Putin and Netanyahu, Risks Sidelining Himself
U.S. president has leverage with both leaders, but analysts say he isn’t using it
President Trump’s foreign policy is marked by a reluctance to use U.S. leverage with Israel and Russia.
Israel recently struck Hamas officials in Qatar, while Russia escalated attacks in the war against Ukraine.
WASHINGTON—One is a close U.S. ally. The other is an adversary. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin both have consistently disregarded President Trump’s wishes, often without major consequences.
His perceived passivity highlights a revealing paradox about Trump. Frequently claiming to have ended half a dozen wars, he portrays himself as an unmatched peacemaker. Yet in the two conflicts he has most often vowed to stop—Gaza and the Ukraine war—he has often been reluctant to exert U.S. leverage with Israel and Russia.
Israel on Tuesday carried out missile strikes on Hamas political officials in Qatar, who had gathered to discuss Trump’s proposals for ending the Gaza fighting and securing the release of the hostages held by the U.S.-designated terrorist group. And Putin, after meeting with Trump in Alaska last month, escalated drone and missile attacks on Ukraine. This past week, forces from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s European members shot down Russian drones infiltrating Poland.
Trump has done little publicly to respond to either event. He held a tense phone call with Netanyahu, followed by a second and friendlier conversation about the results of Israel’s operation. He recently said that the attack “hopefully” wouldn’t endanger the roughly 48 hostages Hamas still holds, despite fears from their families that the strike might disrupt the tenuous diplomacy. About 20 of the hostages are thought to still be alive, Trump said Friday on Fox News.
Trump posed a vague question Wednesday about the Russian drone incursion over Poland—the first time NATO ever shot down Russian aircraft venturing over its eastern flank—despite having a powerful intelligence apparatus at his beck and call. “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!” Trump posted on social media. The next day he suggested the incursion “could have been a mistake, but regardless I’m not happy about anything to do with the whole situation.”
When European NATO members said Friday they were sending planes and other military forces to bolster the alliance’s eastern-flank defenses against Russian drones, no U.S. assets were announced.
On Saturday, Trump added fresh conditions for imposing what he described as major sanctions on Russia—a move that some former officials said appeared to be calculated to put off White House decisions on stepped-up economic pressure.
Trump wrote in a social-media post that all nations in Europe, which has substantially reduced its import of Russian oil, would need to stop buying oil from Moscow. And he insisted that NATO nations put tariffs of 50% to 100% on China, which has provided support to Russia’s defense industry, until the conflict in Ukraine has ended.
“This is not TRUMP’S War,” Trump wrote. “It is Biden’s and Zelenskyy’s WAR.”
Trump administration officials insist the president has a firm grip on foreign policy, citing instances in which U.S. efforts helped pause or de-escalate fights abroad since taking office, including a brief conflict between India and Pakistan and border clashes between Cambodia and Thailand.
His rapport with Netanyahu and Putin provides him with a diplomatic opening, according to the president’s aides, and damaging those relationships would prove counterproductive to Trump’s peace efforts and longer-term strategies in Europe and the Middle East.
But some observers insist one-on-one relationships alone won’t end the wars, especially the one between Moscow and Kyiv.
“For Putin, the ambition to destroy Ukraine goes beyond any U.S. president,” said Alina Polyakova, president and chief executive of the Center for European Policy Analysis, a Washington think tank. “He sees it as his historical fate to restore Russia, and no amount of personal sway will change that.”
Trump’s influence with Israel was at its height in June after American B-2 bombers armed with 30,000 pound bunker-busting bombs struck Iran’s Fordow nuclear complex, which is buried inside a mountain, and two other sites, finishing a military operation that would have been challenging for Israeli forces to complete successfully. Those military gains in Iran have added to the diplomatic leverage that Trump still has, said Dennis Ross, who served as a top official on Mideast issues in past GOP and Democratic administrations.
Israel’s military is broadly equipped by the U.S. to the tune of $3 billion a year and other packages. Slowing some of the deliveries, or restricting the use of some weapons, according to some former U.S. officials, could send a strong signal that Netanyahu should try harder to find a way to end the fighting in Gaza. There is less concern about Israel’s security after its major adversaries—Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran—were severely weakened by Israel, said current and former U.S. officials.
Trump isn’t eager to risk a major confrontation with Netanyahu, officials said, adding that the Israeli leader has used flattery to remain in the president’s good graces.
Trump has mainly directed his ire toward Hamas, which launched the war in Gaza by killing 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and taking around 250 people hostage. Hamas has refused to agree to Israel’s terms for peace—which include the immediate release of all hostages and the group’s disarmament—and Trump has continued to support Israel’s military campaign against the group, with the exception of additional attacks in Qatar, which Trump said in a social-media post “will not happen again.”
Israel is preparing to launch a renewed offensive in the enclave’s capital, Gaza City, which Netanyahu has said is needed to take control of Hamas’s “last important stronghold” and complete the defeat of a group that has balked at Israeli’s negotiating demands. In 2024, Netanyahu said that “victory is within reach” ahead of Israel’s assault on Rafah.
“President Trump keeps saying he wants to end the war in Gaza, but he has done very little to bring about that result, and a lot that has contributed to its extension, such as loose talk of moving Palestinians out of Gaza, insufficient attention to the humanitarian crisis, and acquiescence to the Israeli operation in Gaza City that puts hostages at risk,” said Daniel Shapiro, a former Pentagon official during the Biden administration who is now at the Atlantic Council.
The economy of Russia is suffering under significant U.S.-led sanctions. Yet some observers have said the Trump administration hasn’t done enough to enforce the ones already on the books while resisting congressional plans to impose newer and tougher penalties on Russia’s energy sector. Trump targeted India, a U.S. ally, with increased tariffs for purchasing Moscow’s oil without imposing similar measures on China, Russia’s largest energy customer.
While Trump is selling weapons to European nations that plan to send them to Ukraine, he has held back on donating American arms to Kyiv. Nor has his Pentagon authorized the Ukrainians to use the Atacms missiles that they have left to fire into Russian territory, as President Joe Biden did during his final months in office.
Trump allies including Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who is leading a Senate effort to punish Russia’s economy with new sanctions, are openly calling for the president to change course.
White House officials said this past week that Trump has in recent days engaged in numerous talks with lawmakers about supporting the legislation, with the caveat that the president should have the authority to decide how and when to apply sanctions.
But on Saturday Trump signaled in his social-media post the new conditions for imposing “major Sanctions on Russia,” which some former officials saw more as a rationale for delay than a rousing call for collective action.
“They have flushed some of their leverage away,” said Eric Green, who served as a top expert on Russia on the National Security Council under Biden. “The bottom line is that they are willing to press weaker nations and allies rather than adversaries.”