At a press conference in Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday, just two weeks before being sworn in as America’s 47th president, Donald Trump again invoked hell in warning about what would happen if Hamas does not release the hostages it is holding before his January 20 inauguration.
“If they are not back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East, and it will not be good for Hamas, and it will not be good, frankly, for anyone,” Trump said.
This is not the first time Trump has used such language since being elected, saying variously that there will be “hell to pay” and that “the gates of hell will open wide” if the hostages are not released.
What he has carefully avoided doing, however, is giving any specifics about what all that means, about what steps his administration will take – or allow Israel to take – if the hostages are not set free. In other words, he is making a clear threat, but not spelling out what the threat entails.
The threats themselves have led many to draw parallels between the hostage crisis he is inheriting and the one that Ronald Reagan inherited when he took over from Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981. That hostage crisis lasted 444 days and ended within minutes of Reagan swearing the oath of office, when Iran released the 52 hostages even as Reagan was delivering his inaugural address. Trump seems to be hoping his threats will have the same result.
The problem is that the release of the hostages in 1981 has – over the years – been covered with not a little mythmaking.
One widely accepted version of events suggests that the Iranians, afraid of the consequences of holding the hostages under a tough-talking Republican president, released them as an act of goodwill. They viewed Carter as weak and feared Reagan would be strong, so they released the captives to avoid provoking his wrath.
The truth, however, is a bit more nuanced. Iran released the hostages a day after secret negotiations between the US and Iran resulted in the Algiers Accords. This agreement included significant US concessions to Iran, such as unfreezing $7.8 billion in Iranian assets and an American pledge of noninterference in Iran’s affairs.
It wasn’t, therefore, only the specter of a new, unpredictable, and possibly trigger-happy US sheriff in town, but also long and arduous negotiations and significant concessions to the kidnappers that ultimately led to their release.
As then, so, too, today, negotiations for the hostages’ release are taking place. The question is upon whom Trump’s threat is impacting more.
Rami Igra, former head of the Mossad’s Prisoner and Missing Persons Division, said in a KAN Reshet Bet interview this week that Hamas in Gaza – holed up deep underground – is not impressed by the threats, and that the American hell Trump is promising Gaza is nothing like the Israeli one the region’s residents are already experiencing.
“Trump does not influence Hamas,” Igra said, “he influences Israel. Hamas underground only wants to show endurance, wants to prove endurance and its ability to suffer. That is the ideology, and it is a religious one, and when you understand that ideology, you understand that Trump’s [threat] is wind without movement.”
On the other hand, he said, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a great desire to give Trump what he wants. “Trump wants a deal, he wants it before he goes back to the White House, and Netanyahu very much wants to please him.”
In this telling, any movement now on reaching a hostage deal is more because of Israel feeling pressure from Trump rather than Hamas worrying about what will happen the minute Trump officially takes over.
THIS THEORY received some circumstantial support on Wednesday when Trump reposted on his Truth Social platform a video clip of an interview with Columbia University economics professor Jeffrey Sachs, who peddles in antisemitic conspiracy theories.
After claiming that then-president Barack Obama tasked the CIA with trying to overthrow the Syrian government and the press covered this up, Sachs – born Jewish – took aim at Netanyahu.
“Why did the US invade Iraq in 2003?” he asked in the clip. “Where did that war come from? You know what, it is quite surprising. That war came from Netanyahu, actually.”
Netanyahu, he said, “had from 1995 onward this theory that the only way we are going to get rid of Hamas and Hezbollah is by toppling the governments that support them – that’s Iraq, Syria, and Iran – and the guy is nothing if not obsessive. He’s still trying to get us to fight Iran to this day, this week. He’s a deep, dark son of a bitch, sorry to tell you, because he’s got us into endless wars; and because of the power of all of this in US politics, he’s gotten his way.”
That’s quite an accusation that Trump reposted, and his account does not include the caveat – that millions of other social media accounts do – that reposts are not endorsements.
Was Trump endorsing this conspiracy?
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump, said in a brief text message to Jewish Insider on Wednesday that the post “is clearly referencing Obama’s failed policies and the corrupt media.” Cheung did not, however, respond to a request for clarification that Trump was not endorsing Sachs’s condemnation of Netanyahu.
A day after warning of all hell breaking loose in the Middle East, was this a message to Netanyahu to close a deal before inauguration, or else Israel would be blamed for dragging the US into another Mideast war? Or is that merely a type of conspiracy theory that people like Sachs like to trade in?
TRUMP’S LATEST threat about all hell breaking loose came at the same press conference where he would not rule out using military force to take control of Greenland and the Panama Canal, and his reposting of the Sachs video came on the same day he posted several maps showing Canada as an integral part of the US.
Is he serious about any of it? Does he truly want to buy Greenland, retake the Panama Canal, and annex Canada as America’s 51st state? Or is that all Trumpian bluster and showmanship? If it is, then are the threats of opening the gates of hell for Gaza anything else?
“Speak softly, and carry a big stick; you will go far,” Teddy Roosevelt famously quipped. Trump is speaking loudly, in fact shouting from the mountaintop. In a matter of days it will become apparent whether he is carrying a big stick or a twig.
The thing about making threats is that you win if they work before you need to act on them. But if they don’t move the object of the threat, then if the words are not backed up by action, the other side becomes emboldened, since he who threatens in vain ultimately strengthens his enemy.
This leads to the big question: What can or might Trump do on January 21 if the hostages are not released, to make good on his pledge that there will be hell to pay?
The first option is a military one. The first time the president-elect said there would be “all hell to pay” concerning Hamas was on December 3, when he alluded to the possibility of military intervention. “Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied history of the United States of America,” he posted.
But it seems unlikely that Trump, who campaigned on a plan for the US to reduce its engagements in foreign wars, is going to send the Marines into Jabalya.
What he could do, however, is to remove the brakes from Israel and allow it to take military steps inside Gaza that the Biden administration objected to. At this time, however, the prevailing view is that the reason Israel is not fighting more intensely inside Gaza stems not from US pressure but from concern over the risk of killing the hostages – or indirectly leading to their deaths.
In the military sphere, however, Trump could remove all restrictions on arms shipments to Israel.
The second option is economic pressure. Trump could implement sanctions or other financial penalties against those countries – such as Qatar and Turkey – supporting Hamas. However, since both those countries are strategic US allies, with both housing important US air bases, such a scenario is unlikely.
The third option would be to take direct action against Iran as a way of pressuring Hamas. This action could take the form of direct military action against the Islamic Republic – something, again, that the incoming administration does not seem to have an appetite for – or clamping harsh economic sanctions on Iran and making sure that they are honored, at least by America’s allies. If the US does not want to take direct military action against Iran, it could, however, green-light Israeli action.
A fourth option would be to allow Israel to reduce humanitarian aid to Gaza and do what some suggested doing at the outset of the war: cutting off the supply of electricity and gas to the coastal strip.
One of the advocates of this policy then was former National Security Council head Giora Eiland. In an Army Radio interview this week, he argued that under the rules of war, one state is not obligated to provide electricity, gas, and water to an enemy state that attacks it. And Gaza, he said, was, for all intents and purposes, an enemy state. If Trump wants to open the gates of hell on Gaza, the way to do it, he said, is to allow the Israelis to close the gates of Gaza.
“If we want to give Trump credit regarding the threats – or perhaps use his commitment about the gates of hell opening – what is needed is the following: a US-Israel agreement that says Israel will declare a readiness to end the war and withdraw all the troops in exchange for a return of all the hostages at one time.”
This needs to be coordinated with the US, he said, “so that if, within a week, Hamas does not accept this, then the gates of Gaza will close and there will be a real blockade of Gaza.”
Ultimately, Trump’s threats, like any bold declarations, will be measured by their impact rather than their volume. If his rhetoric moves the needle and leads to the release of the hostages either before or soon after his inauguration, he can claim victory. But if it doesn’t, if in a few days it emerges that there was nothing to his threats, then he risks both emboldening Hamas and damaging his own credibility just as his second term begins.
Jesus Christ is King
