Trump Finds No Easy Way Out From Gaza To Ukraine To Iran

New Delhi: US President Donald Trump craves the Nobel Peace Prize, something his bete noir Barack Obama got.

And Trump is desperate to have it.

When Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado got it in 2025, she offered it to Trump, who was only too happy to accept.

But he wants it the proper, formal way, and he thought he could get it if he brokered peace between Russia and Ukraine.

The war in Ukraine has dragged on.

And the Nobel Peace Prize seems even more unachievable as Trump is ensnared in the conflict in Iran and unable to bring peace to Gaza.

The President who promised no more forever wars is entangled in not one but three conflicts with no end in sight.

To top it all, critics are calling him TACO or Trump Always Chickens Out, an acronym used to describe his many U-turns.

Let's go back to February 2025, when Trump infamously clashed with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky along with Vice President J.D.Vance at a press conference in the White House.

That was his characteristic attempt to nudge and push Zelensky to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Zelensky tried to explain to him that Putin cannot be trusted. Trump did not agree.

But after 19 months in office, the picture has shifted as the US is now helping Ukraine fight the war.

When Trump turned his attention to Israel’s war in Gaza, he came up with the Grand idea of a Riviera.

He thought the best way to do it was to find a safe alternative to the 20 million Gazans in one of the Arab countries, and turn the Gaza Strip into a replica of the French Riviera, a holiday resort for the rich.

Of course, the idea was roundly rejected by all the Arab countries as being unfair and unjust, apart from being impracticable.

Trump, not the one to be rebuffed, persisted with alternate plans.

He pushed Israel to accept a ceasefire with a 20-point peace plan last October, which included keeping Hamas out of the arrangement, setting up an apolitical administration comprising technocrat Palestinians, and an international Peace Board comprising many countries, with him presiding over it as chairman.

There are elements of the self-indulgent egotist. But there was also an energetic push to end the violence.

Hamas, which was governing Gaza, had agreed to step back, and it has not attacked Israel for the last year.

And Hamas, led by Khalil al-Hayya, has agreed to surrender weapons and not involve itself in the new administrative setup of Gaza.

Trump has succeeded with Hamas by holding negotiations with the militant group face to face. Trump’s

son-in-law Jared Kushner, a Jew, has been the chief interlocutor with Hamas and Israel.

Still, he is facing too many obstacles on the way.

In the latest round of talks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Kushner in Tel Aviv on Monday that Israel will not pull out its soldiers from Gaza until Hamas genuinely lays down arms.

The Hamas team led by Khalil al-Hayya promised that it is ready to surrender weapons, but that Israel must do its bit of withdrawing from Gaza.

It looks like a deadlock, but Kushner was optimistic that Hamas will give up arms in a month.

It would be naïve to believe that Hamas would fade away into oblivion voluntarily. It wants the peace interlude to recoup.

Netanyahu reads Hamas’ mind quite accurately.

But uncertainty remains over how the peace plan will move forward.

Still, Trump has had some success in ending conflicts in the past.

He did end the war between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda through the Washington Accords signed in December 2025.

Given his bellicose statements on Iran, like decimating the Iranian civilisation, Trump wants peace for very earthy reasons.

As a businessman, it is his gut conviction that war is bad for business. He is not the idealist who desires global peace.

He thinks that to be able to do business and make profits, you have to put away wars.

His position on the war with Iran contradicts his pragmatic instinct for peace.

It would seem that he has been drawn into the war with Iran because of Netanyahu, and his subconscious commitment that the US has to defend the security of Israel.

Remember that it was Trump who, in his first term as president, shifted the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and he said he was doing it because that is what American presidents before him had promised.

He is eager to get out of the Iran war because he realises that he has bitten off more than he can chew.

Iran is holding out, aware that Americans have painted themselves into a corner. Netanyahu has left it to Trump to handle the war.

The Gulf Arab states which have been targeted by Iran are unhappy with Trump.

Trump is a troubled man in the Strait of Hormuz and is lashing out, making the wild claim that Hormuz is US territory when it is far from the truth.

The Iran war spoils his chances of winning the Nobel Peace Prize. And so does his act of blatant aggression in getting then Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia.

And so far, for Trump, there seems to be no easy way out of the biggest conflicts in the world, and that peace prize is only moving increasingly out of reach.

(The facts and opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer and do not reflect the views of ETV Bharat)