Trump seeks to build on momentum from Gaza deal in a busy diplomatic week
By Kevin Liptak, CNN
(CNN) — These are busy days for Steve Witkoff.
The real estate developer-turned-Swiss Army Knife diplomat (officially the special presidential envoy for peace missions) was sitting in the galleries of the Israeli Knesset on Monday, listening as President Donald Trump basked in the newly brokered ceasefire-for-hostages deal, when his boss reminded him of another assignment.
“We have to get Russia done. We got to get that one done,” Trump said while musing about a new Iran nuclear deal. “If you don’t mind, Steve, let’s focus on Russia first.”
Energized by success in the Middle East, Trump is eager to harness that most elusive ingredient in politics and diplomacy: momentum. A week that began with a 36-hour trip to the Middle East ended with Ukraine’s president in the White House, trying to convince Trump to approve new long-range missiles before a surprise meeting soon with Vladimir Putin in Budapest.
In between, Trump confirmed he’d authorized the CIA to operate covertly in Venezuela while threatening to strike inside the country. He threw his endorsement — and a $20 billion lifeline from the US Treasury — behind Argentina’s likeminded leader. And he zigzagged through new China tariff threats ahead of a high-stakes meeting with President Xi Jinping in a few weeks.
“I think we carry a lot of momentum, a lot of credibility. Getting Middle East done was very important,” Trump said Friday over lunch with his Ukrainian counterpart in the Cabinet Room. “Nobody thought it could be done. That was one nobody thought could be done, and we got it done.”
“We had to set the table properly,” he added later. “This should be one that we get done, and I think the table is set properly here now, too, and it’ll be a great honor to get it done.”
Translating his ability to quell the Mideast war into successes elsewhere will be a tall order for the president. And there have already been stumbling blocks in the delicate truce with Hamas, including the militant group’s inability this week to produce the remains of more than a dozen deceased hostages and subsequent outrage in Israel.
The leverage Trump successfully employed on Israel to stop the war doesn’t exist with Russia and China, both nuclear powers who aren’t dependent on the United States for military or financial support. Many senior US and European officials said this week they doubted Trump’s success in the Middle East would lead to any immediate shift in strategy by Moscow or Beijing. And Trump faces political peril with his interventions in Latin America, where US troops and dollars have a mixed history of either propping up or taking down regimes.
A fragile victory
Still, Trump’s experience with Gaza was a reminder that long stretches of arduous, often fruitless effort can eventually result in a victory, however fragile. As the US diplomat George Mitchell liked to say after brokering the Good Friday agreement to end sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, “We had 700 days of failure and one day of success.”
That quote was batted around frequently by aides to President Joe Biden last year as they worked to achieve what Trump eventually did: an agreement to release all the remaining hostages in Gaza while stopping the two-year war. A week after Trump declared the deal done, it appeared to be holding, despite accusations from Israel that Hamas was not maintaining its pledge to return all the hostage bodies.
American officials were quick to explain it would have been nearly impossible for Hamas to quickly locate and extract the bodies from the piles of rubble and debris left behind from the war. One US adviser pointed out the Palestinian enclave lacks any heavy equipment, like bulldozers, to clear out the wreckage. And they emphasized the unquestionable diplomatic success of getting 20 living hostages released.
“I think the understanding we had with them was we get all the live hostage hostages out, which they did honor that,” one US adviser said.
The task of preventing the deal from falling apart has fallen mainly to Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, each of whom helped convince Israel and Hamas, via its Arab interlocutors, to agree. In conversations with Israeli officials, they have tried to emphasize the ways in which they are working to locate all the bodies, including calling in teams from Turkey with experience in earthquake recovery efforts.
After returning in the middle of the night from the region this week, the president himself spoke again on Thursday with Netanyahu about the issue of the hostages’ remains.
“We’re going to find out if they behave,” he said afterward, referring to Hamas. “If they don’t behave, we’ll take care of it.”
Few believe the issue could derail the deal entirely, and American advisers were pushing ahead with the next phase of the arrangement: establishing a multinational security force and taking steps toward rebuilding Gaza.
But the issue underscored the fragility of a deal that was pushed through by Trump before many of the details were finalized. Ultimately, far stickier questions remain, including getting Hamas to disarm, deciding who will govern Gaza and, most crucially, whether the process results in a Palestinian state.
Carrots and sticks
As he turns quickly to Ukraine, Trump may be drawing some lessons from his Middle East negotiations, including the virtues of working rapidly even as major details remain outstanding. This week he agreed to meet soon with Putin in Hungary in another attempt at face-to-face diplomacy, even as the parameters of a peace deal remain entirely unclear.
Some European officials speaking privately this week said if Trump hopes to strike a similar deal to end the Ukraine war, it will require a degree of pressure on Putin — be it new sanctions or supplying new arms to Ukraine — that he so far seems unwilling to exert. Without sticks, Trump may seek to find carrots to lure Putin into a peace deal, although those, too, will be limited compared to what incentives existed with Israel.
Trump, in his dealings with Netanyahu, appeared highly attuned to the Israeli prime minister’s political concerns, be it the demands from his far-right coalition partners or his ongoing corruption trial on long-standing bribery and fraud charges. In a remarkable moment during his speech to the Knesset, Trump called for Israel’s president to grant Netanyahu a pardon, brushing aside the accusations the Israeli leader received lavish gifts in exchange for favors.
“Cigars and champagne, who the hell cares about that?” Trump scoffed.
Finding a political lever to pull with Putin will be more difficult. The Russian president rules as an authoritarian, without the political chores required to keep together fragile coalitions or avoiding legal mires (at least in his own country; he’s wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of trafficking Ukrainian children).
That leaves Trump with fewer options to bring Putin to the negotiating table. For much of the last week, Trump seemed to be warming to the idea of sending Ukraine new long-range Tomahawk missiles, whose 1,000-mile range would put Moscow well within striking distance.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky set off for Washington this week hopeful Trump was serious about providing the weapons, which he believes are necessary for turning around the battlefield momentum. He even arranged meetings with representatives from Raytheon, the US manufacturer of the Tomahawks, to discuss his weaponry needs.
But over the course of his working lunch with Trump, it became evident the Tomahawks would not soon be on their way to Ukraine.
“Hopefully they won’t need it,” Trump said. “Hopefully we’ll be able to get the war over without thinking about Tomahawks.”
The conversation between the two leaders, alongside their top aides, continued behind closed doors on Friday afternoon in what was described to CNN by several people familiar as a tense, frank and, at times, “uncomfortable” discussion.
Trump made clear to Zelensky in a “direct and honest” conversation that — for now — the Ukrainian leader would not receive the long-range missiles. One official said Trump was under the impression that Ukraine is seeking to escalate and prolong the conflict and is worried about potential losses during an upcoming harsh winter.
Zelensky said afterward he’d agreed with Trump not to discuss the Tomahawks in public. And Trump, as he was flying to Palm Beach for the weekend, wrote on social media that Russia and Ukraine should end the war “where they are,” tacking back to his position from the summer that land concessions were necessary after claiming in September that Ukraine might be able to regain its lost territories.
Trump told those around him that was due to the “realities of where the conflict stands,” arguing there was too much devastation and too much killing, according to one official.
It was the latest example of Trump inching closer to allowing new capabilities or applying new sanctions on Moscow, only to back away when Putin intervenes to head it off. In this case, it was a phone call initiated by the Kremlin a day before Zelensky arrived, meant ostensibly to congratulate Trump on his Middle East victory but which resulted in arranging another in-person meeting.
Meetings with Putin and Xi on horizon
If the Budapest summit materializes — Trump said he hoped it would happen in the next two weeks — it would mean back-to-back meetings with two of his top global adversaries who have, in recent years, deepened their alliance. Trump’s face-to-face summit with Xi, scheduled for the end of the month in South Korea, is intended to clarify trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies.
The war in Ukraine, which Beijing has helped sustain through military supplies and purchases of Russian oil, could be another point of contention. But Trump appeared confident he’d have the whole thing resolved before they sit down.
“I’ll be discussing that, but I’d love to see it ended before that,” he said.
Trump’s assessments Friday that Putin “wants to end the war” were reminiscent of his confidence ahead of his August meeting with the Russian leader in Alaska, when he seemed sure the talks would result in quick progress toward a peace deal.
They did not, and before Thursday there seemed to be little evidence that Putin was interested in moving ahead with US-brokered negotiations. Trump said he believed threat of Tomahawks could have helped bring him back to the table.
So, too, do American officials believe that a successful negotiation in the Middle East has led Russia to rethink how it is approaching Trump and his desire to see the Ukraine war ended.
But even Trump seemed to allow for the possibility that he could be wrong, and that Putin — as he’s feared in the past — may just be stringing him along.
“I am,” he said when asked whether he’s concerned Putin might be playing for time. “But, you know, I’ve been played all my life by the best of them, and I came out really well.”
This story has been updated with additional details.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and Kristen Holmes contributed to this report.
