Washington Examiner / Magazine
December 15, 2020 Issue
December 15, 2020 Print Edition
Cover Story
How the Trump administration banished the ghosts blocking the path to peace
A car explodes, bullets riddle their target. It’s unclear which happens first, but the end result is the death of the godfather of Iran’s nuclear weapons program in a convoy east of Tehran in late November. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a senior officer in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, was a wanted man. So was Abu Muhammad al Masri, al Qaeda’s No. 2. Two weeks before Fakhrizadeh’s death, Masri’s rumored killing in Tehran in August, on the anniversary of deadly U.S. Embassy attacks in Africa that he masterminded, was confirmed. A consensus has formed around Israeli involvement in both events, and American involvement at least in Masri’s death. The Trump administration earlier this year also ordered the successful strike against famed Revolutionary Guard commander and floor leader of Iran’s regional war-making Gen. Qassem Suleimani. These events punctuated the Trump administration's successful campaign to remake global hot spots and build alliances, culminating in once-unthinkable peace agreements. Just days before Fakhrizadeh’s killing, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were in northern Saudi Arabia for a historic meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. That meeting followed the Abraham Accords, peace-and-normalization deals President Trump brokered between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, two Sunni Gulf kingdoms whose very public accommodation with Jerusalem could not have come without Riyadh’s approval. The administration negotiated a similar deal between Serbia and Kosovo, achieving a tensions-defusing trade...

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