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 deal after the European Union had failed for a decade to bring the two sides to common ground. And a breakthrough in Latin America showed a degree of patience and behind-the-scenes organization that had the United States enabling a unity of voice and purpose among the Organization of American States that will surely outlast the administration.