Donald Trump has discovered one of the persistent annoyances of foreign policy: other countries get a vote.
His administration has been eager to declare progress in the Middle East. But Gaza, Israel and Iran keep demonstrating the difference between announcing an agreement and actually constructing one.
That difference usually requires diplomacy.
Real diplomacy.
Not merely a president, a favored envoy, a son-in-law and a press release.
The Middle East currently presents Washington with overlapping negotiations involving Israel, Hamas, Iran, Qatar, Oman and other governments and intermediaries, each possessing interests and political constraints of its own.
Trump, however, has increasingly personalized American diplomacy around Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner rather than relying primarily on the deeper institutional machinery traditionally built for precisely this sort of work.
And there is an additional irony.
The Iran crisis Trump now wants to “low-key” is not simply a foreign-policy emergency deposited on his desk by history. His administration helped create the present confrontation through the choices that escalated American involvement.
Which leaves the president trying to announce his way out of a problem that cannot be solved by announcement.
There may be a lesson here.
In domestic politics, controlling the announcement can sometimes control the perception of what happened.
Foreign policy imposes a more irritating requirement.
Eventually, somebody else has to agree.
— Dunneagin
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