Trump's peace efforts falter as conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza escalate
[September 22, 2025]
By CHRIS MEGERIAN and MATTHEW LEE
WASHINGTON (AP) — A month after an Alaskan summit with Russian leader
Vladimir Putin, President Donald Trump still seems surprised that his
gambit did not pay off with peace in Ukraine.
"He’s let me down,” Trump said this week. “He really let me down.”
There has been no more progress in the Middle East, where Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is beginning a new offensive in Gaza City
and lashing out across the region.
“They have to be very, very careful,” Trump said after Israel targeted
Hamas inside Qatar, a U.S. ally that has been hosting diplomatic
negotiations.
Trump's disappointment and frustration is much different from the
confidence and dominance he tries to project on the international stage,
especially as he trumpets his diplomatic efforts and campaigns for the
Nobel Peace Prize. Asked about his goals for the upcoming U.N. General
Assembly, the president said “world peace." But the most high-profile
conflicts appear to be escalating instead of winding down.
“This whole last nine months of peace efforts was just a
merry-go-round," said Max Bergmann, a State Department official under
Democratic President Barack Obama who now works at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Bold gestures, but reaching peace deals is hard
Although Trump prizes bold gestures — a stealth bomber strike in Iran, a
sweeping tariff announcement — solving a global jigsaw puzzle is a far
bigger struggle.
The fundamental truth, Bergmann said, is “trying to reach peace
agreements is very hard,” and that Trump has not surrounded himself with
experienced diplomats and foreign policy experts.

“It’s like if you were to tell me, ‘Go do a hotel deal,’" Bergmann said.
"It would be a terrible deal. I would lose a lot of money.”
In Trump's defense, the White House has pointed to comments from
European leaders who have praised his efforts working to forge peace
agreements. Trump often notes that he hires “only the best people.”
Matt Kroenig, a senior policy adviser at the Pentagon during Trump's
first term, said the president's brashness can get results, such as when
he demanded increased defense spending from European allies.
Trump, however, can end up spinning his wheels on more challenging
issues and eventually give up, such as when he tried to persuade Kim
Jong Un to end North Korea's nuclear program.
When it comes to making peace in Ukraine and Gaza, Kroenig wondered, "At
what point does he say, ‘This is too hard, let’s move on to other
issues.’”
Foreign policy is usually a team sport for presidential administrations,
requiring extensive coordination among agencies through the National
Security Council. But Trump has dramatically slashed the council's
staff, and Marco Rubio serves as both secretary of state and national
security adviser.
“It’s one person setting the strategy and everyone else is waiting to
see,” Kroenig said.
Mideast is increasingly in turmoil
In the Middle East, Trump is getting caught in the middle of an
increasingly combustible situation. He has visited Arab nations,
including Qatar, this year to strengthen ties, and he has backed
Israel's military operations in Gaza and Iran.

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President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House,
Friday, Sept. 19, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

But now Israel, emboldened by its battlefield success, is striking
more widely throughout the region, including the recent attack
targeting Hamas officials in Qatar. That jeopardized negotiations
that the United States has been trying to push along and rattled
Arab leaders' faith in Trump's ability to influence, let alone rein
in, Netanyahu.
Some of them now view Israel, not Iran, as their primary security
threat, according to three Arab diplomats familiar with
conversations at the last summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council in
Doha. It’s a noticeable shift after Israel and Arab nations grew
closer during Trump’s first term, when the Republican president
championed the Abraham Accords. The diplomats were not authorized to
publicly discuss the private conversations and spoke on condition of
anonymity.
U.S. officials have tried to assuage doubts by pointing to Trump's
expressions of displeasure with Netanyahu's latest moves, to recent
meetings held with Qatar's prime minister and to discussions of
enhanced security arrangements.
During next week's annual high-level gathering at the General
Assembly, Rubio and Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff can expect to
hear a chorus of criticism, with Arab nations seeking a more
fundamental shift in how the U.S. approaches the region.
For example, the U.S. has tried to ensure that Israel has a military
edge over its Arab neighbors. But now that Israel has attacked Qatar
with U.S.-supplied weapons — a strike that Qatar was unable to
counter with its own U.S.-supplied defenses — Arab diplomats are
considering demanding stronger support.
Such a move would likely be politically untenable, at least for now,
with support for Israel strong among Republicans who control
Congress.
Trump's equivocal approach to Putin
In Europe, Trump has frustrated his critics with his equivocal
approach to Putin, sometimes suggesting that Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelenskyy is just as responsible for the war that Moscow
started with its 2022 invasion.

Trump recently insisted that his meeting with Putin “accomplished a
lot,” but “it takes two to tango.”
“You know those are two people, Zelenskyy and Putin, that hate each
other,” he said.
Fears that the war in Ukraine could spill over have been heightened
by recent Russian military incursions into the airspace of NATO
members Poland and Estonia. After three Russian fighter jets entered
Estonian airspace on Friday, Trump said it could signal “big
trouble.”
During a news conference in the United Kingdom on his state visit,
Trump said he was dedicated to stopping the conflicts in Gaza and
Ukraine. Then he turned philosophical.
“You never know in war. You know, war is a different thing," he
said. “Things happen that are very opposite of what you thought.”
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