El memorando: Los problemas de Medio Oriente presionan a Trump

President Trump is facing trouble on two fronts in the Middle East — and it’ s not clear how he gets out of it. Iran is pressing what it sees as its strategic advantage over control of the Strait of Hormuz, ratcheting up its rhetoric and its demands. The Islamic Republic’ s leadership is now insisting the U. S. must pay reparations, among other concessions, if the vital shipping channel is to return to seminormalcy. At the same time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday threw a wrench into Trump’ s plans for stabilizing the situation in Gaza. Netanyahu rejected a 15-point plan that could, perhaps, have advanced the arduous task of lowering hostilities between Israel and the Palestinians. The deal, in simple terms, envisioned a phased process whereby Hamas would gradually disarm and, in return, Israel would withdraw from Gaza. Hamas had signed up for the deal, but Netanyahu rejected it unequivocally in on-camera remarks at an Israeli Cabinet meeting. “ Israel does not accept the 15-point document,” he said, twice. The Iran and Gaza developments, though separate, combine to create problems for Trump. The Iran war has been unpopular since its inception, in part because it has directly impacted Americans with higher gas prices and broader inflationary pressure. The seeming collapse of the Gaza disarmament deal has less direct effect on American domestic politics, but it still deprives Trump of a sliver of good news in the global arena. On the Iran question, Trump blasted back Monday with a demand that reparations should flow from Tehran to Washington rather than the other way round. In a social media post, the president contended that an Iranian demand for compensation “ was never mentioned in any of our negotiations or meetings!” But he continued: “ It is an interesting idea because now I am likewise demanding compensation from Iran, for all of the people that they have killed and gravely wounded with their roadside bombs and many conflicts.” A U. S. official told this column that ceding control of the Strait of Hormuz to Iran was out of the question. “ Any temporary routes will be without any impediments — meaning no approvals or permissions and no tolls or charges. The Strait of Hormuz is an international waterway and no party controls the lanes or the ability to transit through them,” the official said. The price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil rose above $80 again Monday, up about 5 percent for the day, amid the uncertainty over the strait. The national average for a gallon of gas was $4.01, according to AAA. The average was just under $3 before the war. The rising prices are one of the factors behind Trump’ s ebbing popularity. Roughly 58 percent of Americans now disapprove of his performance in office while just 38.5 percent approve, according to the weighted average maintained by data and polling expert Nate Silver. The situation with respect to Israel and the Palestinians has less of a direct bearing on Trump’ s popularity because the political dynamics are more complicated. The issue is more contentious in the Democratic Party, where many lawmakers are reflexively pro-Israel but a newly ascendant left has tapped into grassroots outrage over Netanyahu’ s post-Oct. 7, 2023, campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians. Aaron David Miller, who spent decades at the State Departmen