At US President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu likely assumed that he was at the front of his host’s mind, or at least the issues he had come to discuss were: Gaza, Iran, Lebanon and a pardon.
By all accounts, the two leaders enjoyed a friendly and productive meeting, and also spent New Year’s Eve together at the resort’s black tie ball.
The attention of the White House, though, was far from the Middle East. Instead, it was busy planning for an impending daring special forces raid to snatch Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro from one of his homes and take him into custody to face narcotics and terrorism charges in the US.
The stunning operation early Saturday marks the latest use of military force by the US president that shattered ostensible red lines and forced observers to scramble to find a new description of his foreign policy doctrine.
As evidenced by his January 2020 assassination of Qassem Soleimani, who led Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, and the US strikes on nuclear sites at the tail end of Israel’s 12-day war against Iran in June, Trump is no isolationist. He is ready to use American military might in an aggressive but targeted fashion against adversaries, especially after repeated warnings.
Published originally on January 4, 2026.
Read the full article at the Times of Israel.
