President Donald Trump, in the opening speech of January, predicted that his “most proud legacy will be that of a peacemaker and a unifier.”
Six months after his second term, conflicts are on three fronts worldwide.
Iran and Israel are exchanging strikes amid fears of a total war in which the United States could get involved. Russia carried out one of its most mortal attacks against the capital of Ukraine in months during the night earlier this week. In Gaza, people struggle to find food and dozens have been killed in recent incidents near places of help.
“It is clearly not a peacemaker, but it is not a heater either,” ABC News told ABC News, Aaron David Miller, a state department diplomat in the administrations of Clinton and George W. Bush, now at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
President Donald Trump walks to address Marine One at the South Law in the White House, on June 15, 2025 in Washington.
Katopodis/getty images
Trump promised rapid ends to the Israel-Ahamas War and the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, two conflicts that exploded in the previous administration that Trump has described “the biden wars.” On the path of the campaign, he often criticized “endless wars” and reflected that he could resolve the Russian-Ukraine war in 24 hours, a comment that once in office returned as an “exaggeration.”
“He has commented on all of them that this could be done quickly or easily and that there are solutions to these three problems,” said Miller. “And yet, it has not been successful even in identifying what I would consider a potentially effective strategy to manage or stop solving them. And there lies the challenge.”
While Trump has made new diplomatic efforts a priority in the midst of his burst of initiatives during his first months, he has expressed a growing frustration with foreign leaders involved and continuously condemns what he calls “death” that conflicts have forged.
“He has followed his promises to try,” said Elliott Abrams, the main member of the Middle East studies in the Foreign Relations Council that worked as Iran Special Representative and Venezuela in the first Trump administration. “He has tried in Ukraine and tried in Gaza and has tried in Iran, and none of them has worked.”
A success claim in the front of the foreign policy that Trump does frequently, and says that he can replicate by promoting trade agreements, is how he says he stopped the recent fighting between India and Pakistan. Trump said he has not received enough credit: “I stop him. I don’t think he had a story.”
Trump now faces a difficult option in Iran and Israel
Trump started early from a group of seven summits, citing tensions in the Middle East and ordering his national security team to curl up in the situation room upon his return to Washington. He has received a variety of options, including the use of US military assets to attack Iranian nuclear facilities.
Trump did not rule out the possibility, telling journalists on Wednesday: “I can do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do.”
The president’s messages have mixed.
Trump had publicly warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu any attacks that could derail the conversations between the United States and will go to a nuclear agreement. But after Israel’s attacks last Friday in Tehran, Trump seemed to change his tone, telling ABC News that they were “excellent” and saying that they could take Tehran to the negotiating table.
In recent days, he has floated sending Vice President JD Vance and the special envoy Steve Witkoff to talk to the Iranians and at the same time demanding the “unconditional surrender” of Iran. The authorities have said that the United States has not been involved in Israel’s offensive, while Trump said that “we now have total and total control of the heavens over Iran.”
Israeli lifeguards work in a residential area hit by a missile from Iran, in Bat Yam, Israel, on June 15, 2025.
Ariel Schalit/AP
“His words and works are chaotic and inconsistent,” Miller said about Trump. “And the notion that it is unpredictable and that helps it certainly has not proven to be the case so far in these three conflicts.”
The White House and Vice President Vance have defended Trump’s position in Iran, saying that for a long time it has been clear and consisting that the nation cannot have a nuclear weapon.
Abrams acknowledges that Trump’s messages could be “confusing”, but it is representative of a situation that quickly changes in the field in Tehran.
“One thing that is trying to make the Ayatolá clear is that if it attacks the American ships of the bases it has made, that is the end of the regime. That is something that any president should do,” Abrams said.
Peace in the wars of Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Ahamas remains out of reach
As the administration increases its approach to Israel and Iran, other areas are paralyzed.
“In Gaza, nobody came up with a viable plan,” Abrams said. “It is an evil problem. [Joe] Biden did not occur to him a plan in his 15 months after October 7 and Trump has not found a viable one. “
An initial peace agreement of three phrases destined to end the war in Gaza, which was negotiated by members of the Biden and Trump administrations, collapsed in March. Since then, the proposals for a high temporary fire have fallen.
People who transport bags of flour flour along Al-Rehyd Street in western Jabalia, on June 17, 2025, after humanitarian aid trucks entered the strip of northern Gaza through the border crossing of Zikim controlled by Israelis, in the middle of the current war between Israel and Hamas.
BASHER TALEB/AFP through Getty Images
Ukrainian rescuers do a very damaged search and residential building work after the Russian missile strike in kyiv on June 17, 2025 in the midst of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Genya Savilov/AFP through Getty Images
In Eastern Europe, Trump adopted a different approach to his predecessor to get involved with the leaders of Ukraine and Russia, saying that their personal relationship with Vladimir Putin would produce results.
Some progress seemed to be done when Russian and Ukrainian officials celebrated their first face -to -face meeting since the invasion began in mid -May. But the conversations have stagnated since then, with the Trump administration step back, while Ukraine and Russia have intensified attacks in recent weeks.
“The president made a lot of snort and snorting the need for peace, but has not been prepared to push Putin in that direction,” said Stephen Sestovich, a member of the Foreign Affairs Council that he served as ambassador to the State Department in general for the former Soviet Union.
William Taylor, former ambassador of the United States in Ukraine during the Obama administration who currently serves as the main member in the Atlantic Council, said Putin will not be diplomatically influenced.
“Putin will be influenced by a combination of military and economic pressure,” Taylor said. “Then President Trump should do that.”
However, no new commitments have been made to the deliveries of weapons from the United States to Ukraine and no new sanctions have been taught to Russia, and now there are reports that the Trump administration dissolved a group focused on pressing Russia.
“For someone who claims to have dominated the art of the agreement, this is a fairly spectacular failure,” said Sestovich on Trump’s approach to the Russia-Ukraine war until now.
Anna Kelly, Deputy Press Secretary of the White House, responded to criticism, saying in a statement: “President Trump leads the world to end this brutal war, which inherited from his incompetent predecessor Joe Biden. No one cares about the opinions of the” experts “of Mariscal de Campo” who have done nothing to make the world. “
