Interpreting President Trump's first trip to the Middle East. That is the topic we'll discuss today, right here on the Christian Worldview Radio Program, where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. I'm David Wheaton, the host. Our website is thechristianworldview.org. The rest of our contact information will be given throughout today's program. As always, thank you for your notes of encouragement, financial support, and lifting us up in prayer.
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And if cost is an impediment, there are some scholarships available donated by generous supporters. All right, let's get to our topic of the day. President Trump just returned from his first overseas trip of his second term. Where a president chooses to visit first is a signal of his priorities. That President Trump went to the Middle East and three Arab Muslim countries, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates speaks loudly about Trump's hope to bring peace and prosperity to the Middle East. Interestingly, Trump did not visit Israel, even though he was in the region. Trillions of dollars in investments by Arab countries to American businesses were negotiated. Trump met with sketchy leaders like Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharra and the Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, who oddly gifted the U.S. a Boeing 747 to be Air Force One. Trump gave a major policy speech outlining his vision for the Middle East, which would have Saudi Arabia signing the Abraham Accords, a treaty normalizing relations between Arab nations and Israel. Meanwhile, Islamist Iran looms in the region, trying desperately to develop nuclear weapons.
So how to interpret all that took place? Christian geopolitical analyst Soren Kern joins us today on the Christian worldview radio program to survey the many facets of President Trump's trip and how it will impact America and our longtime ally Israel. Soren will also discuss the upcoming UN-Palestine summit June 17-20 in New York City, which aims to, quote, take irreversible action toward implementing a two-state solution, unquote.
That means dividing the land of Israel. These are some of the subjects Soren will be addressing in more detail in the June 2025 issue of the Christian worldview journal monthly print publication that is sent to all Christian worldview partners. Is God close to enacting his end times plan of snatching away his church and allowing the Antichrist to deceive the nations and persecute Israel before Jesus Christ's victorious return?
We don't know God's timing, but we'd better be alert and ready. Let's get to the interview with Soren Kern. Soren, thank you for coming on the Christian worldview radio program today. I just want to quote from a online news source called, I think it's Weo News, and it says, US President Donald Trump is on his way back to Washington, DC.
He's already back now. After his three-nation Middle East tour, Trump visited Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or some call it Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, UAE, and sealed several investment deals in what is being seen as a new era for the US-Middle East relationship. From meeting Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharra in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to visiting a mosque in Abu Dhabi, to getting involved in the controversy of gift diplomacy, we'll talk about that regarding an airplane being offered to America. Trump's Middle East trip showed his newfound affection for the region vis-a-vis business prospects as well as his aim to expand the Abraham Accords.
There was a lot in that paragraph and a lot that happened on this trip. So, just to start out, Soren, on his first official overseas trip as president, what do you think the significance is of Trump visiting only Arab Muslim countries and not visiting Israel, and what has been Israel's response to that? The fact that President Trump went to the Middle East and did not visit Israel, it generated a lot of controversy, a lot of commentary. Some analysts interpret this as saying that there is a rift between the Trump administration and Israel.
I personally do not see it as that. I think that President Trump needed some wins. He needed some deliverables. And these are investments. The United States is in a very serious economic situation, financial situation. And these are investments that President Trump was able to at least get promises for commitments to could only come from countries like the Gulf Arab states. I mean, Israel has no ability to make those types of investment commitments in the United States. So I think that's really what Trump's number one objective was, was to try to get some of these very large dollar commitments that were really, in my mind, and I suppose in his mind, will provide a huge boost to manufacturing industries, particularly aviation in the defense industry in the United States.
So I would not read too much into that in terms of the rift between Israel. I think the significance of this trip really is number one that the Middle East continues to be and will continue to be a very, very important regional block. During the Obama administration, the Obama people decided that the future US interests are all in Asia Pacific, particularly with the looming competition with China. And so I think that President Trump, by visiting the Middle East, he showed that these long commitments, these investment commitments, which really promise investments for well over a decade, mean that the Middle East will continue to be a very, very important geopolitical actor in the Middle East and for US national interests. And I think the fact that President Trump was able to get these commitments also kind of pushes China out of the Middle East. There's been a lot of competition between China and the United States for access to Middle Eastern markets, for influence in Middle Eastern geopolitics. And I think President Trump, by focusing on particularly these Gulf Arab states, was able to achieve several very important objectives geopolitically and economically.
Let's talk more about the financial side of that. Again, according to this same news source, Weo News, Qatar Airways signed a massive deal with US-based Boeing to purchase 160 jets worth $200 billion. He announced defense deals Trump did in Riyadh and said that the total investments from the three nations he visited against Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, the investments from those countries into American companies. And by the way, there were lots of heads of big American companies with Trump on this trip to do business. President Trump said that the investments would total as high as $4 trillion of money coming into the United States. Qatar and the US agreed on a $1.2 trillion economic exchange. Saudi promised to invest $600 billion in major products were signed with United Arab Emirates after Abu Dhabi in March committed to a 10-year $1.4 trillion investment framework in the US. Soren, why are these countries now so eager to invest in the United States? But are there negatives to this type of major investment by Arab Muslim states in the United States?
Well, I think there's a number of different ways to view this. Obviously, it really depends on, you know, we have to differentiate between Saudi Arabia, Qatar and United Arab Emirates. The real problem for a lot of people, including myself, is Qatar. Qatar is a very, very wealthy country that is doing the bidding of Iran.
That is an Islamist government whose objective is really to spread Islamism throughout the world. They're patrons of Hamas and they have essentially control over Hamas. And so by the United States accepting these very large dollar contracts from Qatar, it's basically coming with strings attached. And this is really what the problem is, obviously, that in exchange for these very large dollar contracts coming into the United States, there's obviously the danger that the Trump administration will close a blind eye to Qatar's patronage of Hamas and all of the different Islamist groups, Muslim Brotherhood groups that Qatar is funding and protecting. I think that the investments from Saudi Arabia have a different dimension to them. Saudi Arabia is very concerned about the Iranian nuclear program. And Saudi Arabia is doing these deals with the United States in exchange for securing long term U.S. commitments to Saudi security. And part of these deals, the United States has committed to helping Saudi Arabia develop its own nuclear program. I should mention that it's a civilian nuclear energy program.
It's not a military dimension program. What the United States has been doing, what the Trump administration is doing with these contracts, particularly Saudi Arabia and with the United Arab Emirates, is to signal that the United States is not planning on leaving Saudi Arabia to its own devices. That was sort of the signal that the Obama administration and the Biden administration sent. And that by this interconnectedness, economically, through these investments that Saudi Arabia has promised and the United States has promised to deliver these very large contracts of weapons deals, it really signals a long term commitment for the United States into Saudi security.
And I think that that is a very positive thing for the stability of that part of the world. All right. Soren Kern is our guest today to interpret the ramifications of Trump's visit to the Middle East.
We have much more coming up. I'm David Wheaton. You are listening to the Christian worldview radio program. You see, ideas have consequences and bad ideas have victims. The culture of death that we are in today is not coincidental.
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Order resources for adults and children and support the ministry. Our topic today is interpreting President Trump's visit to the Middle East. And Soren Kern, geopolitical analyst and managing editor of the Christian Real View Journal, is our guest. Soren, it made a lot of news that Qatar, the country you were just talking about in regard to sponsoring and helping the patron of Hamas and other Iranian interests in the Middle East, offered a jumbo jet, an Air Force One gift to, I guess, President Trump in the United States.
And people were commenting about this left and right. But not only that, according to the AP, before President Trump began his visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, Trump's sons, Eric and Donald Jr., had already traveled to the Middle East extensively in recent weeks. Quoting here, they were drumming up business for the Trump Organization, which they are running in their father's stead while he's in the White House.
Eric Trump announced plans for an 80-story Trump Tower in Dubai, the UAE's largest city. He also attended a recent cryptocurrency conference there with Zach Whitcoff. Recognize that last name, Zach Whitcoff. He's a founder of the Trump family crypto company, World Liberty Financial. And he's the son of Trump's envoy to the Middle East, Steve Whitcoff. So just on these two issues here, why would we be accepting a jumbo jet, Air Force One-type gift from Qatar? And is this the fact that Trump is his organization, even though it's being run by his sons now, is financially benefiting, I guess, or doing business in the area? Is this some sort of illegal conflict of interest going on? Or is it just sort of an unenforceable gray area that, well, his company is allowed to continue to do business while he's in office. He's not running it.
How do you summarize these sort of other financial aspects of the trip? It's very difficult to make sense of what exactly is going on behind the scenes. I would not place any trust in anything that the media outlets like Associated Press report because they are obviously biased against the president and against the Republican Party. That being said, it does seem that President Trump is being advised by a very small circle of advisers.
Let's say some of them are family members. So I'm not completely sure. It's not completely transparent what's going on behind the scenes. I think that the idea of accepting this airplane from Qatar is just a bad idea. It's very bad optics, particularly because we know that Qatar is controlling Hamas and they are financing Hamas. It's very hard to understand why President Trump has allowed himself to be advised, I think, rather poorly by accepting this, because if the gift was from Saudi Arabia or from the United Arab Emirates, that's one thing.
But Qatar is a serious problem for international security and for American interests and obviously for security of state of Israel. So it's hard for me to understand why President Trump is adamant about that. We know that there have been a lot of problems with Boeing has a contract to produce some new Air Force One for the White House. And these aircraft are at least a decade behind schedule. So I don't know why President Trump, what the urgency is. I think that even if they accepted that gift from Qatar today, that aircraft would have to be refurbished and I don't even know if that would be finished by the time President Trump leaves the White House into four years from now.
So it's very hard to discern all the rumors going around, all the disinformation, all the propaganda. And this problem with Steve Whitcoff, this is a serious issue. Steve Whitcoff was in a very problematic business deal in New York City, and the Qataris bailed them out to the tune of almost 700 million dollars. And so it's very clear that Whitcoff is indebted to the Qataris. And it does seem to kind of explain some of the weird deal making that Whitcoff is making with Hamas. We're trying to get some of these hostages released, and particularly with the negotiations with Iran.
I don't know Steve Whitcoff. I don't trust him because of this business deal with Qatar. And it does seem that this is not the right individual to be negotiating these deals, you know, that we're really concerned about the future of Middle East security and particularly Israeli security. So what I'm trying to say in a very roundabout way is that it's very hard at this point to discern between fact and fiction what is propaganda and disinformation and what is actually the truth. But I do think that there are serious optics problems with this gift from Qatar, this airplane, and particularly with the Middle East negotiator, Steve Whitcoff. So I hope that at some point, President Trump can replace Whitcoff with somebody who maybe has less of these financial dealings in his past. Yeah, I think that's an accurate view of this.
And as far as the plane, it just seems strange. Why would we be accepting an American company's plane from a country like Qatar in the Middle East? We don't need that. Soren Kern again with us today here on the Christian Royal View. Let's get to one of the most important issues beyond the financial investments, and that has to do with the Abraham Accords. And Donald Trump, he made a major policy speech when he was in the Middle East. He said this, and with the historic Abraham Accords that we're so proud of. Remember, he started on these in his first term. It was an effort to gain peace between Israel's historic enemies, to normalize relations and trade and all these things. He started that in his first term.
He's trying to get those signed now. And that we're so proud of all the momentum was aimed at peace in an aim very successfully, Trump said. It's been an amazing thing, the Abraham Accords. And it's my fervent hope, wish, and even my dream that Saudi Arabia, a place I have such respect for, will soon be joining the Abraham Accords.
I think it'll be a tremendous tribute to your country, and it'll be something that's really going to be very important for the future of the Middle East, unquote Donald Trump. And again, the King of Saudi Arabia was sitting there right in front of Trump when he made these remarks. So Soren, tell us about the Abraham Accords and what the status of that is now that Trump has made this trip to the Middle East.
I think the Abraham Accords are Trump's signature foreign policy issue. He's really wanted Saudi Arabia to normalize relationship with Israel. And the Saudis are not ready. And the Saudis have repeatedly said that they won't have any normalization with Israel unless there's the establishment of a Palestinian state. And so I think that Trump was probably hoping to get some kind of a movement from the Saudis during this trip to the Middle East.
That didn't happen. You mentioned in the earlier segment that President Trump's sons traveled extensively in the Middle East before President Trump's visit, and that's very normal. There are a lot of moving parts, a lot of negotiations behind the scenes. Just stepping back for a second, the Abraham Accords, I think in general, are a very positive development because they do have Morocco, United Arab Emirates, and some other Arab states who are saying, hey, look, Israel, it's been on the land for almost 80 years.
It's a part of the Middle East. It's not going away. Let's normalize the relationship. Let's do some business deals. Let's just normalize the relationship. One of the parts about the Abraham Accords that's not talked about a lot is that all these concessions that the Arab states are making to join these Abraham Accords. The other part of the equation is that there has to be a Palestinian state and Jerusalem is going to be split between an Arab section, a Muslim section and a Jewish section.
A Palestinian state to state solution. I personally looking at this from a prophetic perspective, I think why there were so many problems with the election in 2020 and why President Trump was out of office for four years is because he was going to move on the Abraham Accords during a second term. And that really meant establishing a Palestinian state. And it's very possible that the Lord intervened to make that impossible.
So we're just moving too fast. What I'm trying to explain, I guess, is that there's pros and cons to the Abraham Accords. And Joel 3 verse 2, it's a prophecy in the Old Testament. It's very clear that at some point the Gentile nations do split the land of Israel. They force Israel to split the land. And God's judgment is going to come down on the Gentile nations for that act. And so when we're talking about these Abraham Accords and this normalization of Israel, it's not just in the here and now, we're talking about prophetic implications. And God really does care about the land of Israel, the integrity of that land. And to the extent that Gentile nations, particularly the United States, try to force Israel to split the land and create a Palestinian state, that is basically going to provoke a reaction from Almighty God.
I completely agree with you. And I'm just thinking as you were answering there, the Abraham Accords, here we are referencing a key figure in the Old Testament, even today in the year 2025. Abraham, of course, was the father of first Ishmael, who was the father of the Arabic peoples. And then through Sarah, the promise came of having Isaac, who is the father of the Jewish peoples. And here we are, thousands of years later, naming peace agreements after the original father of both.
Of course, they had different mothers. Abraham took the bad advice of his wife Sarah and bore a child through his handmade Hagar. And God never was going to bless that. That was never God's promise.
And then eventually God fulfilled what he had promised through Abraham and Sarah and having Isaac. It's amazing to be even talking about this today with something called the Abraham Accords between two peoples that have been historically at odds for so many millennia. Now, Soren, not as a part of this trip, but just a follow up to that question, as you talked about the two state solution, there'd be a Palestinian state and then Israel within the same land. There is a summit coming up called the UN Palestine Summit in June 2025. It's sponsored by Saudi Arabia and France. And the aim, quote, is to take irreversible action toward implementing a two state solution.
So this is coming up very soon. Tell us what you know about this UN Palestine summit. The negotiation of the Palestinian statehood with the Israelis was codified in the Oslo Accords.
Those Oslo Accords have never produced any fruit because of Palestinian refusal to make any concessions on the land. And so what is going on now with this UN summit is basically an attempt to create a reality of a Palestinian state apart from the Oslo negotiating framework. This might be why the Saudi Arabians were not willing to join the Abraham Accords right now, because they're sponsoring this conference in June.
It's going to be held at the UN headquarters in New York City. And maybe perhaps if something comes out of that conference, that then is when the Saudis will be satisfied that a sufficient progress is made towards a Palestinian state. You know, I've mentioned in this radio program, in past programs, that I believe these Abraham Accords, if we are living in the end times, we're like close to the rapture. I'm convinced that these Abraham Accords are the framework that the Antichrist is going to sign with Israel. It will be confirming, according to Daniel chapter 9, the Antichrist will confirm or sign some kind of a peace treaty with Israel that allows the Jews to build a temple on the Temple Mount and resume the sacrificial system.
And so, you know, that signing of that peace treaty is what really begins the clock ticking on the seven-year tribulation period. I think this is very significant. We're seeing if really we are living in the end times, if our generation is the last generation, what's being negotiated or what will be negotiated in New York is really creating the legal basis for Palestinian statehood.
So this is a very big deal in my mind. There's really a global anti-Semitism since the October 7, 2003 Hamas massacres. It seems like the whole world is opposed to Israel sort of defending itself from these Hamas terrorists. And so Israel, which was a victim of this attack, is now accused of being the perpetrator of a genocide of Palestinians. And this has created, particularly here in Europe, has created like a mass public support for Palestinian statehood, Spain, France, United Kingdom, Germany, to some extent. So I think what we will see in June in New York City is really a historic movement towards Palestinian statehood.
I hope I'm wrong. There could always be the United States, you know, using its veto power to prevent anything like this from actually becoming reality in international law. But when we see this, you know, the Bible is very clear that Israel is going to be at the center of world geopolitics during the last seven years of the tribulation. Everything, all of the world's attention is going to be focused on Jerusalem and on Israel. And we're seeing now the whole world is obsessed with Israel.
Russia invades Ukraine. There are no protests here in Europe, in the United States. You have a thing with the Iranian nuclear program.
There are no protests. It's very hard to understand the obsession that European and Western publics have with Israel, this anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism. This movement towards the Abraham Accords, particularly the summit in New York coming up in June, I think it's between the 17th and the 20th of June. These are stage setting, to my mind, for the end times.
We're going to have to watch that very carefully. And by the way, for listeners who received the Christian Review Journal, Soren is going to be writing about Trump's first trip to the Middle East here. You're going to be developing into much more detail in your column for the June issue of the Christian Review Journal. And also, you mentioned anti-Semitism. Well, earlier this week, a young Jewish couple who worked at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., who apparently were believers in Christ and due to be married, were shot in cold blood on the street. And the murderer, when arrested, was shouting, free Palestine! Truly a wicked act that will be justified by someone on the left as, quote, resistance for the genocide in Gaza.
This goes right in line with what you've been writing about in the Christian Review Journal with regard to anti-Semitism. Now, Soren, there was a few side things going on. We've talked about some of the big things of the Abraham Accords and the investments and so forth. But there were some other things that occurred during President Trump's trip to the Middle East. He had a meeting with the new Syrian president, Ahmad al-Sharra, or al-Julani, as he's sometimes called.
That's someone who you wrote about in the Journal earlier this year. There was some discussion about stopping Iran's development of a nuclear weapon. There was also a potential meeting that was supposed to take place in Turkey with Trump and Vladimir Putin of Russia and Volodymyr Zelensky. That was going to take place in Turkey.
That did not happen. Let's talk about some of these peripheral things that are actually really important that happened during this trip. Let's start out just briefly with the meeting with Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharra, the new president of Syria who has a background in al-Qaeda, fighting against the U.S., I believe, at one point. But now he just met with U.S. President Donald Trump.
Just briefly tell us how you see that, what took place there. Yeah, that's very difficult for me to understand why President Trump met with this guy. So this guy's been a hardcore jihadist all his life. He was part of al-Qaeda. He was part of ISIS. He's been in Iraq.
He was fighting against American troops. And now all of a sudden he puts on a suit and a tie, and he presents himself as some kind of a moderate. Now, okay, let's give the guy the benefit of the doubt and maybe, you know, a jihadist changed his stripes, right? I just find the fact that the United States just lifted the sanctions on Syria without really expecting anything in return, that's pretty shocking to me. I don't know why President Trump did that. He said he wanted to basically give Syria a new start, again, like with Qatar.
The optics in Syria, they look very bad to my mind. Let's give Ahmad al-Sharra the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he has the best intentions for the future of Syria, but I think it was premature for President Trump to lift the sanctions. Of course, I'm not privy to the advice that President Trump is getting, and maybe he has some agreement with Turkey or some agreement with Israel, or perhaps he's concerned that without the lifting of the sanctions on Syria, that there will be no stability in Syria. I have no way of knowing that, and nor does really anybody else outside of Trump's inner circle.
So let's hope for the best. Syria is not just any country. Syria is a country that has a border with Israel. And so what happens in Syria does affect the Jewish state in a very real way.
We've discussed this before on other programs and in the Christian worldview journal. Turkey is increasing its influence in Syria, and it's basically creating the conditions where Turkey and Israel could actually get into a military conflict in the northern part of Israel. President Trump was encouraging the Syrian president to join the Abraham Accords.
And this is another thing that I don't really see happening because in order for that normalization to take place, I'm sure the Syrians would demand the return of the Golan Heights and at least Israel removing its troops from Mount Hermon in the north, just sort of a buffer zone that Israel has created in the northern part of Israel and southern part of the Syrian border to protect Israel from the jihadists. So that is a very fluid situation. It's very, very difficult to understand at this point. Soren Kern, geopolitical analyst and managing editor of the Christian worldview journal, is our guest to interpret the ramifications and significance of President Trump's visit to the Middle East.
We have much more coming up. I'm David Wheaton. You are listening to the Christian worldview radio program. The Christian worldview journal is our monthly 12 page full color print publication designed to sharpen your biblical worldview on current events and issues of the faith. The journal is anchored each month with three columns, including one by Christian geopolitical and prophecy analyst Soren Kern.
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I'm David Wheaton. Be sure to visit our website, thechristianworldview.org, where you can subscribe to our free weekly email and annual print letter, order resources for adults and children, and support the ministry. Our topic today is Interpreting President Trump's Visit to the Middle East, and Soren Kern, geopolitical analyst and managing editor of The Christian Worldview Journal, is our guest. Soren, what about Iran? That's in the background here, Iran trying to develop a nuclear weapon. President Trump has tried to be very clear that they're never going to let Iran have a nuclear weapon, although bordering area countries like India and Pakistan have them. But they do not want Iran to have one, neither does Israel. We're hearing some news reports now, and we've heard these over the years, too, that Israel is going to be attacking their nuclear sites and so forth.
What did you learn about this trip with regard to Iran's development of a nuclear weapon? You mentioned earlier in this interview about President Trump's Middle Eastern speech in Riyadh. He sort of laid out what we call the Trump doctrine about how he intends to deal with the use of force.
This is a very important issue because within the Trump administration, there is a civil war going on between his key advisors on the use of force. And so you have guys like Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, and the former National Security Advisor Michael Waltz. These guys were very much in favor of using military force to deal with the Iran nuclear program. And they were basically shot down by what I would call neo-isolationists within the Trump White House, led by J.D.
Vance and Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard. And so it seems from the statements that President Trump made in the Middle East on the Iranian nuclear weapon is that he wants to deal with this problem completely by diplomacy. This is the greatest threat to world security, far greater than the threat posed by China, because in Iran you have a Shiite theocracy that has promised, has pledged to wipe Israel off the map. And they were barreling toward a nuclear weapons capability. And they might not only use the weapon against Israel, but against Europe and the United States as well. It's really hard for me to understand when the Trump came into the White House, even during the campaign, that he pledged that this was going to be his number one goal is to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons capability.
And now with Steve Whitcoff in charge of these negotiations, they've been dragging on and on and on, months and months and months. And the centrifuges, the machines that enrich uranium in Iran are spinning and spinning and spinning. And Iran is getting closer to this goal of a nuclear weapon every day, even as we're speaking right now on this interview.
And so what I don't know, and what a lot of analysts don't know, is that Trump is just giving this speech to show that he's a peacemaker and he doesn't want to use military force. But if the Iranians do not make the concessions or to not fall into line, then the United States will have no other recourse but to use force. I don't think the Israelis are able to do this by themselves, or they would have already done so in the past. But you know, we have no idea what Israel's actual capabilities are. I think that Israel is concerned about dealing with this on its own, because of the repercussions about the consequences, you know, the retaliation from Iran. And so, like I just mentioned that this issue of the Iranian nuclear weapons program is really, in my mind, the number one security threat to the world in our day. For 20 or 30 years, every single presidency from Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, the first Trump administration, then the Biden administration, and now Trump. They're kicking the can down the road and trying to make it somebody else's problem, a future president's problem.
The issue with this really is that the time is running out. Let's talk briefly about the meeting that didn't take place in Turkey with Vladimir Putin of Russia, and also the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky. I remember in the campaign, Trump was saying over and over that he would have this war ended by day one of his presidency.
Obviously, that has not been the case. What is the dynamic there that you're hearing about? And was Turkey going to be a central player in that meeting?
Turkey would have been the ideal location because President Trump was in the region, and logically, Turkey would be the great stopping off point for President Trump on his way back to Washington, D.C. I think the problem with this particular meeting was Vladimir Putin. He did not want to be put in a position by President Trump to be forced public to make any concessions. I think one of the things with President Trump, he wrote this book about the art of the deal. He believes that everything is transactional and that everybody is basically motivated by financial interests.
And the world just doesn't work that way. You know, President Putin is not interested in money. He's interested in Ukraine. He is interested in expanding the Russian empire and getting some of these territories back from Putin's own worldview. That's far more important than the perception of Russia, the international stage right now. And I think that Zelensky promised that he would be there. Trump, until the very last moments in the United Arab Emirates, was sending signals, diplomatic signals, that he wanted to go to Istanbul, he wanted to go, he wanted to go.
And it was in the end of Vladimir Putin who didn't go. I think the other issue that really raises a lot of eyebrows is the thing with the Houthis. President Trump negotiated a deal with the Houthis, this rebel group in Yemen who are essentially controlled by Iran and financed by Iran. And so President Trump negotiated a deal behind Israel's back. And the Houthis apparently promised that they will no longer attack any American ships passing through the Red Sea. There are very few American ships that pass through the Red Sea.
Most of international shipping is Panama flagged, Africa flagged, Asian flagged vessels. And so President Trump tweeted, even in March 15th, he tweeted that if there were any more attacks by the Houthis, he would hold Iran personally responsible. And the Houthis continue to send missiles into Israel.
They shut down the Ben-Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. And so I don't understand some of these deals that President Trump is trying to negotiate. It seems like he's just looking for a constant string of foreign policy successes.
Look, I wish President Trump all the success in the world, and I support him in what he's trying to do. But the world doesn't always operate around money and making deals. There are real ideological interests with jihad, with Russian imperialism, with the Houthis and their jihad against Israel.
And these things can't be bought through Art of the Deal financial transactions. And this is a really big law, I think, in President Trump's foreign policy paradigm. Over the years, I've had to understand that the common phrase money is always the bottom line is true in a lot of cases, but I don't think it's the very bottom line. I think always worldview or an ideology advancing one's ideology and worldview is always the bottom line. And you can see that coming out in situations around the world at this point. Final question for you, Soren, you just mentioned Trump not understanding some of the dynamics of how the worldview works or the ideologies of different parts of the world coming from the culture he does and how it's different other places in the world. What is Trump not understanding about dynamics in the Middle East and specifically not understanding about biblical prophecy that could easily lead him into agreements and pressuring other nations and so forth that will go against what God would design for Israel specifically, but also for the world peace he's trying to get after. He's probably trying to get the Nobel Peace Prize. He's mentioned that, I think, before.
What is he not understanding about the dynamics of the world and biblical prophecy? Since the very beginning of the nation states, there's been a concept called balance of power. In every part of the world, in every region, every empire, there needs to be a balance between different powers. So if you have Iran emerging in the Middle East, there needs to be something to balance Iran or Iran is going to take over and become the hegemon.
And so I think that this is really a big problem. There's a debate within the American foreign policy for a long time about the new isolationists who believe that the United States should completely withdraw from international responsibilities and have the neocons who are sort of at the other extreme who believe that the United States should be intervening in every single sort of conflict. And so there has to be a medium between the two, because we're in a situation which is called, in international relations terminology, anarchy. There's no global government in the world. And so for the last hundred years or so, since the end of the Second World War, the United States has sort of played the role of the world policeman, because it has a financial and the military means to do so. And it's provided a certain degree of semblance of stability. Yes, there have been a lot of wars throughout the last hundred years, regional wars, but there's been no nuclear war. There's been no world war. It's just not realistic in the nuclear age that the United States completely withdraws into a neo isolationist stance.
And I think that that is what a lot of analysts are fearing. That plays very well to President Trump's base. There's a movement within Conservative Party in the United States of neo isolationism about America first. I think when you're linking this sort of with biblical prophecy, God's foreign policy is Genesis 12. And that's just basically if you bless Israel, you are blessed.
And if you don't, you're cursed. I know it's very simplistic and there's a lot more to it than that. What concerns me is that if President Trump is making deals that behind Israel's back, that are America first, but that put Israel's security, particularly with the Iran thing, into jeopardy. I think that this is something that God Almighty is not going to overlook. And given the fragile financial situation in the United States, the United States is heavily indebted. It's just a step away from complete and total financial collapse. President Trump's objectives for some of the stuff in the Middle East is to bring investments into the United States and try to get some of these factories moving again and trying to get some impulse into the economy. If Israel is being sacrificed on the altar of financial gain, this will not bode well for the Trump presidency and for the future of the United States.
And again, we've talked about this before. It's like we don't have to agree with everything that Israel does. Israel is certainly not a perfect state.
They do a lot of things and have a lot of policy that we would probably not agree with. But I think in the general principle, the United States has a responsibility since the Holocaust in World War II to provide some kind of a safe haven for the Jews and particularly for the Jewish state. And to the extent that the United States starts abandoning Israel, and I'm not saying that it's doing that, but I'm saying to the extent that it does or would, this will not bode well for the future stability of the United States and its role. And I think we should mention that the United States is not mentioned in Bible prophecy at all. It seems to me that something is going to happen to the United States. And it's very hard for me to understand that the most powerful, wealthy country in the history of humanity is not in any way involved in the dealings of the end times of the tribulation period.
So I hope I'm wrong. I hope that this is not a consequence of our dealings with Israel, that something happens to the United States. I think that that is the dynamic. And I would just add in closing that within the conservative party in the United States, there's a growing chorus of voices that are pro-Arab and anti-Israel. I would just mention Tucker Carlson and a couple of these other sort of commentators that have taken very anti-Israel positions lately. And it does seem like there is a split within the conservative movement in the United States. And what I fear will happen is that the only people who in the end will be supporters of Israel are those who are Bible-believing Christians.
Because definitely the secular conservatives are moving towards a more skeptical line regarding Israel. Wow. That is a lot to think about, Soren. We just so appreciate your analysis and coming on the Christian Real View Radio program today. We're looking forward to your article where you'll develop this more fully in the Christian Real View Journal in the June issue, and then of course your article. We're going to put part two of your article on anti-Semitism in the July issue and move it back one month because of this trip by Trump to the Middle East. But thank you for coming on the program today, and all of God's best and grace to you.
Thank you. Just a reminder that the Christian Real View Journal is sent to Christian Real View Partners, but the June issue is going to our entire mailing list. So be sure to subscribe to our mailing list or just become a Christian Real View Partner to receive the journal. We are out of time today, but thank you for joining us on the Christian Real View Radio program and for your support of this nonprofit radio ministry.
Next weekend, we'll discuss the massive use and consequences of antidepressant medications. So be sure to join us then. Let's close by remembering Christ's word to his disciples. But when these things begin to take place, straighten up and lift up your heads because your redemption is drawing near. What a great reminder to eagerly anticipate the return of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So until next time, think biblically, live accordingly, and stand firm. The mission of the Christian Real View is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.
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