In the general skepticism of the American national political press toward practically any initiative of President Trump’s, there is a perverse failure to recognize the progress toward peace in both the Middle East and Ukraine. There is a grudging recognition that bringing in all of the nearby Arab powers to an implicit recognition of the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state and of the unacceptability of terrorism, is at least a tentative accomplishment.

There has been a scattered recognition that bringing the principal non-Arab Muslim powers — Turkey, Pakistan, and Indonesia, with a combined population of approximately 600 million people — may also be an achievement. Yet the fact that some violence sporadically continues in Gaza is presented as if it were a surprise and a negation of the drastic reduction of violence when the war was in full swing and a substantial number of hostages remained in the hands of the Hamas terrorists.

No serious observer imagined that the violence would end completely until after the second phase of Mr. Trump’s peace plan: The demilitarization and removal from control of any part of Gaza of the Hamas terrorist organization. Various Muslim powers expressed a willingness to help police Gaza but not to disarm Hamas. The Biden position, echoed by the Western Europeans and Canadians, was that Israel had “the right to defend itself,” which in practice meant the expulsion of the Hamas invaders but no serious countermeasures against Hamas.

The implication was that the invasion and massacre of 1,200 Israelis, including many women and children, on October 7, 2023, and the taking of 250 hostages was just another border skirmish. The invaders, who had expected to raise a general revolt of Arabs in Israel and the West Bank and send a flying column to the gates of Jerusalem, were repulsed, and it was supposed to be business as usual. Terrorist outrages would continue at the convenience of Hamas, Hezbollah, and their Iranian puppet-masters.

Every informed person knows that no one except Israel is going to remove Hamas. Phase 1 returned the hostages and took away Hamas’s bargaining power, and aligned Muslim opinion behind Israel’s right not to be permanently tormented by terrorists. We cannot be far from the point where Israel sends robots into the remaining Hamas tunnels with flamethrowers and explosives and flushes out or kills the remaining terrorists as they fester under the ground like murderous rodents.                    

No one except Iran will mourn Hamas, and the Arab powers will be just as pleased as Israel will to see the end of them. Even though the Arab leaders have been generally successful in ignoring their domestic public opinion, they are not prepared to disarm Hamas. They consider this to be Israel’s work and will stand by as Israel roots out and exterminates the Hamas terrorist apparatus once and for all. Then Gaza will be rebuilt as Mr. Trump has forecast, and there will be peace in Gaza.

Ultimately there is going to have to be some international force to strengthen the Lebanese government and enable it to complete the disarming of Hezbollah. Real peace throughout the region, though, will await the overthrow and replacement of the ghastly criminal regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This will happen eventually. Americans should not forget President Carter’s role in its birth. Nor President George W. Bush’s role in the elevation of Hamas and Hezbollah.

There was no talk by anyone of peace in Ukraine until Mr. Trump’s reelection a year ago. First he had to bully the Europeans and Canadians into paying a respectable amount for their own defense and not just freeloading off the United States. Then he was able to get his own isolationists off his back by selling the Europeans advanced weapons that they could give to the Ukrainians. The United States makes money and Ukraine has the weapons to force a satisfactory peace.

Now an alternate source to Russia of oil and gas for Western Europe has to be found so they cease to finance the Russian aggression in Ukraine that they never cease to implore the Americans to counter. The fears expressed in the comprehensive strategic document issued by the Trump administration last week about the decline of Europe are unfortunately well-founded, but only the Europeans can address this.

Mr. Trump has shown considerable foresight in recognizing that it is not desirable to humiliate Moscow as we wish to outbid the People’s Republic of China for Russia’s goodwill and bring it back into the West, once Vladimir Putin realizes that trying to rebuild the Empire of Peter the Great and Stalin is not acceptable to the West, (or China). We went to considerable  lengths to win the Cold War and will not see Russia reassembled.

We must be close to the day when Mr. Trump rolls the cannon up to Mr. Putin’s cheekbone with the message that if Russia does not negotiate seriously for a peace that recognizes Ukraine’s sovereignty, Tomahawk missiles will enable the civil populations of Moscow and St. Petersburg to enjoy war as the people of Kiev have come to know it, and secondary sanctions will bankrupt the Russian war effort. Then peace will come.

The implosion of the moral credibility of the Ukrainian government in scandals that have plagued that country since it was established in 1991 is untimely but hardly surprising, Ukraine has a right to exist as an independent state which must be preserved, but it has a duty to show some aptitude for self-government if its desire for economic association with Europe and military guarantees from members of the North Atlantic Treaty are to be satisfied.

A year ago, there was no pathway to peace in either of these wars. Most of the national political press is too biased and obtuse to notice what’s happening. There is no doubt that Mr. Trump is the principal architect of peace in both conflicts and will ultimately be recognized for it.