The Trump Presidency Timeline

Trump has reportedly signed off on a 30-year nuclear cooperation deal that would let Saudi Arabia enrich its own uranium, because if there’s one regime you want flirting with the bomb, it’s the one that can’t tolerate a tweet about Jamal Khashoggi. The agreement would involve US firms helping build out the kingdom’s nuclear program and potentially a Saudi enrichment facility, all while not including the IAEA’s more intrusive “additional protocol” inspections. So yes, we’re handing centrifuge capability to Mohammed bin Salman and then politely agreeing not to look too closely.

This diplomatic tire fire is being prepped for Congress, where lawmakers who can still spell “non-proliferation” are expected to object to giving a monarchy with a casual attitude toward human rights a nuclear starter kit. Meanwhile, the US and Israel are at war with Iran, supposedly to stop Tehran from doing exactly what we’re now helping Riyadh get ready to do. Non-proliferation experts are screaming into the void that any Saudi centrifuges are a short hop from a weapons program, and MBS has already said he’ll chase the bomb if Iran gets one. Add in Saudi Arabia’s mutual defense pact with nuclear-armed Pakistan and you’ve got a region-wide nuclear Jenga tower, with Trump happily yanking out the bottom blocks for a quick geopolitical photo op.

For extra farce, the UAE previously signed a “gold standard” 123 agreement with the US that explicitly gave up enrichment, proving that regional allies can, in fact, have nuclear power without getting a weapons-ready pathway. Trump looked at that model of restraint and said: what if, instead, we did the opposite with the crown prince who buys our weapons, hosts our pageants, and loves our hotels? American foreign policy is now a choose-your-own-proliferation adventure.

Donald Trump is heading to a high-stakes NATO summit in Turkey while every allied capital plays the same game: Is he going to defend Europe, or audition for a job on Russian state TV? The official agenda is unity and deterrence; the unofficial agenda is everyone quietly gaming out what happens if the guy who keeps calling NATO a bad real-estate deal decides to treat Article 5 like a gym membership he forgot to cancel.

Allies are reportedly anxious about his "commitment" to the alliance, which is a polite diplomatic way of saying, "we’ve seen the rallies where he threatens to let Russia do ‘whatever the hell they want’ to countries that don’t pay up." So while NATO leaders talk about collective defense, Trump is expected to talk about invoices, imaginary arrears, and how he alone can fix an alliance he clearly doesn’t understand and openly resents.

The result: Putin gets a free morale boost, authoritarian regimes get another signal that Western security guarantees are now subject to the mood swings of a guy live-tweeting cable news, and U.S. credibility gets treated like another Trump casino: leveraged, hollowed out, and left for someone else to clean up. American leadership has rarely looked this much like a timeshare presentation with nukes.

The planet’s most important oil chokepoint is one nervous twitch away from catastrophe and Donald Trump is, of course, handling it on Truth Social. After reciprocal U.S.–Iran strikes over the Strait of Hormuz started to shred what’s left of a "peace deal," Trump announced, in all caps, that “IRAN HAS REQUESTED A MEETING” in Doha. Iran’s negotiators then politely replied, "What meeting?" because nothing says stable global order like nuclear-adjacent adversaries playing He Said/They Said via press releases and social media.

Behind the bluster, the U.S. and Iran are supposedly trying to turn a fragile interim agreement into a final deal: technical teams, de-escalation channels, and a U.N.-backed shipping route near Oman that lets tankers sneak past Iran’s self-declared tollbooth. Tehran, furious that reality is not respecting its imagined monopoly over Hormuz, responded like any totally normal, responsible government by attacking ships and hitting Bahrain and Kuwait, while Washington launched strikes “across Iran” to protect commercial traffic and whatever’s left of deterrence.

Trump, ever the diplomat, is publicly threatening to “militarily complete the job” the U.S. “successfully started,” as if war with Iran is a home renovation project he’s been meaning to finish. Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian is simultaneously selling the interim deal at home as a heroic victory that will unlock $6 billion in frozen assets, while his own deputy foreign minister insists there are no technical talks scheduled in Doha. So we’ve got a U.S. president saber-rattling online, an Iranian leadership contradicting itself in state media, and a major waterway being treated like a mob protection racket. What could possibly go wrong with this carefully curated path to peace?

European leaders are apparently living in a quantum thought experiment where NATO both exists and doesn’t, depending on whether Donald Trump woke up wanting to help defend Europe or shake it down like a mob boss with nuclear weapons. The European Council on Foreign Relations politely calls this a “Schrödinger’s NATO” moment; the less polite version is: the continent’s security now hinges on the mood swings of a guy who once tried to blackmail Ukraine for dirt.

While Vladimir Putin tests how much of Ukraine he can chew off, Europe is heroically responding by… letting French and German defense contractors torpedo a £100bn joint fighter-jet program over who gets to hoard the tech and the glory. As Spain’s defense minister dryly notes, it’s not ideal when Dassault’s ego outranks Europe’s security. Meanwhile, everyone keeps buying US F-35s that only work as long as Washington feels like letting them, and the US is already leaning on Italy over its AI air defense project to make sure the gravy train of dependency keeps flowing.

Brussels is trying to duct-tape together a response with a new EU defence industrial strategy and €150bn in cheap loans, plus a patchwork of side deals like the UK–Finland–Netherlands procurement club. And yet, even as G7 leaders trek to Evian to sweet-talk Trump into maybe pressuring Putin this week, the editorial’s whole subtext is: Europe either grows up and stops relying on flattering an aspiring autocrat, or it keeps gambling its survival on the hope that the guy who loves strongmen suddenly decides to stand up to one.

Donald Trump hopped on the phone with Benjamin Netanyahu and, according to Donald Trump, also with Hezbollah, declared that "all shooting will stop" and that there would be "no Troops going to Beirut" because the Commander-in-Chief of Vibes said so. Within hours, Israel was still striking southern Lebanon, a civil defense center was hit, soldiers were wounded by a drone, hospitals were damaged, and people were fleeing Beirut while the self-described dealmaking genius posted through the collapse of his own ceasefire.

The White House now says the president had a "very productive" call with Netanyahu in which Trump reportedly called him "crazy" in an expletive-laden rant, and then bragged that Hezbollah had also agreed to stand down after his "very good call" with them — marking what appears to be the first time a U.S. president has chatted up a State Department–designated terrorist organization like it’s a condo board dispute. Meanwhile, Iran threatened to suspend negotiations and floated retaliation if Israel keeps bombing Lebanon, while Trump alternated between saying talks might be over and insisting they're continuing "at a rapid pace," because nothing projects stability like your nuclear diplomacy sounding like a live tweet of a reality show reunion.

So on one side: Israel, Hezbollah, and Iran trading threats, rockets, and airstrikes; on the other: Trump, announcing ceasefires that don’t exist, freelancing U.S. war policy in public, and turning the entire region into a stage for his personal fan fiction about being the world’s greatest negotiator. Actual diplomacy remains missing in action, but at least the president got a fresh Truth Social post out of it while civilians in Tyre and Beirut dig themselves out of the rubble.

Mohammad Al-Saadi, an alleged commander of Kata’ib Hizballah, has been indicted on eight counts tied to nearly 20 attacks and attempted attacks across Europe, Canada, and the U.S. Prosecutors say he helped direct assaults on U.S. banks, synagogues, and Jewish communities — essentially running a global terror franchise with a very specific target demographic. Because this timeline is cursed, sources now say he also talked about wanting to target Ivanka Trump in Florida, presumably to avenge U.S. strikes on his mentors.

The Justice Department’s indictment somehow skips the part about the alleged Ivanka plot, leaving that detail to quietly leak out via reporters and the New York Post, which is what passes for a communications strategy in the Trump era: indict in formal legalese, leak the really explosive parts to tabloids, and let the rest of us connect the dots. The White House and Secret Service didn’t respond to questions — possibly busy workshopping whether this will be used to justify more crackdowns, more surveillance, or just more fundraising emails about how only Trump can protect the Trump family.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche vowed to prosecute Al-Saadi “under American law in an American courtroom,” which is a refreshing commitment to due process from an administration that usually treats the justice system like a personal Yelp account. Meanwhile, the same crew that screams about "weaponized DOJ" every time someone with an R after their name gets indicted is now suddenly thrilled to have federal prosecutors flexing their muscles — as long as the case can be framed as defending the royal family’s favorite influencer from a foreign boogeyman.