Trump Gets the Nuclear Dust

Also, the defense minister blows up his own party, and a tense interview on Channel 4.

Donald Trump and Syrain President Ahmed Al Shaara at the NATO summit, July 8 2026. (White House)

It’s Tuesday, August 11, and with Israeli help, the Trump administration has reached a deal to denuclearize an Islamist nation: Syria. According to Axios’ Barak Ravid, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will soon remove nuclear material stored at a clandestine site in the country.

But first, context.

Before and after photo of the Syrian reactor released by the U.S. government.

It was 2007, a simpler time, when disabling a nuclear program and deterring a genocidal dictator from rebuilding it took a single resolute strike. Israel showed the evidence of a secret reactor to the Bush administration, hoping for support. At the time when the Bush administration feared the phrase “weapons of mass destruction” the way today’s administrations fear “boots on the ground,” Israel went it alone. It destroyed the reactor in Operation Out of the Box, and in the aftermath the United States, Israel, and Syria all officially pretended nothing had happened. Syria denied the reactor had ever existed—even after IAEA inspectors found evidence of undeclared nuclear material and declared the country in noncompliance with the NPT.

Bring us to the late days of 2024 when the Assad regime collapsed, Israel—suspicious of the ex-jihadist government that replaced it—set about crippling Syria’s military. A country it wouldn’t trust with fighter jets it certainly wouldn’t trust with nuclear material, so it kept the old reactor site under watch.

According to the report, that monitoring picked up movement around the site a few weeks ago—enough to suspect the new government was reneging on understandings and trying to reach the nuclear material. Israel wasn’t going to let that stand. It told the Trump administration it would strike the site again if the material wasn’t removed, or if there were any sign Damascus was trying to get to it.

Syria’s new government, for its part, is eager to clear away the sensitive files it inherited from Assad—the nuclear and chemical weapons programs chief among them—that could sabotage its bid to rehabilitate the country’s international standing. The ultimatum handed it the perfect opportunity to look responsible, especially set against other Islamist states in the region.

“Syria is seeking a security agreement with Israel,” President Ahmad al-Sharaa told Al Jazeera on July 26, adding that a successful deal could “pave the way for comprehensive peace without compromising Syria’s right to the Golan Heights.” Any such agreement would depend on a denuclearized Syria.

This is a major achievement for the prospects of peace in the region. But nuclear dust still lingers in hands far more dangerous than an ex-jihadist’s—and it should be clear to Trump by now that agreements won’t be enough to get it out of their hands.

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Defense Minister Israel Katz attends a plenum session and a vote on a bill to freeze arrests of haredi draft evaders at the assembly hall of the Knesset, July 14, 2026. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

Among the great campaign slogans, there are such standouts as Clinton’s “It’s the economy, stupid!,” Trump’s “Make America Great Again,” and Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz’s “Boom Boom Boom.” For the upcoming Likud primaries, Katz has already workshopped other options such as “Finally, a Right-Wing Defense Minister” and the bizarre “What a graceful smile.”

I don’t have to spell out why the defense minister advertising his success with clips of explosions and an AI song repeating “Boom Boom Boom” reflects badly on the IDF and Israel as a whole. Though I wouldn’t go as far as Avigdor Liberman in claims he needs a Boom Boom to the head, some blunt force trauma was likely involved in his recent decision-making.

As of this morning, Katz has already received a guaranteed spot in the top 10 of the list for the upcoming elections. Likud claimed that ensuring his guarantee allows him to focus on defense rather than campaigning—though it is more so because his campaigning is damaging Likud’s defense.

Katz is suffering from a confidence deficit—his own, and Bibi’s in him. His desperate plays for popularity so far—the AI campaign ads, skipping security cabinet meetings to attend the family bar mitzvahs of Likud activists, firing the Central Command commander on live television—have all fed the Israeli media cycle, but not the way he or Bibi hoped. Being a clown is fine; making Likud look like a circus is not.

Squeaky wheels get grease. Publicly exploding defense ministers get guaranteed slots. Also receiving a spot are Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar—who was promised his when he joined Likud in 2024—and Likud Central Committee chair Haim Katz. Though none of this comes out of Netanyahu’s eight-slot budget.

With the three additional spots, 11 of the first 29 places on the ruling party's slate will go to hand-picked candidates rather than to the roughly 140,000 members who vote in the August 17, 2026 primary. Another slice is set aside for up-and-comers from the party's own ranks. The result is a tidy division of labor: one-third of the list is elected, one-third is reserved for stars from the outside, and the last third is reserved for problems from the inside.

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Yesterday I spoke with the UK’s Channel 4 about the future of the Gaza Strip. It got a bit heated, but it was still a great interview—check it out.

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English Editor: Ari Tatarka

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