Biden officials "awed" by Trump's rule-breaking Middle East moves

What they're saying: Biden administration veterans who spoke with Axios raised questions about Trump's motivations but grudgingly saluted his boldness.

• "Gosh, I wish I could work for an administration that could move that quickly," one admitted.
• "He does all this, and it's kind of silence, it's met with a shrug," says Ned Price, a former senior State Department official under President Biden. "He has the ability to do things politically that previous presidents did not, because he has complete unquestioned authority over the Republican caucus."
• "It's hard not to be simultaneously terrified at the thought of the damage he can cause with such power, and awed by his willingness to brazenly shatter so many harmful taboos," says Rob Malley, who held senior posts in three Democratic administrations, including handling Iran talks under Presidents Obama and Biden.

Zoom out: On issue after issue, Trump is taking steps no recent president would have even considered.

• He abandoned the unified Western position to back Ukraine "as long as it takes" by negotiating directly with Vladimir Putin and declaring that Kyiv will never get Crimea back and must cut a deal now.
• He inserted himself directly in the recent Kashmir crisis, something past administrations have avoided so as not to antagonize India.
• He endorsed direct talks with Iran and shrugged off hawks at home and abroad who tied the Obama and Biden administrations in knots. It helps that many of them, like Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, are loath to cross Trump.

Zoom in: On Syria, Trump's own State Department had espoused a policy similar to the Biden administration's before it — sanctions relief might be possible if militant-turned-statesman Ahmed al-Sharaa's government met a number of criteria, such as suppressing extremist groups.

• That meant that, somewhat perversely, the new administration was being strangled by sanctions imposed on the dictator they toppled. But it was also just the way these things work, until Trump decided it wasn't.
• "It's so clearly the right decision," said Ben Rhodes, a national security aide to President Obama, on the "Pod Save the World" podcast. "I don't know why Joe Biden didn't do this."
• "I don't like Trump's motivations for lots of things he does," Rhodes continued, "but one thing you will say is he's not tied to this constant fear of some bad faith right-wing attacks or stupid Blob-type, 'we don't do this, we must leverage the sanctions for blah blah blah.' No! Sometimes you just have to try something different."

Perhaps most shocking to veterans of previous administrations, Trump authorized direct talks with Hamas last month that Israeli officials only learned about through espionage (or by reading Axios).

Driving the news: This week, Trump's envoy-for-everything Steve Witkoff used backchannel talks to negotiate the release of Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander, undercutting Israel's own negotiating tactics.

• "I suspect Witkoff doesn't have to look over his shoulder as much as others have. His predecessors have had to make sure the secretary of defense is on board and the secretary of the Treasury is on board, and the head of the CIA is on board. He just does it," the former Biden official said.

Flashback: The Biden administration considered but ultimately rejected opening direct talks with Hamas.

• "This is not about President Biden, this is about President Trump and the advantage that he has with Bibi [Netanyahu]," Price said. "If the Biden administration had done something like this, Bibi would have gone out guns blazing."
• Now, even with the daylight between him and Trump growing more glaring, Netanyahu is keeping uncharacteristically quiet.

The flipside: Trump has also not pushed back hard as Netanyahu cut off all aid to Gaza, refused to budge in ceasefire negotiations, and announced a military operation to flatten and occupy the enclave.

• Price argues that's the more nefarious side of Trump's a-la-carte "America First" approach.
• "Unfortunately, we have a real-life experiment going on right now where we see exactly what happens when an administration abdicates that concerted pressure on the Israelis."

Between the lines: All the former Democratic officials who spoke to Axios questioned Trump's motives, even for policies they personally agreed with, noting that he's not just breaching norms to make peace, but also to sell cryptocurrency, expand his real estate portfolio or obtain a $400 million jet.

• The Syria announcement notably came at the urging of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, two leaders fluent in Trump-style transactionalism.