Only Donald Trump could cut off Israel — and win a Nobel Peace Prize for it

Just as political pundits of the 1970s were quick to say that only Richard Nixon could reach out to the communists of Beijing, the pundits of 2026 might say that only President Donald Trump could end the $4 billion in annual U.S. military aid to Israel.Trump made the announcement in the final days of the 2026 midterm elections. Some may be skeptical that the president will follow through, given his numerous past policy reversals.However, if Trump’s decision leads to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political downfall, it might have been a political calculation that could bring peace to the Middle East. That might earn Trump a Nobel Peace Prize, like Jimmy Carter. Carter’s Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel also earned Nobel Peace Prizes for Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin. Nobels are not without risks. Forty-five years ago, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was assassinated by the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, an extremist organization that merged with al-Qaeda in 2001. He had ruled Egypt since 1970. After the 1973 Arab-Israeli War (The Yom Kippur War), Sadat worked to find peace with Israel. He worked to meet the conditions of the 1974 Egypt-Israel Disengagement Agreement.This Agreement, signed in Jerusalem, established a ceasefire, separated Egyptian and Israeli forces in the Sinai, and began a U.S.-mediated peace effort between the two countries, among other terms. History records that Sadat honored the Agreement.In January 1979, Gerald Ford, traveling in the Middle East, accepted Sadat’s invitation to meet with him and the ailing former Shah of Iran. This was a meaningful moment in U.S. diplomatic history, allowing Ford to thank the Shah for decades of friendly relations between Iran and the United States. The Washington Post commended Sadat for taking “Iran’s dying shah at a time when the United States had shoved him out in the cold.” The Shah died in July 1980.After Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Sadat signed the historic 1978 Camp David Accords, mediated by President Carter at the Presidential retreat in Camp David, Maryland, the Egyptian president worked to bring peace to his country and the Middle East. Sadat and Begin shared the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger nominated Sadat for the Nobel. Members of West Germany’s Bundestag nominated Begin and Sadat.In 1979, Sadat and Begin signed a historic peace treaty between their two countries. The Washington Post reported that when Sadat arrived in Jerusalem, he kissed former Prime Minister Golda Meir’s cheek and said: “I have waited a long time for this.” According to the U.S. Congressional Research Service, “Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel stands as one of the most significant diplomatic achievements for the promotion of Arab-Israeli peace.”In Cairo for Sadat’s funeral, Secretary of State Alexander Haig delivered a letter of condolence from President Ronald Reagan, who called Sadat “a champion of peace.” Former President Carter told Mrs. Sadat that her husband was “like a hero” in the U.S. Former President Ford told Mrs. Sadat, “The American people looked upon [Anwar Sadat] as a beautiful man.” One European newspaper wrote: “No one among the statesmen of our time could less be spared” than Anwar Sadat.“Sadat was a Muslim, even a devout and practicing Muslim, but he was not, in the zeal of his public actions, a Muslim recognizable as such by the jinns unleashed upon the Islamic world by the revolution in Iran,” wrote the Guardian. According to Merriam-Webster, a jinn is “a supernatural spirit in Arabic mythology that is made of fire or air and can assume human or animal form” and “loves to punish humans for any harm done to it.”TO SAVE BLACK SEA SHIPPING, WASHINGTON NEEDS ISRAEL’S ASYMMETRICAL PLAYBOOKAnwar Sadat played a prominent role in U.S.-Middle East relations from the 1960s to the 1980s. In 2026, Sadat, one of the most courageous statesmen of the latter twentieth century, remains a “beautiful man” and a “hero” to Americans, Israelis, and Arabs.It is far too early to compare Trump’s decision to disengage militarily from Israel to Sadat’s decisions to lay down arms and embrace peace with Israel in the 1970s. Should Trump’s decision bring peace to the Middle East, the president might be worthy of the title of Statesman, if not a Nobel Peace Prize recipient.James Patterson is a life member of the American Foreign Service Association. He resides in Washington, D.C.