Ex-US Ambassador to NATO: Trump fears midterm defeat

It seems like the United States under Pete Hegseth is delaying the delivery of Patriots to Ukraine, as President Zelensky said. What do you think? What do you make of all this? Yeah, well, first off, we don't have hard information. It seems to be the case that European countries have purchased Patriot missiles, the inserts, the anti-missile missiles, and that they have not been delivered to Ukraine yet and there's no information or explanation from the Pentagon about this my best guess is that the Pentagon is preparing for the possibility of a resumption of the war against Iran after the midterm elections and in that circumstance they don't know how many Patriot missiles they're going to need for themselves so they're just waiting that's my best guess but i i haven't heard anything concrete about this but there's also a fairly strong uh feeling that this is also about applying leverage on Ukraine we saw with Starlink with Patriots we've seen a lot of pressure put on Zelensky by this administration to stop striking Russian diesel refineries right right so we've seen several things here it's all driven by the midterm elections in the U.S. which are now just a week away and President Trump is seeing what everyone is seeing that it's going to go very very badly for the Republicans uh certainly losing the House of Representatives probably also losing the Senate at this stage is the way it looks although you never know and he wants to be seen to be doing something about the issues that are making voters unhappy one of them is the price of diesel and that particularly affects farmers mid-state red state voters in the Midwest in the United States so he wants to be seen to be doing something about that so he thought it would be a great story for him to be able to say i've got Vladimir Putin giving us diesel and i've got Zelensky to stop attacking the refineries so i'm i'm fighting for you i'm on your side uh the problem with that is it is an insignificant amount of diesel. It won't do anything to U.S. or global prices. The U.S., in fact, is already a diesel exporter. We have more than enough for our own consumption. It's just that global prices are high. And everyone in the U.S. sees through this. So it hasn't delivered the electoral benefit to President Trump that he thought it might. So he's been trying to figure out other things he can do to pull a rabbit out of the hat, before the midterms. Restart negotiations. Send Witkoff to Russia. Talk about major oil deals. All of these things are intended to create some sense, I think, in Trump's mind of doing something, and it's not working. The public is not buying it. They're focused domestically. They're focused on prices and things here. They don't like the war against Iran, and yet it may have to resume. We'll see. And why do you think it may have to resume? Well, because Iran is effectively going to be in control of the Persian Gulf. And that's going to be unacceptable for the Gulf states, for Israel, for us. And right now, President Trump is saying, no, no, no, they're not. We're getting things through, but we cannot be in a permanent position of blockading Iran and escorting vessels through the Persian Gulf and through the Straits of Hormuz. That's not tenable so i think that trump is going to have one more effort to hit the iranian regime hope that somebody replaces them try to get them to agree to freedom of navigation again uh which they had until january and february of this year and that that is where i think we're headed and that's going to put a spike on oil and energy prices again so it's it's there's a no-win situation for president trump here but i mean from a european perspective um the withdrawal of uh Starlink for a certain period of time the slow walking on the patriots there's a feeling that the United States is no longer a neutral part of this negotiation but actually is on the side of Russia and remember the Patriots are purchased already notwithstanding the war in Iraq and the stockpile issue purchased by European taxpayers yeah no that's that's right and i think one of the reasons for that perception was the meeting in Oslo, where you had some Europeans together with Steve Witkoff, and he brought some proposals. And some of these proposals were very much one-sided in favor of Russia, including that Europe would unfreeze the frozen Russian assets and transfer them to the U.S., and the U.S. would use them for investment in Ukraine's reconstruction, including in occupied areas. So crazy stuff coming out of these proposals here. Again, I think it's grasping for straws. It's flailing around. President Trump doesn't want to put pressure on Putin, does want to see the war end. And so he keeps reverting to try to put pressure on Ukraine, which is not going to end the war. But what do you think of the fact that, as Zelensky is saying, and as what we're led to believe, that there is a delay in the Patriots put pressure on uh Zelensky i mean what are Europeans to think of this given this is life or death i mean Ukrainians are dead as a consequence here yes yeah it's terrible and as you saw there was a great deal of confusion in the U.S as to what actually happened with Starlink first uh Elon Musk said it's not me then President Trump said it's not me then Associated Press reports that it's the White House somewhere. Then President Trump says, I don't know anything about it. Then Elon Musk says, well, actually, it was me. But it was only because they were misusing Starlink. And Star Shield is still something that the US government controls. And then Trump calls Musk and says, OK, just turn it back on. So a great deal of confusion over this. The main effect of limiting the use of Starlink and StarShield was to impact Ukraine's air defenses, which I think people thought would impact their offensive strike capability in Russia, which is not true. And so once that was apparent, then they went and restored Starlink to the way it had been. But what are the Ukrainians supposed to do and Europeans supposed to do now with no Patriots to intercept these ballistic missiles coming from Russia? Yeah. You know, just keep going. There's no other direction, no other pathway. Russia is gradually losing the war here. It's just going to take a very long time at this rate, but they are losing people, they're losing money, they're destroying their economy. they are losing on the front lines they're not having a strategic impact with their aerial campaign so russia is gradually losing here and they will eventually i believe agree to a cease fire it would be nice if the u.s was helping and it would be nice if the u.s and europe were coordinated in how we help but that's not the case but i think ukraine and europe just have to keep going because we do want to see this war ended and just finally though on the patriots do you think that there's, at the midterms, there may be a change at least, perhaps, if this is about leveraging Zelensky to stop striking Russia diesel refineries, that maybe they will release the Patriots after the midterms? I think it's going to depend on the war in Ukraine. I think that's the main driver right now is the uncertainty over what the US will need for our own defense and for that of Gulf states and Israel. And so until that's clear, I think we're going to live with a lot of uncertainty. Because the United States is within its rights, is that what you're saying, to withhold patriots if they need them, even though they're paid for? Yeah, both as a practical matter, it's doable. And also as a legal matter, usually in contracts, there are some force majeure clauses and a war or military action that we would be engaged in would qualify for that.