Editors at National Review Online consider President Trump’s approach toward the nation’s Middle East ally.

This week, we got an early glimpse of how President Trump will approach the U.S. relationship with Israel during his second term. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu became the first foreign leader to visit the White House since the start of the new administration, which in itself carried great symbolic significance. But Trump followed up the symbolism with substantive moves that conveyed the common interests of the two allies.

On Tuesday, before welcoming Netanyahu, Trump signed an executive order that brought back his “maximum pressure” campaign targeting Iran. During his first term, he imposed crippling sanctions on the Islamist regime, which starved the mullahs of resources, making it harder for them to finance terrorist proxies led by Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.

Unfortunately, the Biden administration shifted to a policy of minimum pressure, unraveling carefully deployed sanctions that provided a lifeline to Iran in hopes of reviving Barack Obama’s disastrous nuclear deal. The result was more aggression from Iran and its terrorist network.

Trump also made clear that he would never permit Iran to obtain nuclear weapons. During the campaign, he said he supported Israeli military strikes on Iranian nuclear sites. He did not reiterate that position this week, but did not rule it out, either. In a Truth Social post, he indicated that he was open to negotiating a deal with Iran that involved real verification of its nuclear program. “Reports that the United States, working in conjunction with Israel, is going to blow Iran into smithereens, ARE GREATLY EXAGGERATED,” he wrote. But there are plenty of military actions that fall short of completely leveling the country.

In addition to Iran, Trump signed an order saying that the U.S. would no longer participate in the United Nations Human Rights Council and that it would pull funding from the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), noting that they have abandoned the founding mission of the U.N. “and instead act contrary to the interests of the United States while attacking our allies and propagating anti-Semitism.”