It was supposed to be the moment US President Donald Trump’s vision of bringing peace to the Middle East by redeveloping the war-torn Gaza strip into “Riviera” style premium housing and permanently relocating its more than 2 million residents finally got a reality check.

Instead, it was the moment the true scale of the challenge facing America’s Arab allies became clear.

When King Abullah II of Jordan met Trump at the Oval Office on Tuesday, there were widespread expectations that his visit – as the first Arab leader to meet the US president since his reelection – might help to rein in some of the more far-fetched elements of Trump’s vision. (To recap, Trump apparently envisions the US taking control of the territory, rehoming millions of Palestinian refugees in Jordan and Egypt, replacing the rubble of Gaza with glass towers with Mediterranean views and inviting “the world’s people” to move in.)

But it became clear almost as soon as Trump began talking at their joint press conference that he had no intention whatsoever of softening his proposal.

“I believe we will have a parcel of land in Jordan, a parcel of land in Egypt, we may have some place else but I think when we finish our talks we’ll have a place where they’ll live very happily,” Trump said, before brushing aside questions about what authority the US might wield to take control of the Palestinian enclave.

The embarrassment to King Abdullah, whose eyes twitched extensively as he listened quietly beside the US president, was clear.

After all, this was a man who was expected to – diplomatically – state in clear terms the Arab world’s almost universal opposition to the plan.

Instead, and despite his clear discomfort, he appeared to nod and praised Trump as a man of peace who could take the Middle East “across the finish line.”

Asked whether he agrees with Trump’s proposal to rehome the Palestinians, the king deflected, instead revealing that “Egypt and the Arab countries” had an alternative plan that would be revealed in due course and advising, “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“You could see the discomfort on the king’s body language and his face … they were completely talking past each other,” said Khaled Elgindy, visiting scholar at the Georgetown University Center for Contemporary Arab Studies.

A ‘bad bet’

Until that point, Egypt had said nothing publicly about having a counter-plan. Afterwards it issued its own vague statement, in which it referred to an “intention to present a comprehensive vision for the reconstruction of Gaza.”

Meanwhile, Arab social media erupted in criticism of the king, who was widely criticized for appearing to capitulate to Trump.

In what looked like an attempt at damage limitation, the king posted on X that he had “reiterated Jordan’s steadfast position against the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.”

“This is the unified Arab position. Rebuilding Gaza without displacing the Palestinians and addressing the dire humanitarian situation should be the priority for all,” he wrote.

But by then, in many Arab eyes, the damage had already been done.

While Abdullah may have impressed Trump with his offer to take 2,000 of Gaza’s sick children, it’s clear his visit did little to persuade the president away from his desire to take Gaza. If anything, the limpness of the opposition may only have encouraged Trump.

“We’re going to have it (Gaza), we’re going to keep it, and we’re going to make sure that there’s going to be peace and there’s not going to be any problem, and nobody’s going to question it, and we’re going to run it very properly,” Trump said.

Randa Slim, a fellow at the foreign policy institute at Johns Hopkins University, said the king had made a “bad bet” in traveling to Washington.

“If the visit was aimed at helping sway Trump to abandon his plan, King Abdullah was unsuccessful because Trump doubled down. And it did not put the Jordanian king in the best light with his own population, he did not come across in the public presser as strongly pushing back against a plan which the majority of his population opposes,” she said.

“I don’t think it was a success on a regional and domestic level,” Slim added.

A precarious position

The exchange between Trump and the king reveals the precarious position that America’s Arab allies could find themselves in over the next four years, especially those, like Jordan, who have relatively little in terms of natural resources to offer the self-styled master of the deal.

As Arab countries scramble to make a counteroffer to Trump’s Gaza plan, they are also rushing to salvage the ceasefire agreement, which is currently under threat of collapse after Hamas said it would postpone Saturday’s scheduled hostage release in response to alleged Israeli violations of the deal in recent weeks.

If there is a silver lining to the “madness coming out of Trump’s mouth,” said Elgindy, it’s that it spurred Arab states to think about what their own, more credible alternative would be – even if that action is long overdue.

“It took disastrous statements by Trump and the possible collapse of the ceasefire for them to finally spur into action … that should have happened months ago,” he said.

The plan alluded to by King Abdullah, to be presented by Egypt after being discussed with one of Trump’s closest Arab allies, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, could present a vision where Arab countries help clear the rubble and rebuild Gaza over several years, without Palestinians leaving and in line with the two-state solution.

But the finer details of the Arab plan are yet to be revealed and the danger is that any delay will only serve to encourage Trump further. Egypt has said there will be an Arab emergency summit at the end of the month.

For some Arab leaders, the hope is that Trump will at some point come to his own conclusion that his plan is “not practical” and “unimplementable,” Slim said, and that there will be so many obstacles in implementing it that he will abandon it.

Even then, the onus would be on America’s Arab allies to come up with a solution to a decades-old problem, and the king’s visit to DC has hardly inspired confidence.

“They are caught between a rock and a hard place … they will have to come up with an alternative plan that has to involve dollars for Trump to buy into it, and one that he can spin as a win,” Slim added.

“Come on,” said Elgindy. “Nobody has a plan?”

Wednesday’s meeting at the NATO headquarters in Brussels was, on paper, about coordinating military aid for Ukraine and welcoming the new US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth into the international fold. In practice, it was a day that saw the Trump administration upend the alliance’s approach to this almost 3-year-old war, lay out a vision that seemed to deliver some of Moscow’s key demands, and leave NATO allies fighting to avoid the appearance of disunity.

There were, of course, clear signs this was not going to be smooth sailing. US President Donald Trump fired the starting gun on this critical week of diplomacy by pouring cold water on Ukraine’s hopes of a favorable peace deal.

But coordinating with allies may not be a top priority for the Trump administration. Overnight it has lurched the NATO alliance from a stated policy that Ukraine was on an “irreversible path” to membership, to Hegseth’s blunt statement: “The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement.”

Several of his European counterparts tried to argue the two positions were not incompatible.

Whether or not this, or Hegseth’s comment that Ukrainian ambitions to return to pre-2014 borders were “unrealistic,” were meant as a break with previous policy, one thing is clear. “The US is quite happy to march to its own beat and leave Europe and Ukraine to pick up the pieces,” said Matthew Savill, Director of Military Sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank in London.

“European countries have to get with the mood music … If they think any US official or politician is going to stick their neck out for Europe, on Europe’s behalf, they are kidding themselves.”

News at the end of the day in Brussels, that while NATO ministers tried to coordinate efforts to counter Russian aggression, President Trump spent 90 minutes on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin is a case in point. Ukraine’s Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, when asked about this at a briefing, simply walked away from the cameras.

Amongst all the status-quo-churning statements from the Trump administration, there is one hard truth Europe must face. The 2% defense spending target, which a third of NATO members haven’t even hit yet, is looking increasingly outdated. Hegseth even name-checked his boss to drive the message home.

“Two percent is not enough; President Trump has called for 5%, and I agree,” said Hegseth. “The United States will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency.” And the urgency is not only coming from the US. “If we stick to 2% we cannot defend ourselves in four to five years,” said Rutte. “It is crucial that Russia’s rearmament is met by us.”

On this point, it’s hard to find a NATO minister that wouldn’t say they agree. Still, it is what they actually do that will matter. “We heard (Hegseth’s) call for European nations to step up. We can, and we will,” promised UK Defense Secretary Healey.

And yet the UK’s government has committed to raising its spending only from the current 2.3% level to 2.5% of GDP, without specifying a time period.

Caught between a United States promising “resourcing trade-offs” as it prioritizes the Pacific, and a Russia whose defense industry is already vastly outproducing the EU, this may be a reality NATO’s European members can no longer just agree with.

Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa claimed, without evidence, that the first round of the country’s presidential election was rife with “irregularities” after he made it to the second round with a slim lead — which authorities have called a technical tie with his leftist rival Luisa González.

“There have been many irregularities,” Noboa said in a Tuesday interview streamed on the presidency’s Facebook and YouTube pages. “We kept counting, we kept checking in certain provinces that there were things that didn’t add up. They even didn’t add up with the OAS (Organization of American States) quick count, which gave us a higher figure.”

Noboa even suggested that “armed groups” were forcing voters to cast their ballots for his opponent.

After the interview, the OAS Electoral Observation Mission, which had been monitoring the election, issued a statement denying irregularities in the result.

It said that “the results presented by the National Electoral Council (CNE) of Ecuador coincide with the data obtained through the quick count conducted by the Mission, and remain within the margin of error.”

It added that its mission has “neither identified nor received any indication of widespread irregularities that could alter the election results.”

Ecuador’s elections agency issued a statement on Tuesday, hours after Noboa’s interview, saying that it was committed to “guaranteeing fair and transparent elections.”

It was not only Noboa complaining about the vote. Prior to his allegations, González made a similar claim on Monday in an interview with local channel Teleamazonas, saying that there were “inconsistencies” in the vote in certain provinces throughout Ecuador.

“We do not trust CNE,” González added, without offering evidence to support her allegations.

The European Union’s observation mission to Ecuador pronounced the election “transparent, well-organized, and peaceful” on Tuesday, and pushed back against any allegations of fraud.

“Disinformation was rife, with particularly virulent narratives of fraud towards the end of the campaign,” the Election Observation Mission said in their statement, which did not mention either candidate by name.

Ruling by decree

Pinto noted that the president has made many of his more notable decisions by decree, including deploying the army to Ecuador’s streets to combat gangs and building a new prison for 800 of the country’s most violent criminals.

Noboa last year stunned much of Latin America when he ordered police to storm the Mexican embassy in Quito to arrest former vice president Jorge Glas. The violation of diplomatic protocol led many leaders across the region to denounce Noboa’s actions.

“Maybe he thinks that the government is like the private sector,” Pinto mused. “In his companies, he can order everything, and he thinks that in the state, he can do the same thing. But it’s not possible.”

As to Gonzalez, Pinto said her claim might be due to her team being “sure they were going to win.”

Rampant crime has transformed the once tranquil country into one plagued by violence and turf wars between drug cartels.

Much of the violence has centered around the country’s coast, in provinces where Noboa’s campaign fared poorly. Guayas province, for example, experienced over 3,000 homicides in 2024, public data shows. According to the latest tallies on Wednesday, Gonzalez earned nearly 49% of the vote there compared to Noboa’s 43.7%.

“You have to understand, we have almost 10% of the population that votes for Luisa – not because they think Luisa is a good person,” said Pinto. “They vote for Luisa because they don’t want to vote for Noboa.”

Noboa’s statement about armed groups supposedly forcing voters to support his opponent is “dangerous,” Pinto said, “because he’s saying we have no sovereignty, we have no control over these areas.”

The assertion amounts to an endorsement from the sitting president that Ecuador is a “narco state,” Pinto added.