Trump has scored a series of landmark achievements in the Middle East that no other president of the United States would have found within his grasp.

Back when Donald Trump won reelection to a nonconsecutive second term in office — after having spent four years being subjected to lawfare by the collective forces of the Democratic establishment, and slogging through a campaign that involved not only a last-second opponent switch but two separate assassination attempts — even someone as patently skeptical as I am had to tip my cap. It was a truly historic achievement, one that nobody other than Donald Trump could have pulled off, and it happened because of who Donald Trump is. It wasn’t luck, it wasn’t chance — though all of that, and perhaps even the ghost of Shinzo Abe, may have played a role — it was sheer force of will and personality wot done it. You had to be impressed.

With that in mind, I rise once again, with genuine respect — and the understanding that matters are still contingent until all the hostages are returned home within the specified 72 hours — to announce: You absolutely must give Donald Trump credit for the end of the Gaza war. Give him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2026 if he wants it. (The acceptance speech would be legendary, at the very least.) After all, the Scandis gave it to Barack Obama, whose lone achievement at that point was riding a bad economy to the presidency as a charismatically Apollonian half-black man. They gave it to Yasser Arafat, whose sole legacy was carnage and broken dreams. Meanwhile, Trump actually got something done for world peace. He is the man of the hour, deservedly so.

And it isn’t even the first time. Today I am reminded of my thoughts in the wake of the successful American strike on Iran’s nuclear facility at Fordow: This does not happen with Kamala Harris in office. For that matter, this probably doesn’t happen with Mitt Romney in office — not on these terms, not with Israel’s regional enemies reduced to a pile of smoldering rubble in the bargain. The so-called Ring of Fire — of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, hostile actors surrounding Israel all puppeteered by Iran with a looming nuclear threat — has been in large part temporarily extinguished.

The future matters — few I know are even remotely convinced that the peace agreement will proceed through phase 2, given Hamas’s patent unwillingness to cede power — but the present for once feels bright. And President Trump was the necessary actor here; to argue anything otherwise is churlish. Trump has scored, over two administrations now, a series of landmark achievements in the Middle East that no other president of the United States would have found within his grasp. How did he do it? And why him, of all people? Is he just lucky once again?

I doubt it. I suspect the inner workings of Trump’s diplomatic team (as well as his own role as top negotiator) will properly be the subject of deeply reported journalism and book-length explorations in the future — we are living through the proverbial interesting times — so all I can offer now is quickly sketched guesswork. But I think Trump’s success springs from several sources.

For one thing, he has had help from corners the media is least inclined to give credit to. I intend to write more at some point about the quiet role that Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, has played in America’s Middle Eastern diplomacy during both terms of the Trump administration. But let it suffice for now to say that the man widely dismissed as an intellectual lightweight, hopelessly out of his depth, back in 2016 has now racked up more major diplomatic coups than all of the career professionals at the U.S. State Department combined since 2001.

It would also behoove critics like me to acknowledge that Steve Witkoff — a man who has come in for his share of abuse in these pages — may be less hapless than publicly acknowledged. To be sure, the man has made his share of ridiculous public gaffes. On the other hand, he clearly seems to have established a negotiating rapport with his Qatari, Egyptian, and Saudi counterparts — it is noteworthy that both Kushner and Witkoff are Jewish conservatives with credibility in both Israeli and Arab quarters — and when it comes to that part of the world, striking the deal and getting it done is what counts most of all.

Which leads me to a final observation that a friend made to me about the man of the hour himself: One reason why Trump, and only Trump, could have negotiated an end to the Gaza war is that he is the first president of the United States in modern history who “speaks Arabic” in a way that Middle Eastern regimes understand and respect.

For Trump’s critics, that language is one of force, threats, and naked transactionalism. But there is a flip side to that for those who do business with him: Bargains are struck, then (usually) honored. Gifts and public flattery are mutually exchanged to seal the deal. Polite American public opinion — including mine — is often scandalized by this. The Arab world sees a man it can work with constructively, uncaptured by either ideological rigor or domestic political pieties.

Criticize the method all you want: The result looks to be supremely constructive. A president who has forever bragged about his skills as a builder and a dealmaker actually has provided evidence of both with his actions in the Middle East, building from the Abraham Accords all the way to the present moment. It seems strangely ironic to think that Trump’s greatest legacy may not be domestic at all but rather in the foreign policy realm: restoring America’s power as a trusted mediator in the most troubled region on the globe. And that is the most powerful testament to what a true outsider can bring to the job of the presidency. You really do have to hand it to him.