U.S. President Donald Trump’s new counterterrorism strategy is now public, and its stated objective is exactly the right one: to protect Americans from terrorist groups and deter the support they receive from enemy actors.
The strategy promises “peace through strength.” It repeats the president’s warning that those who hurt Americans or plan to hurt Americans will be found and killed.
That is a powerful standard. But it will be measured not by words aimed at enemies alone, nor by how aggressively Washington names threats. It will be measured by whether the United States is prepared to impose costs on governments, allies and institutions that shield terrorists from American justice.
Terror victims and their families have heard strong language before.
The real test is not whether Washington can announce another counterterrorism doctrine. It’s whether the United States is finally prepared to impose consequences on those who murder Americans, hold them hostage, finance terrorism or shelter terrorists from justice, even when doing so is diplomatically inconvenient.
I do not write as an academic observer. My daughter Alisa was murdered in 1995 in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian Islamic Jihad bombing in the Gaza Strip. Since then, I have spent three decades pressing for accountability against terrorists and their state sponsors. I have seen American officials speak eloquently about justice, only to retreat when the path to justice required sustained political will.
During Trump’s first administration, I approached officials with a proposal aimed at hitting Iran where it hurts: its overseas financial and commercial networks.
Iran’s terror machine does not run on slogans alone. It depends on money, front companies, banking relationships, shipping channels, commercial intermediaries and access to international markets. I urged the administration to help dig into Iranian-linked front companies in Europe and expose the structures that allowed Tehran to move money and sustain its terror operations.
My plea was not acknowledged.
That experience was disappointing but not surprising. Administrations of both parties have often been willing to condemn terrorism in principle while stopping short of the financial, diplomatic and legal pressure that would make terrorism more costly to its sponsors.
The U.S. Treasury Department’s recent sanctions against Iran’s shadow-banking networks underscore the point. Tehran uses international financial architecture to move funds tied to sanctions evasion, weapons procurement, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and terrorist proxies. That is exactly why counterterrorism must reach beyond battlefield operations and into the commercial networks that keep terrorism alive.
The same principle applies to hostage-taking and extradition. Terrorism is not only the bomb, the gunman or the kidnapper. It is also the government that provides sanctuary, the financial institution that moves the money, the front company that conceals the transaction and the allied capital that looks away when justice becomes inconvenient.
Nothing illustrates this more painfully than the case of Malki Roth.
A 15-year-old American citizen, she was killed in the Hamas bombing of a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem in 2001. Ahlam Aref Ahmad al-Tamimi, who helped carry out the attack, was later charged by the U.S. Justice Department and placed on the FBI’s “Most Wanted” terrorists list. The United States has sought her extradition from Jordan for years.
Tamimi is not hiding in a cave. She has lived openly in Jordan. She has given interviews. She has been treated in some circles not as a fugitive from American justice, but as a celebrity.
Meanwhile, Jordan remains a major American ally and recipient of substantial U.S. assistance. Successive administrations have said they want Tamimi extradited. They have raised the matter and expressed concern. Reports last year suggested Amman might finally act, but Jordanian officials denied them. Advocacy groups continue urging Washington to press the case.
The question is no longer whether the United States can identify the terrorist. It has done that. The question is whether an American ally can continue to defy American justice without consequence.
That question is not anti-Jordanian. It is pro-American justice.
If the United States says that it will punish regimes that wrongfully detain Americans, then why should it be less forceful with governments that shelter terrorists who murdered Americans? If Washington can devise new categories of consequence for hostage-taking states, it can also devise real consequences for countries that obstruct American terrorism prosecutions.
Media commentator Sebastian Gorka, who worked in the first Trump administration, has said the administration will ask allies to step up against terrorism. Good. But the test of allied seriousness cannot be limited to naval patrols, intelligence sharing or statements of support. It must include cooperation in bringing terrorists who murdered Americans before American courts.
A serious counterterrorism strategy cannot apply pressure only to enemies. It must also apply pressure to allies when they protect terrorists, frustrate extradition or allow terror financiers to operate behind the shield of diplomatic convenience.
This is where many counterterrorism policies fail. They are tough in speeches and selective in practice. Iran is denounced. Hamas is condemned. Hezbollah is sanctioned. But when financial trails lead into friendly jurisdictions, or when an allied government refuses to surrender a terrorist, the language of justice often gives way to the language of “regional stability.”
Terrorists understand this. So do the regimes that support them.
They know that America’s outrage can be managed. They know that the passage of time weakens attention. They know that victims’ families grow exhausted. They know that bureaucracies prefer tomorrow’s meeting to today’s confrontation.
That is why consequences matter.
A credible doctrine should include automatic reviews of foreign assistance when a government refuses to honor an extradition request involving the murder of an American. It should impose visa restrictions on officials who obstruct justice in terrorism cases. It should direct U.S. resources toward identifying front companies, financial intermediaries and commercial structures that help terrorist states evade sanctions. It should treat hostage-taking and the sheltering of terrorists as part of the same strategic ecosystem: the use of human life as leverage against civilized nations.
The Trump administration is right to recognize that terrorism is not confined to one region or one ideology. The new strategy places special emphasis on threats in the Western Hemisphere, including cartels and transnational networks that endanger Americans. That may be appropriate. But no regional focus should obscure a larger principle: Americans are less safe when their government tolerates impunity abroad.
For Jewish Americans, this issue is not abstract. Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities reminded the world that hostage-taking is not a side feature of terrorism. It is central to terrorist warfare. Iran’s sponsorship of terror across the Middle East has long relied on proxies, front organizations and financial evasion. Israel has lived for decades with the terrible consequences of prisoner exchanges, international hesitation and selective outrage.
The United States should learn from that experience, not repeat the mistakes.
As president of the Religious Zionists of America, I believe that American counterterrorism policy must rest on moral clarity. Murdering Americans must carry consequences. Financing those who murder Americans must carry consequences. Protecting those who murder Americans must carry consequences.
That standard should apply in Tehran, in Gaza, in Europe’s financial centers. And it should apply in Amman.
The true measure of Trump’s counterterrorism strategy will not be the strength of its language or the ambition of its categories. It will be whether terrorists, their sponsors and their protectors conclude that the United States is no longer willing to accept delay, evasion and diplomatic excuses.
Terror victims do not need more ceremonies, proclamations or strategic doctrines. They need an American government willing to impose consequences—not only on declared enemies, but also on allies and institutions that enable terrorists to evade justice.
