In President Donald Trump’s first term farewell address, he spoke with pride about restoring restraint to Washington. “I am especially proud to be the first president in decades who has started no new wars,” he declared. And, indeed, he was the first president since Jimmy Carter who could make that claim.
Trump may be both the 45th and 47th president, but his policies on military action are night and day different. First, he decapitated the Venezuelan regime, spiriting Nicolas Maduro out of the country in the dead of night. Just two weeks later, Trump warned that the Islamic Republic’s leadership could face the same fate. “It’s time to look for new leadership in Iran,” Trump declared. He then characterized Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as “a sick man” who has transformed Iran into “the worst place to live anywhere in the world because of poor leadership.”
Trump is right Khamenei must go, but he should not go alone. As the USS Abraham Lincoln sails into the 5th Fleet’s area of operations, it will pass close to Eritrea. If Trump wants to cement his legacy as a man that defends Americans globally and stands up to American adversaries with all tools available, he should issue Eritrean dictator Isaias Afwerki an ultimatum: Step down and leave Eritrea in peace or end up like Maduro.
Whereas President Barack Obama and Joe Biden paid de facto ransoms upward of $1 billion to the Iranian regime to win the release of American hostages — money that augmented the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ mechanisms of repression — Trump deserves kudos for freeing hostages without contributing to a dynamic that encourages further hostage-taking. That was the case with then-Princeton graduate student Xiyue Wang, whose release Trump won in 2019. Trump’s pressure also won the release of remaining Israeli and American hostages seized by Hamas in 2023.
Eritrea, however, holds the longest-imprisoned American hostage. In December 2012, Eritrean authorities seized 15-year-old Ciham Ali as she sought to leave Eritrea. She neither committed nor was ever charged with a crime, but Isaias tolerates no dissent and so targeted Ciham after her father Ali Abdu, a former minister of information, defected during a trip to Germany. Even though Ciham was a child and an American citizen, Eritrea has not allowed anyone to see her since. While Obama left hostage Bob Levinson behind in Iran, whatever Ciham’s fate, she deserves to come home. If Isaias’s regime killed her, he should pay the price in blood.
Nor is Ciham alone. Eritrea has held Dawit Isaak, a Swedish dual citizen and now the longest incarcerated journalist, for the past 25 years. While Sweden does not have the will to act decisively, Trump can model effective strategy. That Eritrea denies holding him means little: Isaias long denied holding Djiboutian hostages he seized in 2008, only to have Qatari diplomats win their release in 2016.
TIM WALZ AND JACOB FREY UNDER CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION BY DOJ
Freeing Eritrea from Isaias would bolster regional security, American interests, and free Americans from terror in their own country. Eritrea remains a prison state, Africa’s equivalent of North Korea. The Isaias regime enslaves its own people with indefinite, involuntary conscription. Those who flee must pay a 2% tax based on their ethnicity rather than their citizenship. Eritrean officials even try to extort this from Eritreans who hold only American citizenship. If those of Eritrean descent fail to pay up, they face harassment and any relatives in Eritrea face prison, torture, or worse.
Eritrea contributed to the Tigray genocide in neighboring Ethiopia, partners with China and Iran, and hosts Houthi training camps. To end Isaias’s 35-year reign of terror would make Trump a hero for America’s Eritrean and Ethiopian diasporas and help secure the Red Sea.
It is time for Trump to make 2026 the year where every anti-American, hostage-taking, China-embracing dictator falls.
Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is director of analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.