Here is the number the White House does not put on a banner: independent trackers place verified deportations for Trump's second term at roughly 290,000 to 340,000, not the "over one million a year" he promised on the campaign trail. Meanwhile, in a corner of the world Washington once hoped to quiet, a second, larger war with Iran erupted in February 2026 — one that killed Iran's supreme leader and, by early July, had cost American taxpayers over $113 billion. The border and the Middle East, the twin obsessions of this administration, have both produced outcomes messier than the original playbook promised.
The Deportation Machine, Measured Against Its Own Promise
The administration's own count, released around mid-2026, claims more than 605,000 people deported since January 2025, plus an additional 1.9 million who supposedly "self-deported" — a figure without a clear, independently verifiable methodology. Researchers at Syracuse University's TRAC project and the Migration Policy Institute tell a narrower story: roughly 234,000 ICE removals in fiscal year 2025 and another 56,000-plus in the opening weeks of fiscal 2026, for a combined total closer to 290,000. That is real growth over the Biden administration's final year, but nowhere near the "largest deportation operation in history" the campaign advertised.
What changed is not just scale but method. In January 2026, Vice President JD Vance announced 10,000 additional ICE agents would go "door to door," using data harvested by private contractors. Detention has followed a similar pattern: by mid-November 2025, ICE held 65,135 people, and nearly three-quarters of them — 47,964 individuals — had no criminal conviction at all. That is not a footnote; it is the headline the agency's own numbers keep producing, regardless of how officials characterize their targets in press briefings.
Third-country removal deals have quietly become one of the operation's most expensive and least examined features. A Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democratic staff report from February 2026 found that Washington has, in some cases, paid over one million dollars per person to governments — several with documented histories of corruption and human rights abuse — to accept deportees who are not their own nationals. That is a strikingly different fiscal story than the one told in DHS press releases about efficiency and cost savings.
Iran: From "Maximum Pressure" to Two Actual Wars
When the original version of this analysis was written, Iran policy meant sanctions, rhetoric, and a nuclear file stuck in diplomatic limbo. That framing is obsolete. In June 2025, Israel launched the Twelve-Day War, striking Natanz, Fordow, and Iranian military leadership; American B-2 bombers joined on June 22, hitting the same nuclear sites directly. A ceasefire held — barely — until February 28, 2026, when Israel and the United States launched a far larger campaign, opening with a strike that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei himself. His son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was installed as successor within weeks, backed by the Revolutionary Guard.
What followed reads less like the "maximum pressure" campaign of Trump's first term and more like open warfare with intermittent pauses. A ceasefire took hold on April 8, 2026, only to fray repeatedly over Iranian threats to the Strait of Hormuz — the passage for roughly a fifth of the world's oil. Presidents Trump and Masoud Pezeshkian signed the Islamabad Memorandum on June 17 at the Palace of Versailles, promising a 60-day path to a permanent deal. It lasted three weeks. On July 8, Trump declared the ceasefire "over" after Iran allegedly struck commercial vessels near Hormuz and the U.S. answered with fresh strikes, including near the Bushehr nuclear plant.
"There's something wrong with them. They're cuckoo. As far as I'm concerned, it's over.
— President Trump, NATO summit, Ankara, July 8, 2026Iran's economy has absorbed the cost of two wars in thirteen months: annual inflation above 50 percent, IMF projections north of 70 percent for the year, and estimated war damage approaching $270 billion against a projected GDP of roughly $300 billion. That is not a country being pressured into a deal so much as a country being pushed toward collapse or radical improvisation — and neither outcome is obviously stabilizing for a region already exhausted by conflict.
Gaza After the Ceasefire: Neither War Nor Peace
The October 10, 2025 ceasefire between Israel and Hamas did what the earlier version of this piece could only anticipate: it ended the acute phase of a war that had by then killed more than 70,000 Palestinians. It has not delivered the peace its architects promised. Six months in, Israel still controls an estimated 53 to 55 percent of Gaza behind a so-called Yellow Line, Hamas retains its weapons across the rest, and Gaza's Government Media Office has documented more than 2,000 ceasefire violations. Roughly 77 percent of Gaza's population still faces acute food insecurity, even as aid diversion — once as high as 80 percent — has dropped to under 1 percent.
What actually changed in Gaza since October 2025 — at a glance:
| Indicator | Status as of mid-2026 |
|---|---|
| Living Israeli hostages | All released within three days of the ceasefire |
| Territory under Israeli control | Roughly 53–55%, behind the "Yellow Line" |
| Board of Peace pledges | ~$17 billion pledged, disbursement tied to Hamas disarmament |
| Rafah crossing | Reopened Feb. 2, 2026 for people only, not goods |
An international Board of Peace, chaired with U.S. involvement, has pledged roughly $17 billion for reconstruction — $10 billion from Washington and $7 billion from Gulf states including Saudi Arabia and the UAE. But Riyadh has made clear that money will not move until Hamas hands over its heavy weapons and Israel completes a real withdrawal, neither of which has happened. It is a peace plan running almost entirely on the first of its twenty points.
The Abraham Accords: Frozen, Not Expanding
Saudi normalization with Israel — the prize this administration wanted most — has moved backward, not forward. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman accused Israel of "collective genocide" in Gaza in November 2025, an accusation unthinkable from Riyadh before the war. Saudi op-eds have since described the UAE, Israel's Gulf partner, as a "Zionist Trojan horse," and the Anti-Defamation League flagged a rise in antisemitic rhetoric inside the kingdom in January 2026. The one accession Washington did manage to announce — Kazakhstan, in November 2025 — was largely symbolic, since Astana already maintained full diplomatic ties with Israel.
Riyadh's position, restated by its foreign minister as recently as mid-2025 and unchanged since, ties any normalization to a genuine Gaza ceasefire followed by a credible path to Palestinian statehood. Israel's government, meanwhile, continues settlement activity in the West Bank that the Palestinian Authority calls de facto annexation. Both conditions — Saudi statehood demands and Israeli annexation moves — are moving in opposite directions, which is why analysts increasingly describe Saudi-Israeli normalization as "off the table" for now rather than delayed.
The Arab World's Balancing Act, Sharper Than Before
Everything Gulf governments worried about in 2025 has intensified. Oil prices climbed from roughly $75 to nearly $80 a barrel as the Iran war reignited in July 2026, and U.S. gasoline prices jumped from under $3 to $3.80 a gallon over the same stretch — a domestic political cost Trump himself has repeatedly flagged. Sovereign wealth funds across the Gulf, still holding trillions in American assets, now have to price in the risk of a shooting war next door, not just tariff unpredictability.
Jordan and Egypt remain the two states with the least room to maneuver. Jordan still hosts well over a million Syrian refugees on top of a Palestinian-majority population deeply affected by events in Gaza; Egypt continues to mediate Gaza access through Rafah while managing its own economic strain. Both governments now face a second stressor the original policy landscape didn't include: a Gulf that is jittery about a live war with Iran on its doorstep, not merely a sanctions regime they could route around.
Ask any Gulf strategist off the record what changed most since early 2025, and the answer isn't sanctions policy or tariff threats — it's realizing that "maximum pressure" was never the ceiling; it was the floor. A regime that survived one war can still be forced into a second, and the region has had to relearn, in real time, that Washington's red lines move.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many people has the Trump administration actually deported?
The administration claims over 605,000 deportations since January 2025 plus 1.9 million "self-deportations," but independent researchers at TRAC and the Migration Policy Institute put verified ICE removals closer to 290,000, well short of the promised one-million-per-year pace.
Is the US still at war with Iran in 2026?
A formal ceasefire signed in June 2026 collapsed on July 8 after Iranian strikes on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and US retaliatory strikes near Bushehr. Both sides say talks continue, but Trump has publicly called the truce over, and low-level strikes have resumed.
Is the Gaza ceasefire from October 2025 still holding?
Largely, but incompletely. Major fighting has stopped and hostages were returned, but Israel still controls roughly half of Gaza, Hamas remains armed, and thousands of ceasefire violations have been recorded, leaving reconstruction and full withdrawal stalled.
Will Saudi Arabia join the Abraham Accords?
Not currently. Riyadh has hardened its position since the Gaza war, tying normalization to Palestinian statehood and a completed ceasefire. Saudi officials and state-aligned media have grown notably more critical of Israel since late 2025.
Sources & References
- TRAC Reports, Syracuse University — "Taking Stock: Trump Administration Record on Detention and Removals," 2026
- Migration Policy Institute — "A New Era of Immigration Enforcement Unfolds," 2026
- U.S. Department of Homeland Security — FY2026 enforcement statement, January 2026
- Britannica — "2026 Iran War" and "Twelve-Day War" entries, 2026
- House of Commons Library (UK Parliament) — "Gaza 2026: Board of Peace and National Transitional Committee," 2026
- J Street Policy Center — "Six Months In: Assessing the Status of the Gaza Ceasefire," April 2026
- Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) — "Saudi Arabia's New Approach to Israel and the Normalization Process," February 2026
- CNN, Al Jazeera, and The Washington Times — live coverage of the collapse of the US-Iran ceasefire, July 2026