Donald Trump’s second term as President of the United States is approaching. There are many questions about what his foreign policy choices will be on key issues, but negotiators from Qatar, Egypt and the United States have been trying to scuttle an agreement between Israel and Hamas for more than a year. Regarding the Middle East, he has made several notable statements. .
President Trump warned last week that if Hamas doesn’t release the Israeli hostages by Inauguration Day, “all hell will break loose and it won’t be good for anyone.” He made these remarks to Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, who claimed he was “on the brink” of a deal.
Characteristically, President Trump did not clarify to reporters the meaning of this phrase, which he used at least five times, considering that Washington is already providing significant support to Israel’s subversive activities in Gaza. is.
What kind of Middle East did Trump 1.0 face, what did he do, how did he do it, and how has the region changed today?
What kind of Middle East did Trump 1.0 face?
The Middle East that Mr. Trump inherited from President Barack Obama was beset by conflicts along traditional fault lines — Syria and Iraq still battling Islamic State with support from the United States, Iran, and Russia. Meanwhile, the Gulf region sat on a political tectonic plate and was ready to launch a counterattack at any time. Shift hard.
In Riyadh, Mohammed bin Salman took comprehensive control heading into 2017. With his anti-Iranian rhetoric (corresponding to Ali Khamenei’s comments that repeatedly insult Saudi Arabia’s Muslim credentials), he has found a more than willing partner in Saudi Arabia. President Trump’s White House. Unsurprisingly, with Tehran and Riyadh severing diplomatic relations following Iran’s execution of a prominent Shiite cleric in 2016, MBS has vocally opposed Iran’s nuclearization and encouraged further economic pressure on Tehran. I asked for In 2017, MBS famously said, “There is no room for dialogue with Iran.” At the same time, then-Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir and other officials said, “Iran is weakening Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq.” “We are starting,” he claimed.
Another Arab powerhouse, Abu Dhabi, also agreed to this approach. Its ruler, Mohammed bin Zayed, had made personal efforts to improve MBS’s image in the Trump White House. The UAE and Saudi Arabia had already begun to quietly reconcile with Israel over the shared security threat posed by Tehran. The two countries, along with Egypt and Bahrain, also imposed an unprecedented blockade on Qatar starting in 2017. While the issue had long been simmering due to the kingdom’s individualistic tendencies under al-Thani, one of the more prominent public reasons was Qatar’s (relatively) warm relationship with Iran. And Doha is said to be supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.
What were his major policy achievements?
With the board set up that way, President Trump’s anti-Iran stance and his team’s contacts and familiarity with MBS and MBZ fit the priorities of Arab countries as well as Israel.
President Trump withdrew U.S. commitments in Syria, including support for the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces, and continued U.S. attacks on key targets. But his main focus was Tehran. President Trump designated Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization, scrapped the nuclear deal blessed by President Obama, and strengthened the existing sanctions regime against Iran through a policy of “maximum pressure.”
Naturally, this collaboration set the stage for his “deal of the century” between Israel and the major Arab states.
President Trump recognized the illegally occupied Syrian Golan Heights as part of Israel (Syria was still suspended from the Arab League). He recognized undivided Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The United Nations Security Council and most countries around the world consider Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem and its annexation of the entire city in 1980 to be illegal. He reinforced this by moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
It was near the end of his term that President Trump announced his last stand: the Abraham Accords of September 2020, which normalized relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan.
Saudi Arabia, as custodian of Islam’s holiest site, was on alert. Despite President Trump’s 2020 “Peace and Prosperity” plan guaranteeing a Palestinian state (with significantly limited sovereignty), implementation of the Abraham Accords led to President Trump’s proposed new two-state solution. Israel made few concessions to the proposal.
What is he facing now?
Donald Trump likes deals and contracts. A transactional approach that puts aside political and bureaucratic baggage and focuses on the terms of an agreement, regardless of who the parties to the conflict are. “(Witkoff) is a great dealmaker. What we need here is a dealmaker,” President Trump declared last week.
Some changes await him.
Significant changes in the Middle East since 2020 are clear to the world. Most notable are Israel’s war in Gaza, the reorganization of the Iranian axis of resistance with the fall of Bashar al-Assad, and the Arab leadership’s anxiety over the critical situation. Weakening Hezbollah and Hamas.
Although the Abraham Accords still stand, the UAE is currently the only Arab country to host an Israeli ambassador, and commercial relations between Israel and the UAE are currently less than they were before October 7, 2023. It’s not very publicly celebrated.
In stark contrast to the atmosphere in January 2016, when President Trump first took office, in November 2023, MBS claimed that “the relationship between Iran and Saudi Arabia is at a historic turning point.” That’s exactly what they did, as a joint Arab League-OIC summit in Riyadh in the same month passed a resolution with far from typical language. He called Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip a genocide, called for an end to Israeli aggression, and unequivocally expressed support for Iran and the sovereignty of Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. All of these countries were mentioned by Al-Jubeir in 2017.
MBS himself warned Israel against attacking Iran and supported the OIC’s classification of Israel’s actions as genocide. There was no such mention in the first Riyadh Summit resolution in November 2023, one year ago. The Arab position before Trump’s victory was one of distancing itself from any escalation originating from Israel or Iran and prioritizing deepening ties with Iran to reduce the threat of proxy attacks on Arab energy facilities. easily understood. Whether it will intensify after President Trump’s victory (such as Riyadh and Tehran further strengthening their defense contacts) is not easy to understand.
It remains to be seen what impact this will have on U.S.-Saudi negotiations over Riyadh’s security in the event of normalization with Israel or if President Trump potentially returns to maximum pressure on Iran. I don’t know.
President Trump’s warning that hell is going to break loose as far as Israel is concerned is also not easily explained. President Trump has traditionally disliked U.S. combat operations overseas, and his demands for NATO countries reflect his desire for U.S. allies to take more responsibility for their defense.
US aid represents about 15% of Israel’s defense budget. What this will mean for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s continued “total war” is unclear, and Israel experts such as Sharon Lipner have already called Israel’s expectations for unconditional support from President Trump “delusional.” I’m here. But similar calls were made by others even before President Trump’s first term.
Regardless of his ultimate policy choices, and despite the continuation of the institutions and mechanisms he helped put in place, Trump now faces a very different Middle East than it did in 2016.
Bashir Ali Abbas is a Research Fellow at the Strategic Defense Research Council in New Delhi.
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