Trump has everyone running in circles when it comes to his Middle East policy

 

By James M. Dorsey

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US President Donald J. Trump has foreign governments, domestic constituencies, journalists, and pundits running in circles as they attempt to identify his Middle East policy.

The confusion is evident in contradictory responses to Mr. Trump’s election by some of his pro-Israel supporters and early polling in the Middle East.

In a twist of irony, pro-Israel conservatives are campaigning against some of Mr. Trump’s Middle East-related appointees, despite a line-up of hardline Israel supporting Cabinet-level and ambassadorial nominations.

At the same time, a recent opinion poll in Turkey, the first in a Muslim-majority Middle Eastern country, expressed cautious optimism about Mr. Trump’s second term in office.

Messrs. Colby and DiMino have expressed opposition to potential US or Israeli strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.

In addition, Mr. DiMino has questioned whether the United States has a vital interest or faces an existential threat in the Middle East, called for a reduced US military presence in the region, and criticised Israeli attacks on Iranian targets, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s goal of destroying Hamas, and US strikes against Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

“Someone who states that the US has no interests in the Middle East or downplays the Iranian threat shouldn’t be running Middle East policy at the Pentagon,” said a representative of an influential pro-Israel group.

The two men’s views contrast starkly with Mr. Hegseth’s declaration during his confirmation hearing that he “support(s) Israel destroying and killing every last member of Hamas,”  Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s staunch backing of Israel in the Gaza war, Ambassador to Israel to be confirmed Mike Huckabee’s denial of the existence of Palestinians, and United Nations ambassador Elise Stefanik’s assertion that Israel has a Biblical right to the West Bank.

Critics may take heart from the second-tier appointments of Messrs. Colby and DiMino in the face of Mr. Trump’s top-tier pro-Israel line-up.

It’s easy to write off Mr. Trump’s success in forcing a Gaza ceasefire as a one-off twisting of Mr. Netanyahu’s arm so that the president could display his administration’s power and negotiating skills on Inauguration Day.

Mr. Trump and his associate’s immediate follow-up was contradictory at best. Mr. Trump declared he was not confident that the ceasefire’s three phases would be implemented despite his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, planning a visit to Gaza to ensure that Israel and Hamas adhere to the agreement, and a statement by Mike Waltz, the president’s national security advisor, that Mr. Trump was committed to full implementation.

Yet, at the same time, Mr. Trump described Gaza, reduced to a pile of rubble by Israel’s 15-month-long sledgehammer assault, in terms like his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s assessment that “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable” and an Israeli real estate company that advertised the pre-sale of Gazan lots.

Credit: Firstpost

Describing Gaza as “a massive demolition site,” Mr. Trump said this week. “It's gotta be rebuilt in a different way. Gaza's interesting. It's a phenomenal location. On the sea, the best weather. Everything's good. Some beautiful things can be done with it. It's very interesting.”

Similarly, Mr. Trump lifted sanctions on 33 West Bank settler vigilantes and entities in one of his first executive orders. Mr. Trump’s predecessor, President Joe Biden, imposed the sanctions.

The lifting came hours after masked settler vigilantes stormed Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank, setting cars and property ablaze.

Mr. Trump lifted the settler sanctions in the same breath as he granted amnesty to some 1,500 insurgents who stormed the US Capital on January 6, 2021, to prevent the certification of Mr. Biden’s election.

Israel’s state attorney dismissed hours before the lifting an investigation against five men suspected of killing a bound Palestinian they held captive in the aftermath of the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, despite credible evidence and a Tel Aviv Magistrate Court’s arrest warrant against three of the suspects.

Like his remarks about Gaza, Mr. Trump’s other pronouncements on the Middle East since returning to office are part talk of a real estate developer and part the reflection of a businessman who sees opportunity in everything with little regard for the political implications and risks.

Credit: BBC

Mr. Trump, who broke tradition in 2017 when he visited Saudi Arabia rather than the United States' European allies on his first overseas trip as president, said he would do it again if he walked away from the kingdom with deals with US companies worth hundreds of billion dollars.

"I did it with Saudi Arabia last time because they agreed to buy US$450 billion worth of our product. I said I'll do it, but you have to buy American product, and they agreed to do that… If Saudi Arabia wanted to buy another 450 or 500… I think I probably would go there,” Mr. Trump said.

Business is not the only topic on Mr. Trump's Saudi agenda. However, this time around, Saudi Arabia is likely to attach a price tag of its own.

The business deals are the low-hanging fruit of a three-pronged proposition that is equally high on Mr. Trump’s agenda, involving Saudi recognition of Israel, a US-Saudi defence treaty, and US support for the kingdom’s nuclear program.

Saudi Arabia insists in the wake of the Gaza war that the proposition will only have legs if Israel agrees to a credible and irreversible path to the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

The Saudi insistence flies in the face of the pro-Israel hardliners in his administration, and the implications for the Palestinians of Mr. Trump’s real estate developer's vision of Gaza seem to ignore the immediate needs and aspirations of the Strip's devastated population.

Binyamin Netanyahu and Steve Witkoff. Credit: Prime Minister’s Office

This also contrasts with the assessment of Mr. Trump's Middle East envoy, Mr. Witkoff, who believes that full implementation of the Gaza ceasefire will suffice.

Saudi-Israeli normalisation “would be a wonderful thing but the condition precedent for that was always going to be a ceasefire," Mr. Witkoff told Israel’s Channel 12.

The fact that Trump has no guarantee that he will be able to square the circle increases the risks involved in a Trump visit to Saudi Arabia.

Israeli officials suggested they were not about to accommodate the president.

Speaking in parliament this week, Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer stressed that Israel had not committed to the establishment of a Palestinian state in exchange for diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia.

In Davos, President Issac Herzog tried to put the shoe on the Saudi foot by declaring that nomalising ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel was key to ending the Gaza war.

“Israelis lost trust in the peace process because they could see that terror is glorified by our neighbours… I want to hear my neighbors say how much they object, regret, condemn and do not accept in any way the terrible tragedy of the terror attack of Oct. 7,” Mr. Herzog said, referring to Hamas’ 2023 attack that killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and sparked the Gaza war.

Saudi Arabia’s top officials have condemned Israel’s war conduct but left denunciation of the attack to figures like Mohammed al-Issa, the kingdom’s point man for inter-faith dialogue, and former intelligence chief and ambassador to the United States and Britain, Turki al-Feisal, who is believed to reflect official thinking often.

Mr. Al-Feisal laced his condemnation of Hamas two weeks after the attack with criticism of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians.

Taking issue with descriptions of the October 7 attack as ‘unprovoked, Mr. Al-Feisal asked two weeks after the assault, "What more provocation is required…than what Israel has done to the Palestinian people for three-quarters of a century?” He added that "all militarily occupied people have a right to resist occupation."

In the final analysis, Mr. Trump’s ability and willingness to twist Mr. Netanyahu’s arm much more than he did in the walkup to the Gaza ceasefire is what will likely make the difference.

“While neither Binyamin Netanyahu nor his coalition partners are likely to share Trump’s vision of a Palestinian state, Netanyahu’s ability to resist Trump’s will -- unlike his dealings with Biden on this issue – will be substantially reduced,” said Eytan Gilboa, an expert on US-Israel relations.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.