The November 5 presidential election is likely to have major implications for US foreign policy, as it pits a centrist and robust internationalist candidate (Vice President Kamala Harris) against an inward-looking, nativist naysayer (former President Donald Trump). For the Middle East, the outcome will have an important impact on how the United States does business in that region.
Where We Left Off in 2021: Palestine-Israel
It is important to recall where US Middle East policy, and the region itself, stood when Trump departed office in January 2021. The Trump administration had brokered the most sweeping deal since the Oslo Accords of the 1990s, involving normalization of diplomatic and economic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain, capped by a signing ceremony at the White House on September 15, 2020. The parties to the so-called Abraham Accords were soon to welcome Morocco and Sudan into the fold. However, this came at the cost of substantial quid pro quos; in Morocco’s case, US recognition of its claim to Western Sahara, and in Sudan’s case, its removal from the Department of State’s list of state sponsors of terrorism. (The UAE received permission to purchase US-made F-35 fighter jets, somewhat to the consternation of Israel; talks remain in limbo.) Whatever the flaws of the agreement, the Abraham Accords succeeded in establishing a new template for regional relations, one that the Biden administration pursued even after the October 7, 2023, terror attack in Israel.
Not surprisingly, the Accords ignored the Palestinians. Mentioned nowhere in the agreement, Palestinians and their hopes for an independent state were to be bypassed on the road to agreements with Israel and authoritarian governments on diplomatic, security, and economic relationships. Trump’s administration did produce a Palestine-Israel peace plan through the agency of Trump’s son-in -aw, Jared Kushner, who noted that he had read “25 books” en route to promulgating the scheme. The plan was formally unveiled in a 2020 press conference at the White House, featuring Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (The Palestinians had earlier rejected the plan, and were crudely disinvited.) The scheme described a truncated Palestinian entity, lacking critical aspects of sovereignty, that would be highly contingent on Israeli political and security conditions as well as military oversight. The plan gained little traction among any of the parties and sank without a trace.
That the Kushner “peace plan” constituted a thinly veiled scheme to ratify Israeli control over the occupied Palestinian territories and their Palestinian population was an impression borne out by other Trump administration actions.
In 2017, Trump formally recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and two years later proclaimed Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria in 1967. The administration closed the US Consulate General in East Jerusalem (which had served as the semi-official liaison to Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority), and established a new US Embassy on a slice of the former “no man’s land” in West Jerusalem, supposedly subject to border demarcations as part of a comprehensive peace settlement. Taken together, these actions put an American seal of approval on Israeli occupation policies, and abandoned decades of US Middle East peace policy that had insisted that the United States would take no action to prejudice the outcome of final status negotiations. Trump remained close to Netanyahu, to the extent that the latter displayed an enormous poster of the two together on a building in Tel Aviv during his re-election campaign in 2019. Trump’s policies toward Israel were a significant draw.
Where We Left Off (2): Iran
Regarding Iran, too, the Trump administration radically shifted American policy. In 2018, Trump formally abandoned the multilateral Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, negotiated by the Obama administration, the P5+1, and the European Union to freeze Iran’s nuclear program. Citing flaws in the agreement, Trump withdrew US support, leading Iran to withdraw from its obligations in the agreement as well.
Trump replaced the erstwhile American Iran policy with one of “maximum pressure,” which even regional allies of the United States had trouble understanding. Trump veered from threatening military action to promising a deal with Tehran to solve all outstanding issues between the two countries, an erratic position that left Iran’s leadership, not to mention key US allies, wondering what US policy actually was.
Trump replaced the erstwhile American Iran policy with one of “maximum pressure,” which even regional allies of the United States had trouble understanding.
The result might have been predicted. Hostilities between the United States and Iran intensified, as did the proxy war between Washington and Tehran, fought out through strikes against US military facilities in the region and counterstrikes by the United States, including the assassination of Iranian Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani in a 2020 drone strike in Baghdad. Meanwhile, Iran accelerated its program to produce more highly enriched uranium, which is essential for the production of nuclear weapons, and is now closer to a nuclear weapons capability than ever.
Where We Left Off (3): Trump vs. The Gulf
As president, Trump defended the transactional nature of his relationship with Gulf states, famously refusing to cut arms sales to Saudi Arabia in the wake of its October 2018 Jamal Khashoggi killing on the grounds that if the United States fails to supply arms to Gulf allies, Russia and China will. On his first visit overseas as president, in 2017, he took himself to Riyadh, and was feted by the regime, to his evident delight, and made common cause with the kingdom’s counterterrorism efforts. (These are, as in many Arab autocracies, often employed as an excuse to crack down on regime opposition.) In a speech to a gathering of Arab and Islamic heads of state, Trump made clear what he was about: no more pressure on human rights.
When it came to Gulf defense, Trump proved unpredictable.
A September 2019 attack on Saudi oil facilities, claimed by Yemen’s Houthi movement but likely launched by Iran, was met by general indifference from Trump, who announced he was “locked and loaded” for a kinetic response but later claimed he did not want war. No US military action was taken, to Riyadh’s consternation. Other Gulf governments have privately questioned Trump’s commitment to their defense, and while they seem to prefer a Trump electoral victory this year, it very much remains to be seen how this would result in a net benefit.
The Second Coming
A second Trump administration would be little different in direction, but more likely worse in both intent and execution. Without the guardrails of respected national security officials to populate the administration, many of whom were burned by the first Trump term, a new Trump team would likely be staffed by second-raters and hacks primarily loyal to the president and his political needs. Trump’s “gut”—his unchecked instincts—would set both the tone and the policy of a new administration.
Palestine-Israel
Trump would flash a green light to Israel to solve its conflicts in any way it sees fit. He has called for Netanyahu to finish up the Gaza war quickly, and in a private conversation with the prime minister in July allegedly insisted that this be done before his inauguration. This has more to do with campaign optics than any genuine concern for the human costs of the war, and most likely translates to permission to inflict maximum damage as it renders Gaza’s inhabitants incapable of anything but scrabbling for their survival needs.
Trump would encourage other Arab states to step up with financial and humanitarian aid, but would resist any deeper US involvement in the territory’s governance or economic future, especially if it necessitated building up a weakened Palestinian Authority to assume a governance function there, at a cost to American diplomatic and financial capital. Trump has little to no interest in Palestinian governance per se. Proposals floated within the Israeli political system to re-occupy Gaza or even to establish new settlements there could find a sympathetic ear in the Oval Office.
The Palestinians would once again be left to their own devices.
It is unlikely that a new Trump administration would try to revive the Kushner peace plan, unless pressured by Arab allies, for their own reasons, to make at least a token effort to push a final status settlement. While Trump might go along with this, he and his administration would almost certainly refuse to put forth the intensive diplomatic effort required to bring it about. The Palestinians would once again be left to their own devices: a severely weakened Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, stripped of legitimacy and funding, would struggle to pay its electricity bills, let alone to establish a credible governing alternative for Gaza and the West Bank.
Iran: Where To Next?
A Trump administration policy toward Iran is more difficult to parse. Here again, Trump would likely find himself beguiled by Netanyahu and other regional leaders who might advocate for an aggressive US approach to Iran and its nuclear program, including the possibility of military action. They might argue that the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, as well as Israel’s strikes on Iran itself, have dealt a serious setback to the Iranian regime and created an opportunity for coercive diplomacy.
This is true enough, but whether Trump would be wholly amenable to such an argument is open to question. In his first term, he wavered on whether to apply the carrot or the stick, or both at once, to the Iranian regime. Furthermore, the election this past summer of a new Iranian president who professes to want engagement with the West may give him pause. On the campaign trail, Trump has said he is still open to a sweeping deal with Iran, despite charges that Iranian agents have attempted to hack his campaign in an effort to influence the election. Given the erratic impulses that governed the first Trump administration’s policy toward Iran, warring motivations may also govern a second. Public hostility toward the Iranian regime, but private willingness to make a deal, seem likely to characterize another Trump term. This promises to create tension and contradiction in America’s Iran policy going forward.
The Gulf: What Have You Done for Me Lately?
None of this is likely to provide comfort to the Gulf Arab states, who would probably welcome a second Trump administration with its warm embrace of authoritarianism. But Trump’s mercurial nature might dampen their enthusiasm.
Trump could be expected to continue a highly transactional approach to the Gulf states, emphasizing arms sales, business deals, and security and counterterrorism cooperation, while largely ignoring more nuanced or values-based political and diplomatic engagement. Even gentle admonishment on human rights and political freedoms would be out, but so too would any firm commitment to backing Gulf states in the event of a confrontation with Iran.
Trump could be expected to continue a highly transactional approach to the Arab Gulf states.
The burden on these countries, in particular Saudi Arabia and the UAE, would be to ensure Trump makes firm commitments to their defense in case of Iranian aggression or internal unrest, and sticks to them. This will require avid attention to the administration’s emphasis on economic relations and arms sales, as well as a certain amount of effusive flattery.
The Saudis in particular excelled at this, as they demonstrated during Trump’s visit to the kingdom in 2017, when Saudi rulers showered Trump with attention and signed what Trump touted as a $110 billion arms deal. (Whether it actually represented more than a photo op was in question.) In addition, the kingdom has contributed significantly to Trumps’ broader family interests, for instance by investing $2 billion on very favorable terms in a fund helmed by Kushner.
However, this is an inherently unstable basis for a lasting security relationship. Saudi Arabia and neighboring Gulf states will remain on tenterhooks for the duration of a Trump administration, perpetually wondering whether the flattery and business deals are enough.
Twilight of the Pax Americana
A second Trump administration would most likely add an element of uncertainty to formerly stable relationships, further unhinge decades of US policy on the Palestine-Israel conflict, and increase the chances of a US-Iran military confrontation. The mercurial nature of a disorganized Trump Middle East policy would create new openings for Russia and China, which would seek advantage in any policy vacuum created by the United States; the Gulf countries and Egypt might welcome this alternative to US hegemony. While the so-called Pax Americana in the Middle East—the system of military and diplomatic arrangements that has loosely governed regional security relations for roughly 70 years—may be fading, it is still present, for now. But it seems unlikely it will survive Trump 2.0 in anything like its current form.
The views expressed in this publication are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab Center Washington DC, its staff, or its Board of Directors.
Featured image credit: Flickr/White House
