• What would a Trump victory mean for the Middle East?
• If re-elected, a similar Middle East policy to Donald Trump’s first presidency is likely to derail any prospect of long-term peace in the region.
To say that this January has been a good month for Donald Trump would a tremendous understatement. Republican Presidential hopeful and ex-President Donald Trump has cruised his way to victory in both the Iowa and the New Hampshire Presidential Caucuses.
Iowa and New Hampshire are traditionally the first two states to hold presidential caucuses to decide who will win the nomination to challenge the sitting American President. In Iowa Donald Trump won the vote by 51%, miles ahead of the 21.2% given to Ron De Santis, the incumbent Governor of Florida once tipped by conservative pundits to be the next president.
But Mr DeSantis’s campaign ran aground soon after it began, and he has forfeited from the race to be the Republican nominee alongside his populist rival Vivek Ramaswamy. The only other challenger remaining in the arena is Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina.
While Ms. Haley has vowed to keep fighting, the 43.2% she secured in the New Hampshire caucus following Iowa was not enough to edge Mr Trump’s 54.3%. Ms Haley is at the end of her tether; Donald Trump is set to secure the Republican nomination. No candidate who has won both the Iowa and New Hampshire caucuses has failed to win their party’s nomination; a fact Mr Trump was quick to remind his social media followers soon after his victory.
Although the elections aren’t till November this year, a Trump victory is almost certain. American voters are fed up with President Biden for his handling of the economy, the border, and more recently he has earnt the ire of large numbers of Democrat supporters (particularly younger voters) for his administration’s response to the war in Gaza.
Notwithstanding all this is the fact that approximately two-thirds of Americans believe that President Biden is unfit to be the commander in chief due to concerns over his mental fitness.
If the 2024 elections are a rematch between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, Donald Trump at this stage will undoubtably become President again. If this happens, how will the Trump administration tune its Middle East policy?
Firstly, the Trump administration is again likely to cozy up to Saudi Arabia. Last year in September Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman suggested that the $2+ billion investment deal Jared Kushner (Mr. Trump’s son in law) and his private equity fund invested in Saudi Arabia wouldn’t change with a 2nd theoretical Trump win.
It would again be more likely than not that the U.S. would ramp up arms deals with Saudi Arabia too. In 2017, the Trump administration signed a landmark arms deal with Saudi Arabia to counterbalance Iran’s influence in the Middle East. The terms of the deal stipulated $110 billion in immediate funding and $350 billion in funding over 10 years.
All this military funding helped Saudi Arabia intensify its conflict with Iran backed Houthi rebels in Yemen and in turn makes the U.S. partner to various war crimes committed by Saudi military forces using American weapons.
In effect, since it began in 2014 the Yemeni Civil War has led to the deaths of over 377,000- a figure which includes over 85,000 children dead from starvation, a cholera epidemic which has infected 2.5 million and killed over 4,000, and over 4 million displaced in one of the world’s newest failed states.
Yet without foreign assistance from the Obama and Trump administrations, it would have practically been an impossibility for the Saudis to wage war in Yemen on such a scale and further denigrate its own and America’s relations with Iran.
Secondly, Mr. Trump would again inflame tensions with Iran as he did in his last foray as president. Again, a Trump administration will likely pursue a “maximum pressure” situation with Iran and ramp up economic sanctions on the country in a bid counter to curb Iranian nuclear activity.
During his first presidency Mr. Trump oversaw direct U.S. military invention in Iran when American forces assassinated Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani on the 3rd of January 2020. Ostensibly, U.S. intelligence reports have evidence of Major General Soleimani conspiring to launch attacks against American diplomats.
Due to their classified nature, these reports have never been released (and never will be for that matter) and the assassination of Mr. Soleimani raises many questions about the legality of American military action under international law and whether it was indeed a proportional response in the first instance.
But what would the return of President Trump mean for Israel and Palestine?
While prior to October the 7th the Biden administration has attempted to broker peace by supporting a Saudi Arabia peace deal with Israel, in the past the Trump administration took a more hands on approach.
The Trump peace plan unveiled in early 2020 was a highly ambitious albeit controversial vision for peace between Israel and Palestine. Ultimately it was far too unrealistic with its prescriptions for Jerusalem as Israel’s capital as well as allowing Israel to annex its illegal settlements in the West Bank. Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority famously referred to the plan as “swiss cheese”.
Had the Israel-Gaza war never happened Mr. Trump (like his predecessors) would have probably tried to get the best of both worlds in his Israel-Palestine policy; on one hand continue giving foreign aid to Israel so the U.S. has a buddy in the region at whilst maintaining the status quo for Palestinians.
But in truth it is difficult to say how Trump 2.0 will go about negotiations with Israel and Palestine. Mr. Trump may inherit the detritus of the Israel-Gaza war, or he may not. But either way the playing field has shifted from his first term and the aftermath of the current Israel-Gaza war will inevitability create a critical juncture for the future of the region.
At present, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is unwilling to tone down his invasion of Gaza and is adamant that he will pay no mind to American suggestions. Considering the situation, it would be sensible for the U.S. to reconsider withdrawing its foreign aid from Israel given that Israeli strategic interests are starting to ramp up their divergence from American ones.
However, the presence of the “Israel Lobby” (to borrow a phrase from Mearsheimer and Walt) in the American political system means that such a decoupling is political suicide. So far, the future of Palestine remains amorphous.
Specifically, the Trump administration’s actions in Iran as well as its arms deals with Saudi Arabia (both of which were heavily encouraged by Mr. Trump’s former neocon advisors John Bolton and Mike Pompeo) have convinced Iran it needs to intensify its presence in the region. This has translated to Iran bolstering its support for its allies, namely the Houthis and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
In essence, this has fostered more anti-Americanism and made the Middle East more volatile and less stable. With formidable non state actors firmly by Iran’s side, proxy wars, terrorism, and even war between the US and Iran is much more likely.
Pursuing a more hardline stance on Middle Eastern policy than the one he pursued prior, will be bad for Trump, bad for America, and bad for the world.
