President-elect Trump faces difficult challenges in the Middle East.
More than 13 months after Hamas’ October 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel and Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon, there is still no end in sight to the violence. The Middle East remains on the brink of a full-scale regional war, with the United States potentially becoming directly involved. The US government’s decision to place itself at the center of these conflicts is symptomatic of a broader self-defeating US policy in the Middle East.
To resolve this, Mr. Trump should center U.S. Middle East policy on two main goals: disentanglement and deprioritization.
The most pressing issues in the Middle East are America’s deep involvement in Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon, and the continued escalation between Israel and Iran.
From the first days of the war in Gaza and now Lebanon, it was clear that Israel was in the driver’s seat along with the United States. Washington’s regional strategy is essentially reactive, continuing to provide arms, military aid, and diplomatic cover to enable Israel to continue the war, while responding to developments with lukewarm warnings and empty threats. There were many things to deal with.
Israel’s wars, whether in Gaza or Lebanon, lack distinct and achievable political objectives.
Israel’s stated goals in the Gaza Strip are the complete elimination of Hamas and the return of hostages taken in the October 7 Hamas attack, but neither has been achieved. Israeli defense officials view these two goals as mutually exclusive, and American officials believe that Israel has achieved all it can militarily in Gaza.
While Hamas has certainly suffered and deteriorated, the organization is far from eradicated and has resorted to guerrilla tactics against Israeli forces, frequently appearing in areas that Israel claims to have previously cleared and recruiting volunteers. Maintains the ability to recruit. Israel demands a permanent military presence in the enclave, which Hamas rejects as a precondition for a ceasefire and hostage agreement.
Israel can degrade Hamas and kill its leaders, but without a path to a new political balance, the violence will continue.
Israeli military operations are expanding in Lebanon, and President Biden’s special assistant on the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, Amos Hochstein, recently claimed that the situation has “escalated out of control.”
Israel’s stated goals in Lebanon are to destroy Hezbollah’s military infrastructure in the south of the country and to return the approximately 60,000 Israeli citizens evacuated from northern Israel. However, as in Gaza, Israel appears to be planning a long-term military presence in Lebanon. Hezbollah has ruled out any possibility of negotiations as long as fighting with Israel continues, and despite the group experiencing major setbacks, it continues to put up stiff resistance against Israeli forces.
At stake in both of these wars are ongoing military exchanges between Israel and Iran. Washington has placed itself at the center of this escalation cycle.
Washington has stood side by side with Prime Minister Netanyahu as Israel risks direct confrontation with Iran, if not overtly provoking it. As part of these retaliations, the US military defended Israel twice. U.S. troops stationed in Iraq, Syria, and other countries have been attacked more than 170 times by Iranian-backed groups since October 2023, citing Israel’s involvement in the war.
Before Israel attacked Iran in October, the U.S. government deployed the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system with 100 U.S. troops and operated the platform inside Israel, where it remains today. are. Anticipating a new Iranian reaction, the United States is again sending additional military equipment and troops to the Middle East, warning Iran that it will not be able to restrain Israel if Iran attacks in response. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu believes his policies will “change the strategic reality of the Middle East” and has vowed to push through to “complete victory.”
The United States’ willingness to accept Israel’s war comes with real costs in terms of American interests and regional stability. President-elect Trump should end Washington’s carte blanche support for Prime Minister Netanyahu’s policies, withdraw from Israel policy, and begin disengaging from these conflicts immediately.
Another central element of US policy in the region is America’s enduring enthusiasm for Arab dictators. The United States’ deep-seated relationships with countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates are rooted in the “myth of authoritarian stability” that has permeated American Middle East policy for decades.
This view holds that regional dictators are the best guarantors of US strategic interests in the Middle East and the only viable source of stability in the region. This account takes things backwards. Far from being a solution to the region’s problems, these actors are exacerbating the biggest divides plaguing the Middle East between long-standing authoritarian regimes and the peoples they rule.
The disconnect between rulers and ruled is at the heart of an inherently unstable regional order sustained only by exclusion, violent repression, and security from the United States. By subsidizing this order, the United States inhibited liberalization while allowing its partners in the Middle East to act with impunity at home and abroad.
Even before the October 7 attacks, the Biden administration had been involved in a multifaceted “mega-deal” in which Saudi Arabia would normalize relations with Israel as an extension of the so-called Abraham Accords. In exchange for normalizing relations with Israel, Saudi dictator Mohammed bin Salman will receive formal security benefits from the United States and help develop a civilian nuclear program.
It’s a terrible idea, even though both major political parties in Washington portray the deal as a panacea for a variety of problems plaguing the region. Giving Saudi Arabia formal security would legally obligate the United States to protect Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s most authoritarian states and a major source of instability across the Middle East. Such an agreement would also provide a framework for other regional actors to pressure the U.S. government for similar concessions. This is a trap recipe.
This is why America’s attempts to politically manipulate the Middle East have been futile. They have repeatedly backfired, resulting in significant political, human, and economic costs while achieving virtually no results.
The Middle East often plays an outsized role in U.S. foreign policy at the expense of the far more pressing policy issues facing the United States. The region is no longer a core center of U.S. strategic interests. The interests that the United States maintains in the region, such as the free flow of oil, countering terrorist threats to the homeland, and preventing the emergence of a regional hegemon, are easily achievable and could be expected to improve the current (or even greater) ) level is not guaranteed. Regarding US involvement.
America’s continued and growing entanglements in the Middle East are pushing the United States into overextension, as the United States continues to support Ukraine against Russian aggression and work waist-high to deter China in the Indo-Pacific. There is a risk of Worse, with the national debt approaching $36 trillion and the United States running a budget deficit of more than $1.5 trillion, U.S. foreign policy risks pushing the country into economic crisis. Maintaining the current level of US involvement in the Middle East is unsustainable.
President-elect Trump has an opportunity to change all of this by dissociating himself from regional conflicts, deprioritizing the Middle East, and fundamentally changing course. Otherwise, the United States will continue to face problems of its own making.
