A chaotic foreign policy on overdrive risks alienating key US partners in the Middle East

President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress on March 4 doubled down on his disruptive and contentious domestic policy agenda, signaling full steam ahead despite a possible US government shutdown looming later this month. Foreign policy, including Trump’s approach to the Middle East, was mostly an afterthought.

Though he said little about it in his speech last night, Trump’s team has continued to shape its Middle East policy, including moves to back the current Israeli government’s approach on Palestinian issues and sending further mixed signals on the important Iran policy front. On these twin issues of Israel-Arab ties and Iran, which are intertwined in ways often not recognized in US policy circles, the Trump administration is taking an irregular approach that may not produce the stability and prosperity it seeks.

As with his domestic policy agenda, the initial signs are that Trump is uninterested in assembling lasting, sustainable coalitions to get big things done in the Middle East. Instead, he seeks to go his own way to disrupt the status quo, increasingly straining traditional US alliances and partnerships to their breaking point. The main challenge with this approach is that it is much easier to tear things down than to build things anew

Trump’s unconventional foreign policy formula continues to take shape

Trump and his team are forging ahead with a new overall foreign policy approach that prioritizes putting pressure on and forcing concessions from long-time partners and rivals alike (at times Trump’s approach seems tougher on partners) or sidestepping them outright — tactics that will inevitably have implications for his developing Middle East strategy. This past week, the main headline was an Oval Office dust-up between Trump, his Vice President JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which led to the United States suspending military aid and intelligence cooperation with Ukraine, even as Russia continued its unprovoked assault on the country.

The second big foreign policy story of this past week was Trump making good on his threats to implement tariffs against top US trading partners Canada, Mexico, and China, among others. This move represents a significant break from long-standing US global economic policy that centered on lowering of trade barriers. As Trump takes America into uncharted territory with a unilateral, economic-nationalist stance, the shift will inevitably strain US ties with key Middle East partners, including those with large economies interconnected with the rest of the world like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel.

Israel-Palestine: Rejecting the consensus in the Middle East on a two-state solution?

The most urgent issue for the Trump administration and the Middle East is the question of the Israel-Hamas cease-fire — if war re-erupts on this front, then Trump’s grand visions for an Israeli-Saudi normalization accord and wider regional integration will become an even more distant possibility than they are today.

At the end of Joe Biden’s presidency, Israel and Hamas agreed to a three-phase cease-fire agreement, with some key work done by the outgoing and incoming US administrations in coordination with Egypt and Qatar. This agreement was designed to build a pathway toward a wider peace, but this past week saw some major stumbling blocks emerge just as the first phase of the deal came to an end. According to the initial roadmap for the deal:

• Phase 1 (which ended at the start of March) detailed Israeli hostage to Palestinian prisoner release ratios, obligated increased entry of humanitarian aid, and called for Israel’s partial military withdrawal from Gaza.
   

• Phase 2 (to end in April) was to be negotiated during the implementation of the first phase. This would see the return of all male hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and a restoration of a sustainable calm in Gaza. It would also see a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip.
   

• Phase 3 (to end in May) would determine post-war governance for Gaza, mandate the return of the bodies of deceased Israeli hostages, open border crossings, and provide a 3-5-year reconstruction plan under the supervision of a number of countries and organizations, including Egypt, Qatar, and the United Nations.

Negotiations on the second phase never gained traction, and the Trump team has not yet produced a breakthrough in this impasse. At the same time, it has engaged in a secret diplomatic channel with Hamas in an effort to win the release of American hostages held in Gaza.

On Sunday, Israel’s government cut off aid to Gaza, a move aimed at pressuring Hamas to accept Israel’s demands, and this could have devastating consequences for millions of Palestinians who rely on this aid. At the same time, Israel continues to conduct major military operations displacing Palestinians in the West Bank, at a time when some signs indicate a possible move toward Israeli annexation of the territory.

The other big story on the Israeli-Palestinian front this past week was a major Arab summit in Cairo, where leading Arab countries reaffirmed their commitment to a two-state solution and presented a detailed plan for the recovery, reconstruction, and development of Gaza. The Trump administration’s first reaction was to reject this plan, saying that it was unrealistic and did not deal sufficiently with the question of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group and political movement that started this latest war and still controls key parts of the Gaza Strip.

US policy seems poised to double down on its support for Israel and the current government’s actions, even as Israel lacks a clearly defined outcome for its policy in the longer term. The Trump administration started out its second term by authorizing the release of previously withheld 2,000-pound bombs on Jan. 25, 2025. It followed these steps with additional measures, including:

• Notifying Congress on Feb. 7 of plans to sell around $7.4 billion in weapons to Israel.
   

• Approving two additional major sales on Feb. 28: $2.04 billion for bombs and penetrator warheads, and $675.7 million for munitions and guidance kits, while waiving Congressional review requirements under the Arms Export Control Act.
   

• Using “emergency authorities” on March 1 to expedite approximately $4 billion in military assistance to Israel.

The sum of these moves indicates a shift in the direction of giving the current government in Israel even more unrestricted support than it had under the Biden administration. Trump may be returning to his first-term approach on the Palestinian front — a form of “maximum pressure” and isolation of the Palestinian Authority and most of the Palestinian people. Perhaps not coincidentally, the method sounds quite similar to how his approach with Ukraine is shaping up.

What’s next on the wider playing field?

How these moves connect to the wider foreign policy issues facing the Middle East remains hazy, particularly in the case of Iran. Earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly agreed to help Trump broker talks with Tehran on its nuclear program. It is anyone’s guess whether this will produce an actual diplomatic pathway to address Iran’s nuclear ambitions — let alone the wider regional security concerns many of America’s partners continue to have about the Islamic Republic.

In the meantime, one aspect of the Trump administration’s developing Middle East approach seems quite certain: The US president is committed to moving in mysterious ways that may not be in alignment with some long-standing American partners in the region. That could come to haunt him. After all, these are the very same countries he will need to build sufficient leverage on Iran if he wants to move beyond the tactics of “maximum pressure” or if he seeks to garner enough support to offer pragmatic plans on the Israeli-Palestinian front.

For now, the Trump administration has constructed an approach that will prevent it from building the widest possible coalition in the Middle East to address both the Israeli-Palestinian issue and Iran. Such an approach will weaken rather than strengthen America’s position in the region and the world.

Brian Katulis is a Senior Fellow at MEI.

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images