The opening act of US President Donald Trump’s second administration had very little to do with Middle East policy issues.
In its first days, Trump issued a bevy of executive orders focused on priorities like immigration, social policy shifts, and changes in how the US government operates, placing a higher premium on fealty to his agenda.
The most dramatic move Trump made was issuing pardons for more than 1,500 convicted criminals who attacked the US Congress four years ago in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election that Trump lost. This move sent a signal to the world about the direction in which America is heading on issues like the commitment to the rule of law and the integrity of its own political system, as well as support for law enforcement authorities.
It is too soon to predict what approach Trump might take toward US policy on the Middle East or even how much he will prioritize the region relative to the other issues on his second term agenda. His administration has sent some mixed and inconsistent signals on staffing and policy moves that don’t provide enough of a clear overall sense of the big picture on the Middle East but do offer some preview of what might be to come on three key fronts.
1. Arab-Israel affairs: The early math doesn’t add up. Trump signaled that this issue is a priority by naming key figures on the Middle East team early into the transition after his re-election, including Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, his nominee for US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, and senior advisor for Arab and Middle Eastern affairs Massad Boulos, among other officials.
Witkoff worked closely with the Biden administration in its closing days to seal the current cease-fire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas, one that will require additional negotiations to fully implement and realize its potential. Witkoff indicated this week that he will play an active, hands-on role, saying that he would travel to Israel and Gaza as part of an inspection team to make sure things go according to plan. Keeping this deal alive and moving from its first phase into the next two phases will be no small task — Trump himself signaled some pessimism on Monday while signing executive orders and answering reporters’ questions in the Oval Office, saying “It’s not our war. It is their war. I am not confident.”
One of the orders that Trump signed rescinded US sanctions on extremist Israeli settler groups accused of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, a modest measure Biden put into effect that did not appear to have much of an impact. In fact, these settler groups continued to carry out attacks against Palestinians this week, risking an escalation in the West Bank, where Israeli and Palestinian Authority forces launched new operations, all during the tenuous calm in Gaza.
In the bigger picture, Trump’s aspirations for a wider Saudi-Israel normalization deal and a possible Nobel Peace Prize seem difficult to achieve without creating a credible pathway to a two-state solution, something that Huckabee has deemed unlikely. A return to violence, Israel’s annexation of the West Bank, and no clear pathway to a two-state solution all will make it less likely that Saudi Arabia and other Arab states would move forward with normalizing ties with Israel.
2. Iran and its Axis of Resistance: Mixed signals on personnel and policy direction. At this early stage of the presidential transition, the dust hasn’t settled in terms of who will be on Trump’s team and what signals he intends to send. At the cabinet level, Trump is installing a group of loyalists who will implement his instincts, seeking to avoid the challenges and differences of views he faced from his first secretaries of defense and state in his first term, Jim Mattis and Rex Tillerson. At the staff level, Trump this week “fired” Brian Hook, who served as the Iran envoy in his first term and had a position on the board of the Wilson Center, a federally funded think tank in Washington, DC.
An important signal in Trump’s first week came with the possible news that Witkoff might also be serving as the policy lead on Iran in addition to the work he has done on the Gaza cease-fire implementation. If true, this makes some policy sense, because some of the same Middle East partners that have been key to unlocking that cease-fire deal could also play an important role in shaping how the United States addresses the challenges posed by Iran.
At the senior level, top Trump officials like National Security Advisor Michael Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have all signaled hawkish positions on Iran and its nuclear program, and there was much talk during the transition of re-introducing the “maximum pressure” policy from Trump’s first term. At the same time, Trump has nominated or appointed others on his national security team who have advocated a more passive approach to Iran, including Michael DiMino, a new mid-level appointee for the Middle East at the Department of Defense, and Elbridge Colby, nominee to lead the Pentagon’s policy shop.
It will take some more time for the Trump team to sort out its approach to Iran, which has seen its regional position grow weaker during the past year even as its nuclear program and capacity to sow chaos remain major concerns. One area where the Trump team moved in its first days was to designate once again the Houthis in Yemen as a foreign terrorist organization — the Iran-aligned militant group has undercut regional security for years, including by carrying out attacks on global shipping in the Red Sea.
The bottom line is that Iran looms large and poses several policy challenges, and dealing with the Iran file in an integrated way with Arab-Israel issues makes sense, particularly if America is positioning itself to work closely with regional partners.
3. Trump’s emerging global economic policy and its impact on the region: A new era of uncertainty. One area that is a high priority for the second Trump administration is revamping America’s economic relations with major global economic powers. Trump has sent out many different signals, including the notion of imposing tariffs on some of America’s closest trading partners like China, Mexico, and Canada as soon as early February. If Trump moves into uncharted waters in his global economic policy as many expect, this could have major spillover effects on America’s relations in the Middle East, especially with larger economic actors like G-20 members Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
Countries are already positioning themselves for this new era of uncertainty and aiming to curry favor with Trump. In this first week, Saudi Arabia shared plans with Trump to invest more than $600 billion in the United States over the next four years. Trump responded in a virtual address at the World Economic Forum in Davos by saying that he was going to ask Saudi Arabia to invest even more money and to bring down the cost of oil. Energy is a key part of America’s economic relations with many Middle East countries, and energy policy was one of the top priorities in Trump’s initial flurry of executive orders, with a stronger focus on fossil fuels and a shift away from green energy. America remains a major global energy producer and differences in energy policy have at times put it at odds with some of its Middle East partners in recent years — a dynamic that may recur again if America adopts an economic nationalist agenda for its energy policy as well.
These three issues — Arab-Israeli affairs, Iran, and global economic policy — will shape America’s overall policy agenda in the coming months, and it is too soon to draw conclusions about where the new administration is heading on these fronts. The interplay between these three issues will shape the tone and tenor of America’s relations with its closest partners and create the framework for what is and isn’t possible for America’s Middle East agenda in Trump’s second term.
Brian Katulis is a Senior Fellow at MEI.
Photo by JIM WATSON/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
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