How Trump will approach the Middle East in a second term

During his campaign, former President Donald Trump shared few substantive clues on how he would tackle some of the most intractable issues roiling Israel and the Middle East if elected to a second term.

As Trump declares victory after capturing key battleground states, lingering questions remain about how he might tackle the region’s ongoing unrest despite his repeated statement that the October 7 Hamas attacks “would never have happened” under his watch.

In some cases, Trump has been too noticeably quiet on key events, while remaining consistently vague on others – perhaps most prominently in his calls for Israel to end the war in Gaza without offering a ceasefire plan.

The former president has also suggested he is open to renewed talks with Iran over a nuclear deal he himself ended. And he used conflicting messages on Middle East policy bringing different groups to justicelike Jewish and Muslim swing voters in the battleground state of Michigan.

In the meantime, he has decided to select Senator JD Vance (R-OH) as his running mate raised concerns among traditionally hawkish conservatives about whether Vance’s aggressive efforts to push the Republican Party in a more isolationist direction would extend to the longstanding US-Israel alliance.

“I expect strong support for Israel and heavy pressure against Iran,” Elliott Abrams, a former diplomat in Republican administrations who now serves as a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said in an email to JI. “Sanctions will be enforced against Iran, and Trump can threaten Iran that if an American is killed by an Iranian-supplied missile given to the Houthis, or other weapons given to Shia militias in Iraq, he will directly target Iran respond.”

Still, Trump’s allies — and even some Republican skeptics — insist he would be a reliable defender of Israel, pointing to a series of pro-Israel policies he introduced during his first term as a strong precedent.

Elliott Abrams, a former diplomat in Republican administrations who now serves as a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said “the best guide” to predicting what Trump will do in a second term “is what he did the first time as president.” did. .”

“I expect strong support for Israel and heavy pressure against Iran,” Abrams said in an email Jewish insider on Tuesday. “Sanctions will be enforced against Iran, and Trump can threaten Iran that if an American is killed by an Iranian-supplied missile given to the Houthis, or other weapons given to Shia militias in Iraq, he will directly target Iran respond.”

Trump, he speculated, will also likely “try to advance the Abraham Accords, looking for Saudi-Saudi agreements” that have remained elusive during President Joe Biden’s term.

In one job interview last month Speaking to Al Arabiya, the Saudi news outlet, Trump said expanding the Accords, his administration’s signature foreign policy achievement, would be “an absolute priority” if he were to win the election. a period of one year” if he had won the 2020 presidential election.

“If I win, that will be an absolute priority,” Trump said. “It’s peace in the Middle East – we need it.”

Eric Levine, a GOP fundraiser who sits on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said he also expects Trump “will try to expand the Abraham Accords,” calling it “a great achievement” that the former president “ wants to build on. .”

Michael Makovsky, the president and CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, told JI that “Trump would prefer that Israel conclude its major military operations before his inauguration.”

“That said, he will focus on Saudi Arabia, which wants US guarantees that it will contain Iran,” Levine told JI. “That is why I expect him to reintroduce his policy of maximum pressure. For the same reason, he is less likely to pressure Israel not to retaliate against Iran. I think he will give Israel a free hand in Syria and Iraq.”

In Lebanon, Trump “might put a timetable” on Israel’s ground offensive, which he vowed to end soon recent letter sent to Lebanese Americans, “but he will let Israel take out Hezbollah,” Levine predicted. The former president “will want the fighting in Gaza to stop,” he continued, “but I think we will accept an Israeli military presence there.”

Michael Makovsky, the president and CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said in an email to JI that “Trump would prefer that Israel conclude its major military operations before his inauguration.”

“But unless Israel attacks and inflicts significant damage on Iranian nuclear facilities before the inauguration, Iran’s nuclear threat will likely be one of the biggest challenges Trump will face early in his new term,” Makovsky added – noting that, unlike Biden, the former President will “likely implement the tough energy sanctions on Iran that he imposed during his first term.”

Amid ongoing speculation about staffing decisions for top Cabinet posts, Makovsky suggested that “a key early indicator of a new Trump administration’s direction toward the Middle East will be who he chooses,” such as positions like national security adviser and secretaries of defense and defence. stands, among other important roles.

“Will he choose, so to speak,” Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), who is among the most outspoken Iranian hawks in the Senate, Makovsky, as Minister of Defense, asked ‘whether someone with views that have more in common with JD Vance’, who said it is in the interests of Americans to avoid war with the Islamic Republic. “Will there be a shared vision among these national security choices, or will the perspectives be more diverse or even clash?”

“There is no secret,” a Trump confidant told JI. “You know exactly what Trump did in the first administration, and he will do the same in the second.”

Trump’s campaign has not publicly identified who would fill top foreign policy positions in a second term, although some names do it is reportedly being considered – including Cotton, Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL), Robert O’Brien, who previously served as national security adviser, and Ric Grenell, a former acting director of national intelligence.

The co-chair of the former president’s transition team, Howard Lutnickthe billionaire chief financial officer who has long championed pro-Israel causes has emphasized that he is looking for loyalists who will not interfere with Trump’s “America First” policies.

Even as Trump continues to use occasionally contradictory rhetoric on the Middle East, raising questions about his plans for a second term, a person with firsthand knowledge of the former president’s thinking said such doubts are unfounded.

“There is no secret,” the Trump confidant told JI. “You know exactly what Trump did in the first administration, and he will do the same in the second.”