Peace Through Strength: The Trump Administration’s Foreign Policy in the Middle East

The Biden administration’s foreign policy record in the Middle East has been lamentable. The faux pas began before Biden took office, when he referred to Saudi Arabia as a pariah state during the 2020 presidential campaign, only to ingratiate himself as president to Mohammad Bin Salman in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In the four Biden-Harris years, the Middle Eastern strategic landscape deteriorated dramatically, culminating in a regional conflict between Israel and Iran and its proxies in Lebanon, Yemen, and Gaza, that will likely escalate even further before a new president is inaugurated next January. When Vice President Harris was asked recently if she would change anything from the last four years, she answered ‘not a thing comes to mind.’

Given this to be the case, one can assume that should she win on November 5, the US foreign policy approach in the region would be indistinguishable from Biden’s. Iran, a key strategic challenge to US interests in the Middle East and beyond, has been emboldened by the ineffectiveness of US leadership under Biden. Meanwhile, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states, most of which are close US partners, are exploring greater political and military autonomy, in the face of receding US regional influence. The US leadership deficit has left a vacuum in the regional security landscape that is being exploited by US great power rivals Russia and China.

With the US presidential election looming, it is as timely as ever to examine the first Trump administration’s foreign policy record in the region, as his bid to return to the Oval Office enters its final stretch. The Trump administration’s regional report card reads considerably better than the Biden administration’s so far. There remain legitimate reservations about Trump’s character and rhetoric – and no foreign policy success can negate widely held concerns about Trump’s often negative impact on the US’ social fabric domestically. Conversely, however, foreign policy successes should not be dismissed simply because of Trump’s propensity for rhetorical bluster. As the adage goes, multiple things can be true at once.

Despite the former president’s manifold flaws, his administration made meaningful strides toward security, stability, and most historically elusive of all, peace, in the region. Melvyn Leffler once stated that grand strategic success should be judged on the link between means and ends, and whether tactics designed were ‘capable of achieving goals.’  In this article, I will examine the Middle East foreign policy of the Trump administration of 2017-2021 by assessing how his means enabled him to achieve his ends; by comparing Trump’s foreign policy performance in the region to that of his two 21^st century predecessors, President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama; and determine whether Trump left the region more stable and secure than when he took office.

Background: What Trump inherited in 2017

The Trump administration inherited a Middle East that had been subjected to two highly destabilising doctrines. The Bush administration’s global war on terror, which focused on counterterrorism through the use of pre-emptive military force, led to two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; and the Obama administration’s ‘rebooted’ version of the war on terror presided over a period of intensified proxy warfare in Syria, regime change in Libya, and the rise of Islamist terrorist outfit Daesh in Iraq and Syria. The removal of three regimes in less than two decades left the region convulsing. Under President Bush the Iranian regime had breached the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) repeatedly and was actively enriching uranium in order to develop nuclear weapons; under Obama, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), otherwise known as the Iran Nuclear Deal, was signed in 2015.

Although the deal managed to get Iran to agree to reduce its uranium enrichment program down to 3.7 percent, temporarily disabling its ability to develop nuclear weapons, it nevertheless failed to address Iran’s inter-continental ballistic missiles program or hold Iran accountable for the funding of its terrorist proxies Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthi rebels in Lebanon and Syria, Gaza, and Yemen respectively. The sunset clause in the JCPOA also meant that the deal was tantamount to appeasement, as Iran would be allowed to resume all its nuclear related programs by 2030. In relation to the Arab-Israeli conflict, US strategic interests were not well served under Bush or Obama, with US-Israeli relations strained during the two administrations, and no resolution on the Palestinian problem reached.

Fighting Daesh in Iraq and Syria

At the tactical military level, Bush’s 2003 Operation Iraqi Freedom was a sweeping success. Saddam Hussein and his forces were swiftly defeated. Yet no long-term strategy had been devised to address the multitude of issues that would arise from occupying the country, from how to handle ex-Baathist regime soldiers, who were left without livelihoods to support themselves and their families; to establishing a political vision for Iraq and an exit strategy for the international US-led coalition. When the Iraq War officially ended in 2011, former Al-Qaeda cells coalesced to form Daesh, exploiting the chaos that had been left in the wake of the war.

Daesh was formed first and foremost as the Sunni opposition to the Alawite regime of Bashar Al-Assad in Syria and the Shia regime of Al-Maliki in Iraq. At the height of Daesh’s reign in the summer of 2014, the terrorist organisation controlled over 100,000 square kilometres of land in Syria and Iraq. It’s ability to conquer so much land was down to two critical factors: the violent ferocity of its fighters, stemming from their ideological fervour, and the utter ineptitude of their opponents. For example, Daesh faced down an Iraqi force 60,000-strong with about 1300 men, taking the city of Mosul after a four-day battle. When President Trump took office, American commanders had already been engaged in combat in Mosul, by providing support to Iraqi government forces fighting Daesh in Iraq’s second largest city. The battle, which had been expected to last for just two months, turned out to be the biggest military operation in the world since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Under Obama, the strategy in Mosul was stagnating. A different approach was required.

US forces under Trump then increased the number of surgical air strikes in parts of the city, taking out Daesh targets with more efficacy. As East Mosul resident Saad Amr said, ‘the air strikes on east Mosul were fewer, but more accurate.’ On Daesh targets elsewhere in Mosul, from sleeper cells uncovered by Iraqi security forces on the ground to Daesh snipers positioned on building tops located by reconnaissance intelligence, more frequent air bombardment campaigns eventually led to the annihilation of Daesh in the city. Daesh’s defeat in Mosul crushed their military capabilities as well as morale. It had been the location wherefrom Daesh proclaimed its caliphate. The city’s loss put Daesh in a state of retreat from which it would not recover. By the end of Trump’s first year in office, Daesh lost 95 percent of its territory in Iraq, resulting in the achievement of Trump’s stated aim of defeating the Islamist terror group.

Compounding the strategic mistakes of the Bush administration in Iraq were the mistakes of the US-led coalition of Arab states under Obama in Syria. According to then-Vice President Biden, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates ‘were so determined to take down Assad [that] they poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad.’ Many of these forces fighting Assad in Syria were the very same forces that the United States were engaged in combat with, namely al-Nusra, al-Qaeda, and Daesh. The United States were thus fighting two enemies on the same front, but one of them was being funded by their regional allies. Furthermore, their two enemies were fighting each other, raising questions over whether there was a coherent US strategy in Syria to begin with.

On the campaign trail in 2016, candidate Trump hinted at how his strategy would differ from both Bush and Obama. ‘First, you’ve got to take out [Daesh in Syria]’, he stated, ‘and then you go for Assad.’ Once in office, he enacted his pronounced objective, marking a more structured strategic shift from his predecessor. Under Obama, US forces would often withhold from attacking Daesh when their units were in combat with Russian- and Hezbollah-backed Syrian forces. This tactic underpinned part of Obama’s strategy in the Syrian theatre: attack key Daesh artillery units when the Islamists were not engaging Assad’s forces; but when they were, be uninvolved in the confrontations. In the best-case scenario both forces take heavy losses—but the best-case scenario rarely plays out in proxy warfare.

For example, cities such as Palmyra fell to Daesh forces in 2015, following the defeat of Syrian Army ground forces in the ancient city. As Commander-in-Chief, Trump sanctioned US forces to fight alongside Russian and Syrian forces against Daesh, which the United States had never done before in that theatre. As a result, in February 2017, Palmyra was recaptured from Daesh with the assistance of US air strikes. In October 2019, Trump’s stated aim of ‘defeating 100 percent of territorial caliphate in Iraq and Syria’ was finally fully achieved, with the killing of Daesh leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. It is impossible to determine whether Daesh will remain defeated indefinitely.

The reality with terrorist organisations such as Daesh and its Al-Qaeda pre-incarnate is that decapitating their leaderships is no guarantee to permanent destruction of the threat. Embers may become future insurgencies, in the same way that a waning Al-Qaeda eventually transmogrified into Daesh. It remained the responsibility of the Biden-Harris administration to ensure that the achievements of the Trump administration’s regional grand strategy served as building blocks for their own foreign policy objectives. Instead, under Biden, Assad has been able to consolidate his position at the helm, while terrorist proxy groups coordinate from Syria and elsewhere to undermine US and Western regional interests.

Isolating Iran: Withdrawal from JCPOA and Maximum Pressure strategy

Iran’s belligerence has been a source of constant tension and concern among all the United States’ regional allies, within GCC and Israel. The Islamic Republic’s funding of terrorist proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and Yemen most recently plunged the region into disarray. Hamas rockets launched into Israel, stated former Iranian general Mohammad Ali Jafari, were made with IRGC expertise.

The duplicitousness of the regime stretches back decades. During the Bush and Obama years, the Islamic Republic’s habit of flouting the international Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) began, first in 2002, and later again in 2003. And from 2006 to 2012, Iran refused to halt its uranium enrichment program, breaching six United Nations Security Council resolutions. Bush, admittedly, had no concrete strategy to counter Iran upon entering office. As part of the global war on terror, however, Bush did name Iran as part of the axis of evil, along with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Kim Jong Il’s North Korea, accusing Iran of being a state sponsor of terrorism, an accusation that has since proven to be true.

President Obama, on the other hand, did make restraining Iran’s ambitions to become a nuclear power a foreign policy priority. And in July 2015, along with government representatives from the UK, France, Germany, Russia, China and a delegate from the European Union, the United States and Iran signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Key terms of the JCPOA obliged Iran to reduce its uranium enrichment capacity for a period of ten years; conduct all its enrichment related activities at a single facility at Natanz; maintain uranium stockpiles under 300 kg and up to maximum of 3.7 percent for fifteen years; keep its stockpile of heavy water under 130 metric tonnes; and allow IAEA to ensure compliance with these terms through regular, long-term inspections. In exchange for Iranian compliance, overseas assets amounting to $100 billion would be unfrozen and certain economic sanctions that would enable Iran to trade oil on the international markets and have access to global financial systems would be lifted.

When Donald Trump came into office, his intention was to withdraw from the JCPOA. Obama’s strategy of exercising nuclear diplomacy collapsed partly because of Trump’s disdain for the deal, but not solely. The initial deal itself possessed inherent shortcomings, failing to address key aspects that directly threatened core US interests in the region, such as stability and the security of close allies. Namely, Iran’s ICBM programme and Iran’s state sponsor of terrorism were not issues the JCPOA confronted.

Furthermore, evidence shows that Iran had no intention of honouring the JCPOA in the first place, having breached the JCPOA’s terms before Trump even came into office, on two separate occasions. In February and November of 2016, the IAEA confirmed that Iran had exceeded the limit for heavy water production. In relation to Iran, the notion of grand strategy always risking collapse resonates, particularly when liberal institutionalists such as Barack Obama and Joe Biden seek to find multilateral solutions to arguably immutable problems, such as the ideology of a regime. The Iranian regime’s ideological character can make it seem entirely unamenable to reason. It is actively engaged in efforts to eradicate the Jewish state, and its hegemonic aspirations in the region are based on the pursuit of religious primacy over its Sunni Muslim neighbours.

Trump’s realist approach was more suited to dealing with a rogue actor such as Iran, and his maximum pressure campaign produced desirable strategic outcomes. Firstly, imposing heavy sanctions on Iran incapacitated the regime from being able to access precious financial resources, and stifled Iran’s economy. This exposed the fact that the regime’s deeply held aspirations came at the expense of Iranian people’s wellbeing. Whilst ordinary Iranians suffered, the regime chose to allocate state funds toward funding terrorism abroad, abdicating from its responsibility of providing basic public services, managing its natural resources, and assisting the public with the Covid crisis, following the pandemic’s outbreak in 2020. As of 2018, a third of Iranian’s youths were unemployed; and fuel and water shortages were recurrent.

The further the Iranian regime’s aims diverged from the needs of the Iranian people, the greater the possibility for change. Secondly, Trump’s assassination of Quds Force general Qassem Soleimani, in January 2020, sent a signal to Iran that the failure to abandon their pernicious activities could come at a heavy cost, and that so long as he was in office, nothing—not least of all military force—would be off the table.  This approach was in line with a core principle of Trump’s foreign policy doctrine: the idea that peace can only be obtained through strength. Since the Biden-Harris administration came into power, Iran has not only intensified its belligerence in the Middle East, by employing barrages of ballistic missile strikes against Israel, but by also furthering its subversive operations in the West.

Strategic Coup: the Abraham Accords

Trump’s regional foreign policy brought Israel and its Arab neighbours closer together, in the fight to deter their common enemy Iran. Pulling out of the JCPOA and enacting the maximum pressure campaign on Iran were all core components of Trump’s Middle East foreign policy approach. Without those components, the Abraham Accords could not have been possible. Iranian isolation led to Iranian frustration, which led to heightened Iranian belligerence, and exposed their covert funding of terrorism in the region, therefore firmly establishing a consensus among historically hostile actors that Iran poses the greatest threat to Middle Eastern stability, regardless of whether you are an Arab Sunni state or a Jewish state. The Trump administration’s strategic calculus made détente and then rapprochement between Israel and its Arab neighbours a possibility. A striking feature of the strategy was the bypassing of the Palestinian question.

For successive administrations, solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict had always been regarded as a sina qua non to overcoming tensions. Trump’s ‘norm-shattering’ debunked that myth. ‘The Middle East was a land of stale assumption and failed strategies,’ wrote Ray Takeyh, ‘Trump’s penchant toward disruption came in handy in a region that needed shaking up.’ The Abraham Accords, for the first time in Israel’s history, changed its strategic landscape. That is not to say that the Abraham Accords are a silver bullet to all long-standing tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbours. Indeed, as the events since October 7, 2023, have shown, there is no panacea for the deep-seated ills that plague Middle Eastern geopolitical and ideological tensions.

While the Abraham Accords did not provide a miracle, it highlighted that bold strategic thinking could present new possibilities. This is not to say that the agreement was not without its weaknesses. Under Trump, its first Gulf signatories were states with limited political power: the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. By the end of Trump’s first administration, Morocco and Sudan also signed normalisation agreements with Israel. However, the Accords could have paved the way for much greater cooperation between Israel, Arab states, and the US.

For the United States’ strategic interests in the region, peace between Israel and the Arab world presents a seismic shift in regional attitudes, increasing prospects for long-term security and stability. A development of this magnitude also proves that US foreign policy in the region can achieve historic breakthroughs.

Since the October 7 attacks on Israel, the progress engendered by the Abraham Accords has been stalled. While regional Arab states’ support for Hamas specifically and Palestinian statehood more broadly has been tepid, there is little chance of resuming the Abraham Accords process under the current security circumstances. The failure of the Biden administration to capitalise on the Abraham Accords hamstrung efforts to achieve regional peace and stability. It is hard to predict when or even if the peace process can be restored to its optimum. The longer the current war is protracted, the more arduous it becomes for GCC countries to normalise ties with Israel. This is in large part due to political reasons. It is debatable whether Gulf states share a genuine concern for the Palestinian cause. But it has always been a political instrument, utilised to demonstrate a feigned solidarity with the Muslim world, one based on shared faith. Indeed, there has often been a disparity among Arab leaders between rhetoric and action, in support of the Palestinian cause.

Nevertheless, a Harris administration would continue to find it difficult to resolve regional troubles, particularly if it will seek to replicate the Biden administration’s approach to imposing strategic restraint on Israel’s efforts to decisively prosecute the war. Could the return of Trump engineer a revival in the Abraham Accords process? This is a question no one can definitively answer. However, that he was able to establish the process in the first place, sets him apart from both his predecessors Bush and Obama, and to his successor Biden. And, by extension, it is what sets him apart from his presidential challenger in this election. His diplomatic credentials in the Middle East, by comparison to Harris’s, endows Trump with a credibility that she simply cannot match.

Conclusion

The shortcomings of the Biden administration’s regional foreign policy approach over the last four years are glaring. Vice President Harris had the opportunity to outline her own vision for the region but failed to provide any meaningful insight. However, according to Trump, nothing that has happened over the last four years would have transpired had he won the 2020 election. There is no way of proving or disproving that claim. Counterfactual renderings of recent history are convenient to Trump for political reasons, because they enhance his narrative. And while there is something distasteful about Trump’s boastful rhetorical style, there is no denying that under his presidency, US foreign policy in the region achieved great and unprecedented successes. By defeating Daesh, nullifying the Iranian threat, and establishing the Abraham Accords, Trump made the Middle East safer and more secure, for its regional allies and for US interests.

US foreign policy in the Middle East is contingent on multiple factors, most notably the actors that pose the greatest threat to US interests. How the US can better preserve its interests stands at the apogee of US strategic considerations apropos the Middle East. Identifying the end objectives in US foreign policy in the region, and subsequently utilising the means at the president’s disposal to achieve those ends, represent the bedrock of the president’s regional foreign policy agenda. The clearer the end objectives, the greater the president’s ability to achieve them. However disconcerting many may find Trump’s behaviour, his objectives in the Middle East were clear; and the means with which he achieved those objectives were effective.

Tremendous challenges await the next administration, regardless of who wins on November 5. Among the most pressing challenges are bringing an end to the war between Israel and Iran’s proxies in Gaza, Lebanon, and Yemen; restoring a credible and robust deterrence with Iran; resuming the diplomatic progress begun under the Abraham Accords and establishing a new status quo that ensures long-term regional stability and security for the US and its regional allies. Ultimately, incoming policymakers must demonstrate strength, and show resolve in their strategic decision-making, if they hope to achieve lasting peace and prosperity in the world’s most volatile region.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.