The Middle East is a place that most American presidents want to avoid. Yet inevitably, they find themselves mired in its quarrels. Despite periodic calls for a pivot toward other geostrategic challenges, the perception that its core interests are at stake in the region has kept the United States from leaving. The oil depositories of the Persian Gulf remain vital to the global economy. A menacing Iran sits near the nuclear threshold. The Arab world\u2019s political dysfunction has produced generations of militants and terrorists, a collection of whom attacked the United States in 2001, resulting in the worst mass-casualty event it had suffered on its homeland since Pearl Harbor.<\/p>\n
Since the turn of the twenty-first century, U.S. presidents have tried to solve the Middle East\u2019s conundrums through armed invasions, diplomacy, and limited humanitarian interventions. All have failed. Some of these efforts spawned even more pernicious phenomena. The 2003 invasion of Iraq, for example, gave rise to a new legion of terrorists. The limited 2011 military foray into Libya resulted in chaos across a large swath of North Africa. And yet administration after administration has remained, in some way, enchanted with the idea of imposing a regional vision.<\/p>\n
That is, until Donald Trump. This president, like his predecessors, has not extricated Washington from the Middle East. But unlike them, Trump has approached the area with little idealism. His stances have instead been entirely driven by pragmatism and a preference for power politics. Like the Middle East\u2019s own strongmen, Trump divides the world into winners and losers and steadfastly aligns himself with the former. Israel is strong, so he lets it do as it wishes. The Arab Gulf sheikhdoms have oil and make deals, so he engages with them. But the Palestinians are the region\u2019s losers, and thus not worth much concern.<\/p>\n
This approach is doubtless crude. But the results are clearly positive. During his five years in office, Trump has normalized ties between Israel and multiple Arab states. In October, he put a stop to the fighting between Israel and Hamas, sparked by Hamas\u2019 October 7, 2023, assault on Israel. He has ensured that American firms get preferential access to the Gulf\u2019s oil and markets. And he has successfully attacked groups and governments that menace American interests, including the Islamic Republic of Iran.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s decisions have not made the Middle East more democratic. They certainly have not ameliorated the region\u2019s historical grievances. But they have kept it comparatively stable while advancing Washington\u2019s positions. They have, in other words, helped Trump accomplish far more than his sophisticated and well-intentioned predecessors ever did.<\/p>\n
BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMS<\/p>\n
To understand why Trump has succeeded where other presidents have failed, consider the United States\u2019 approach to the Arab countries, which make up most of the Middle East. For decades, American presidents have tried to solve these states\u2019 inherent tensions by attacking or otherwise prodding them. President George W. Bush stands out as his country\u2019s most ambitious and humbled politician in this regard. His initial response to the September 11 terrorist attack\u2014invading Afghanistan to drive the Taliban from power and launching a \u201cwar on terror\u201d\u2014was reasonable. But then Bush and his seasoned advisers came to believe that the best way to stabilize the Middle East was to invade Iraq. Doing so, the theory went, would ultimately transform the region\u2019s many authoritarian regimes into democratic, pro-Western ones. Instead, it sharpened the Middle East\u2019s sectarian divide and empowered Iran. By the time Bush left office, the region was more unstable than when he arrived.<\/p>\n
Bush\u2019s Democratic successors, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, were both determined not to get entangled in the Arab world\u2019s messy politics. They sensed Americans\u2019 exhaustion with endless wars and rightfully declared that it was time to rely less on armies and more on diplomats. But each was, in his own way, hopelessly afflicted by idealism. During the Arab Spring, Obama sided with the street, nudging Egypt\u2019s U.S.-friendly president, Hosni Mubarak, out of power and staging a humanitarian military intervention in Libya that deposed Muammar al-Qaddafi. Neither was successful. Mubarak was replaced by a democratically elected Islamist who, after trying to concentrate power, was deposed by a new military dictator. Libya fractured and now has two competing authoritarian governments. Biden never promoted regime change, but his hostility toward the region\u2019s main monarchy\u2014he called Saudi Arabia a \u201cpariah\u201d after Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing of a dissident journalist\u2014undercut his country\u2019s regional interests. The royal families, for example, resisted Biden\u2019s efforts to increase oil production and pressure Hamas into agreeing to a cease-fire.<\/p>\n
Trump, by contrast, practices politics without judgment. He is happy, for example, to deal with the jihadi turned suited statesman Ahmed al-Shara, the new president of Syria, if Shara joins his fight against the Islamic State (also known as ISIS). He is also deeply transactional. Trump supports Saudi Arabia and other Gulf sheikhdoms because they are a source of capital, an export market for semiconductors and weapons, and an important aspect of the global energy markets. These are people he can do business with.<\/p>\n
The Arabs\u2019 princes and kings have reciprocated. At Trump\u2019s behest, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates signed the 2020 Abraham Accords, normalizing relations with Israel. Saudi Arabia remains outside the accords, but it has its own subtle partnership with Israel involving intelligence sharing and security cooperation. Qatar flirts with Islamist forces, but it continues to house a large U.S. military base and was instrumental in crafting the armistice in Gaza. All three countries are engaged in financial dealings with the Trump family. In that part of the world, personal fortunes are enmeshed with national ones, and the lines between commerce and diplomacy are frequently blurred. This is precisely how the Gulf elites like it.<\/p>\n
BIG STICK<\/p>\n
Since the advent of the Islamic Republic in 1979, successive American administrations have treated the Iranian regime less like a unified entity and more like a collection of factions competing for political power, some of which are susceptible to U.S. influence. Many presidents have thus made supporting Iran\u2019s moderates central to their agenda. The high point of such efforts came during the Obama administration, which pursued arms control diplomacy in hopes of empowering more reasonable actors. The result was the 2015 nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, in which Iran agreed to limit its enrichment and accept increased international monitoring in exchange for sanctions relief.<\/p>\n
But this approach is based on a faulty premise. Although Iranian officials may not all hold the same views, they do all share a hatred for the United States\u2014anti-Americanism is the glue that binds the regime. As a result, Iran would only agree to a deal after Washington recognized its right to domestic enrichment and stipulated that Iran could move toward industrial-scale enrichment after various clauses expired. The regime\u2019s powerbrokers, meanwhile, used the economic dividends from sanctions relief to fund terrorism abroad and repression at home.<\/p>\n
Trump practices politics without judgment.<\/p>\n
Instead, the best way to get results with Tehran is through force. After storming the U.S. embassy in 1979, for example, Iran\u2019s revolutionaries threatened to put captured American diplomats on trial. In response, U.S. President Jimmy Carter sent a private note to Iran saying that if Tehran harmed the hostages, Washington would retaliate. Soon, all the talk of public trials was shelved. Two decades later, after Bush had invaded Iraq and was menacing Iran, the Iranian regime suspended its nuclear program until the United States became bogged down in a quagmire in Iraq\u2014at which point Iran resumed its nuclear program with greater vigor. When it comes to Iran, threats have been the exception, not the rule. The irony of the United States\u2019 approach to Tehran is that Washington has not learned the lessons of its own success.<\/p>\n
Except, again, for Trump. In his first term, he disposed of the nuclear deal and reimposed devastating sanctions on Iran. He sensed, correctly, that the agreement was not a sturdy barrier to Iranian proliferation and that the deal benefited Tehran more than Washington. Trump then ordered the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, the legendary commander of Iran\u2019s Quds Force, who had knit together a transnational army of proxies and terrorists that did Iran\u2019s bidding across the region. Rather than sparking a larger war, as some analysts fretted, Soleimani\u2019s assassination permanently set back Iran\u2019s proxies. In 2011, when the Syrian civil war started, Soleimani was instrumental in organizing Syrian defenses and marshaling an auxiliary force of approximately 70,000 militiamen that rescued President Bashar al-Assad\u2019s regime. But after Soleimani\u2019s death, the Syrian army was hollowed out. Eventually, it lost its ability to fight altogether. When Shara\u2019s rebel forces began their advance from the north in late November 2024, Syrian troops fled their posts, and Damascus fell in less than two weeks.<\/p>\n
But perhaps Trump\u2019s biggest accomplishment was the June 2025 strikes on Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities. For two decades, many policymakers and pundits had insisted that attacking Tehran\u2019s nuclear program would provoke a regional conflagration. As a result, they not only forswore U.S. attacks; they also blocked Israeli ones. Israel wanted to attack Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities during the Obama years, only to be rebuffed. But Trump gave the Israelis the green light\u2014and then joined in when things appeared to go well. \u201cNo president was willing to do it, and I was willing to do it,\u201d he later bragged.<\/p>\n
THE TWO-STATE DELUSION<\/p>\n
For decades, American officials have pushed for an independent Palestinian state. A two-state solution, they declared, was essential to bringing peace to the Middle East and integrating Israel into the region. Bush became the first president to formally call for an independent Palestinian state, in June 2002, during the run-up to the Iraq war. Obama kept up these efforts, having his secretary of state, John Kerry, shuttle between Israel and the West Bank. Biden also championed this proposal, even after the October 7 attacks.<\/p>\n
But these attempts went nowhere. Bush\u2019s endeavors led to a summit, and little else. Obama was able to secure nothing more than temporary, partial freezes on settlements. Biden\u2019s efforts were almost entirely rhetorical\u2014designed, it seemed, to shield him from liberal backlash while he sold Israel every weapon he could and insulated the country from criticism and pressure at home and abroad. The sum total of Washington\u2019s two-state endeavors is a sheaf of memoirs lamenting a lost peace.<\/p>\n
There has always been something improbable about an independent Palestinian state. Palestinian leaders were trying to win at the negotiating table what they had lost in wars that they and their Arab allies had frequently started, and history rarely rewards such truculence. The Palestinians were still able to persuade Israel, at various times, to offer up Gaza and portions of the West Bank that it seized in 1967 in exchange for recognition and some territorial concessions. Yet these concessions were never enough for Palestinian leaders, and Israel\u2019s position hardened as time wound on and terrorist attacks by Palestinian militants continued. The tragedy of the Palestinian people is that their leaders are too invested in their narrative of grief and loss to accept any compromise until their options have been even further eroded.<\/p>\n
The chimera of a two-state solution still has widespread backing within Washington\u2019s traditional foreign policy establishment. But not from Trump. This president cares little for subnational actors. He understands that Israel does not want to cede land and should not be asked to do so. And he realized that many Arab governments grasp this fact, as well. He was thus able to broker the Abraham Accords, to the shock of many analysts. The Arab signatories have stood by the agreements, even during Israel\u2019s onslaught in Gaza.<\/p>\n
Still, Trump knows better than to hand Israel a blank check. He has been sensitive to Arab leaders\u2019 public relations concerns and has warned the Israelis not to annex the West Bank, although he allowed them to incrementally increase the size of their settlements. He also successfully pushed Israel into signing the October cease-fire. But Trump was able to exert this leverage because he is one of the most popular politicians in Israel and has solid relations with Arab monarchs, who could, in turn, pressure Hamas. Trump was also willing to break Washington\u2019s unwritten rule against engaging directly with Hamas, which helped him secure the cease-fire.<\/p>\n
AGENTS OF CHAOS<\/p>\n
Trump has calmed the Middle East. But he has not fixed it. Despite his protestations, peace is not in hand in the Holy Land. The Iranian nuclear program has not been obliterated. And the Arab world remains plagued by political dysfunction. In a region where things frequently go wrong, much can still fall apart.<\/p>\n
Consider, for example, the recent cease-fire. Armistices in the Middle East are always shaky, and the one worked out between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s aide Ron Dermer and Trump\u2019s all-purpose envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner will be no exception. Both Hamas and Israel are still inclined to pressure each other militarily when convenient. The deal does not address the expansion of Israeli settlements. The 20-point plan for disarming Hamas, reconstructing Gaza, and creating a pathway for Palestinian statehood is therefore likely to remain dormant. It is hard, for example, to see a multinational force of Arab troops entering Gaza and finishing off the stubbornly violent remnants of Hamas, as the plan calls for. Instead, Gaza will likely remain a festering wound, a densely populated refugee camp subsisting on food aid from humanitarian relief agencies. The Israel Defense Forces will bear the brunt of the security responsibilities, patrolling demilitarized zones and occasionally bombing emerging threats.<\/p>\n
The Iranian nuclear challenge, meanwhile, could again rear its ugly head. Iran\u2019s clerical oligarchs are shaken and still sorting out how their defenses were compromised and their intelligence apparatus penetrated. They will want to settle internal scores and sideline Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who made catastrophic misjudgments about Israel\u2019s power and is physically frail. Although the regime will lie low, it is waiting for the moment when the United States becomes distracted with other crises and Israel loses its focus. Then, it will resume its nuclear program with alacrity.<\/p>\n
The sum total of Washington\u2019s two-state endeavors is a sheaf of memoirs lamenting a lost peace.<\/p>\n
Washington must be ready to respond with attacks. The most important long-term consequence of the 12-day war between the Islamic Republic and Israel (and, later, the United States) is that military intervention is now the instrument of counterproliferation in Iran. It is hard to imagine the regime putting its trust in agreements that can be abrogated or international institutions, such as the UN Security Council, that can easily be bent to Washington\u2019s will.<\/p>\n
Israel seems to understand that this is the new normal. It knows that no victory in the Middle East is permanent; there is a reason its doctrine for handling adversaries is called \u201cmowing the lawn.\u201d But it is unclear whether Trump has the same grasp of the facts. Instead of continuing to menace Tehran, the president has declared victory and invited Iranians to talk. Trump may get away with this approach; his unpredictability, and Netanyahu\u2019s bellicosity, will temper the mullahs\u2019 atomic ambitions for now. But he has almost certainly saddled his successors with a vexing Iran challenge. They may have little choice but to bomb the country again.<\/p>\n
Some analysts hope that Iran\u2019s nuclear program will go away on its own, when the regime finally collapses. But Iran\u2019s war with Israel and the United States suggests that, despite its massive domestic failures, the Islamic Republic is far more resilient than many thought. Israel was able to quickly degrade Iran\u2019s proxies, including the vaunted Hezbollah in Lebanon. Yet when Netanyahu called on the Iranians to rise up and overthrow their regime at a moment of profound vulnerability, not much happened. Iran\u2019s cantankerous elite came together, and the public remained passive. The Islamic Republic is a problem to be managed, not wished away.<\/p>\n
THE MIDDLE EAST AS IT IS<\/p>\n
None of this means the Middle East can\u2019t be made better. Poor governance, institutional decay, and environmental degradation remain endemic problems in the region. The Arab ruling elites know they are presiding over a region marred by corruption and dysfunction. Their lust for power often blinds them to popular disaffection. The United States cannot persuade or compel these leaders to govern in a more enlightened fashion, but it can still encourage them to broaden political participation and reform their economies.<\/p>\n
But any such conversations or efforts must be circumspect and limited. The Middle East is ultimately no place for idealism and lofty ambitions. It is, instead, a place for power and realism\u2014which makes it perfect for this U.S. president. For now, oil continues to flow, the Iranian threat has been diminished, the fighting in Gaza has subsided, and there are no major upheavals. In a region known mostly for chaos, these are consequential achievements.<\/p>\n
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