The regional actors he needs to attract to the coalition were drawn by its focus on Iran at the expense of the Palestinian issue. So much for that.
T he United States deserves a lot of the blame for the present state of the Middle East, Donald Trump averred in a Tuesday night press conference alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“We should have never gotten in there a long time ago,” he mourned. “We spent trillions of dollars and created so much death.” It was odd, then, that this thought followed a fulsome endorsement of his plan to “take over the Gaza Strip,” “own it,” “level the site and get rid of all the destroyed buildings,” thereby creating “an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area,” which would be an international polyglot once the local Palestinian population has been relocated.
This is all, to use a technical term, bananas. As Phil Klein observed, it’s “not going to happen.” But even though Trump’s fans often convince themselves that the president’s ponderous public musings invite zero practical consequences, the thought bubbles he emitted on Tuesday landed with a thud in the region.
“Saudi Arabia said it would not establish ties with Israel without the creation of a Palestinian state,” Reuters reported, “contradicting President Donald Trump’s claim that Riyadh was not demanding a Palestinian homeland when he said the U.S. wants to take over the Gaza Strip.” Jordan’s King Abdullah II reiterated his “rejection of any attempts to annex land or displace Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.” These statements reflect the sentiments expressed in a joint letter produced on Saturday by the governments of Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, opposing any attempt to “compromise Palestinians’ unalienable rights, whether through settlement activities, or evictions or annex of land or through vacating the land from its owners.”
These expressions of fealty to the Palestinian cause are likely to complicate Trump’s desire to expand Arab membership in the Abraham Accords. Indeed, how could they not? The genius of that multinational compact was its rejection of the peace processors’ cherished but untested belief that there could be no peace in the region in the absence of a permanent resolution of Israeli–Palestinian tensions. By sidestepping that intractable issue, it opened new avenues for cooperation between Israel and its Sunni-dominated neighbors — first covertly, then overtly. Restoring the “Palestinian question” to prominence in the discourse about the future of the Middle East only undermines that achievement.
But that wasn’t the only paradigmatic revolution of which the Abraham Accords took maximum advantage. The concordat was possible only as a response to a region-wide recognition that the Iranian regime had become an intolerable menace, and it had become that as a direct result of Barack Obama’s nuclear deal. In his administration’s efforts to grease the skids for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Team Obama filled Iran’s coffers with cash and, amid his administration’s rush to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, outsourced Iraqi security to Iran-controlled Shiite militias. That shift in the regional power dynamic, coupled with the recognition that the nuclear deal only postponed an Iranian breakout — and gave its nuclear program the false legitimacy of an agreement supposedly limiting it — helped convince Israel’s old enemies that the threat in the east was far more urgent.
In his berserk presser with Bibi, Trump subverted that shared understanding as well. “I hated doing it,” the president said of his recent executive actions recommitting to a campaign of “maximum pressure” on Iran. Yet, as he rightly noted, it was necessary. Maximum pressure ensured that Iran “had no money for Hezbollah, they had no money for Hamas, they had no money for any terror.”
Trump is correct: Iran is the problem. The Palestinians in Gaza are not natural egalitarians struggling to secure their own liberal social covenant against an oppressive regime, but the instruments of terror with which Iran provides them can be interdicted. And getting the region on board with that project is critical. But why should the region have any faith in that effort’s success if it is going to be accompanied by yet another Iran nuclear deal?
It would be “very unfortunate for them” if the Iranians attempted to break out a fissionable device, Trump said. “If, on the other hand, they can convince us that they won’t — and I hope they can, it’s very easy to do,” he speculated. “It’s actually very easy to do.”
It sure is, particularly if we want to be fooled. That was the danger of the JCPOA — the temptation, to which the Obama administration often succumbed, to praise and preserve the deal even when its terms were being abrogated because the political achievement of the deal became more important than the objectives it was supposed to secure.
Trump restated his position on his proprietary social media venue on Wednesday morning. The notion that the U.S. and Israel are “working in conjunction” to prepare for a preemptive attack on Iranian nuclear sites is “GREATLY EXAGGERATED,” he insisted. “I would much prefer a Verified Nuclear Peace Agreement,” Trump added. “We should start working on it immediately, and have a big Middle East Celebration when it is signed and completed.” That party is likely to be sparsely attended.
The regional actors Trump needs to attract to the Abraham coalition were drawn to it by its focus on Iran at the expense of the Palestinian issue. Today, Trump is attempting to reignite the accord’s engines by sidestepping the Iran issue and redoubling his focus on the Palestinian question. Trump and everyone else who genuinely seeks peace in the region is likely to be disappointed with the results.