Scarcely six months into Trump 2.0, America is scoring big wins in the region. What’s behind them? Trump’s sober view of U.S. interests.
A second marriage is the “triumph of hope over experience,” quipped 18th-century man of letters Samuel Johnson. We can today reverse the saying: Trump’s second term is the triumph of experience over hope. Consider his policies in the Middle East.
Scarcely six months into Trump 2.0, America is scoring big wins in the region. What’s behind them? Trump’s sober view of U.S. interests. He understands when to attack and when not to. He understands which countries are friendly to the United States and which aren’t. Trump’s policies are a much-needed return to the sort of realism that U.S. presidents employed during the Cold War. They’re also a much-needed break from the naïve idealism they employed after it.
Iran is a case in point. Unlike Joe Biden and Barack Obama, both of whom funneled billions of dollars to Tehran, and even George W. Bush, who refused to challenge Iranian attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, Trump knows that it’s foolish to shower the implacably hostile regime with cash. He swiftly reintroduced his maximum pressure campaign, striving to reduce Iranian oil exports “to zero.” Trump wants to starve the mullahs, not satiate them.
He has also been clear-eyed about their nuclear program. “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said on June 17. He made good on that promise just five days later, when he ordered massive strikes setting back the nuclear program “by one to two years.” Trump does not forsake diplomacy. At each turn of the screw, he has offered Tehran a diplomatic path to trade away its nuclear program.
Trump’s attack served its purpose. What’s more, it accomplished its objective with no American casualties. It was targeted and pragmatic. It begat no serious Iranian response nor committed the United States to occupying the country. It also sent a message to American friends and foes the world over. When he means to, Trump is able and willing to use the U.S. military to great effect.
Repudiating those who allege that Trump has no interest in and cannot learn from history, he has followed the example of two other Republican presidents who used force prudently in the Middle East. In 1988, after an American ship protecting Kuwaiti tankers in the Gulf hit an Iranian mine, Ronald Reagan ordered a retaliatory naval attack. Operation Praying Mantis destroyed approximately half of Iran’s fleet and soon thereafter led Tehran to call time on its eight-year war with Iraq.
Thirty years earlier, Dwight D. Eisenhower also used force in defense of American interests when he sent thousands of soldiers, marines, and sailors to Lebanon to ensure that it did not fall under the control of Soviet-aligned forces. Operation Blue Bat protected Lebanese sovereignty and kept pro-Soviet Arab forces from dominating the country. Both interventions delivered political victories at the expense of very few American casualties.
Trump has been wise not to follow other presidents down the path of misbegotten interventions. Barack Obama recklessly intervened in the 2011 Libyan Civil War, which led to the overthrow of Moammar Qaddafi. While the barbaric Qaddafi was no loss, Obama’s failure to recognize the pull of Islamic extremism gave radical jihadists a beachhead in Libya. Another counterproductive intervention came courtesy of Bush, who invaded Iraq in 2003. That war was unacceptably costly in casualties and money. Not to mention the gains by American adversaries Iran and the Islamic State, both of which exploited the vacuum in Iraq. In light of this history, it is unlikely that there will be such wars of folly on Trump’s watch.
Nor are there rash crusades to topple pro-American leaders. Obama was an egregious offender in this respect. During the Arab Spring, he did not support embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak was brutal, yes, but he was a partner of the United States. The same cannot be said of the fanatical Muslim Brotherhood that took his place. Elsewhere, Obama wanted to oust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as pro-American a leader as any. His Department of State funded entities that spent the grant money on anti-Netanyahu electoral efforts.
Trump does not call on U.S.-aligned rulers to relinquish power. He wastes no time pretending that Middle Eastern countries will become Switzerland anytime soon. He judges regimes based on how they behave toward America, not how open their societies are.
Saudi Arabia is one example. Biden showed what not to do in promising to make Riyadh a “pariah” and was forced to backtrack when he could not ignore the reality that America had interests for which it needed the Saudis. It made no sense then, nor does it now, to alienate a longtime American partner that has the world’s second-largest oil reserves, seventh-largest military budget, and 18th-largest economy. Trump recognizes that Saudi Arabia is powerful and amenable to doing business with America on good terms. He was keen to secure $600 billion in Saudi investment and another $200 billion from the Emiratis. Both commitments redound to America’s favor.
Trump also grasps the strategic value of Israel, America’s greatest regional partner. Whereas Biden and Obama distanced themselves from the Jewish state, Trump has brought it closer. He understands that America’s partnership with the strongest country in the Middle East is crucial. It benefits the United States to be close to Israel, whose military has shown time and again that it can defeat shared enemies.
Compare Biden’s policy with Trump’s. The former hectored Israel over the war in Gaza. He threw $230 million at a Gaza pier boondoggle that reportedly claimed the life of one U.S. serviceman and injured another 62 and did little to achieve its aims. He recycled baseless claims about the Israeli military and the humanitarian situation in the enclave. He reportedly called Netanyahu a “bad f***ing guy.”
Trump sounds a wholly different note. He knows it is Hamas, not democratically elected Israeli leaders, who are the bad guys. He has thrown the United States behind Israel both in the region and in international institutions. He has held Hamas responsible for the war and abhors terrorism and Hamas’s gleeful massacring and kidnapping of civilians, including U.S. citizens. All this is in marked contrast to past presidents who wavered at critical moments on Israel.
“Power attracts, weakness repels,” writes Netanyahu in his autobiography. Trump knows this intuitively from his many years in the cutthroat world of New York real estate. As president, he applies the lesson to the Middle East. He understands that strength is the most important consideration in the national security arena. He has embraced an unambiguous policy in the region: America’s friends come first, and America’s enemies lose out.
And with that philosophy, who wins? The United States.