ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — The moment is ripe for President Trump to focus on aligning Arab powers with the U.S. and Israel around the common goal of containing Iran, according to former national security officials who attended a major international weapons show here last week.
Some at the International Defense Exposition said Israel’s battering of Tehran’s top proxy Hezbollah, coupled with the fall of the pro-Iran Assad regime in Syria and the severe damage wrought by Israeli airstrikes on military targets inside Iran have created a once-in-a-generation opening for Washington to capitalize on a regional paradigm shift.
“When Israel struck in Iran, they reestablished the baseline,” said Robert Harward, a former deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, who emphasized that the ball is now in the Trump administration’s court.
“We have an opportunity … to align U.S. foreign policy with our allies in the region — the UAE, Saudi, Qatar, Jordan and others — to deter Iran and bring enduring stability and peace to the region through this deterrence,” said Mr. Harward, a former chief executive at Lockheed Martin and currently executive vice president for international business and strategy at the advanced defense-technology firm Shield AI.
He made the comments in an appearance on The Times’ Threat Status Weekly Podcast, which aired Friday — the fifth and final day of IDEX, a massive international arms bazaar where defense companies from more than 60 countries showed off everything from hypersonic missiles to mobile rocket launch systems and suicide drones.
A theme coursing through the gathering was how dramatically the region’s security dynamics have shifted since Oct. 7, 2023. The attack on Israel that day by Hamas — another of Iran’s proxies — set in motion more than a year of bare-knuckle retaliation by the Israelis that has reshaped the region’s geopolitical picture.
“We have a historic moment that we’ve never seen before,” said Bilal Saab, who served as a senior Pentagon adviser in the first Trump administration.
“We’ve never seen Iran at this relative weakness,” said Mr. Saab, currently head of the Washington office of Trends Research & Advisory, a leading UAE think tank. “The question now is … how do you leverage this moment?
“Do you continue to squeeze? Do you continue to pressure? The answer is yes. Do you do it by yourself? The answer is no. You need the cooperation of the Arabs, right? So what can you expect from them? What kind of contributions? This is where you sort of see … varied approaches from all these countries, given their different positions vis-a-vis Iran.”
Mr. Saab made his remarks in a soon-to-be-released video interview with The Times’ Threat Status Influencers series. He suggested that Arab powers, particularly the Saudis, want to be offered a “formal defense pact” with the U.S. that could set the foundation for an “absolute deterrent” with regard to Iran.
If such a pact were achieved, Mr. Saab said, “then you have the opportunity to sort of unpack it and create legs and execute the deliverables from that, which obviously will come in the form of military cooperation that you’ve never seen before.”
Even in the absence of a formal defense pact, there are still areas of security cooperation the Trump administration could upgrade with the Saudis and others, particularly with regard to easing restrictions on certain military equipment that was essentially “off the table in the previous administration,” Mr. Saab said.
The Biden administration froze billions of dollars in arms sales that Mr. Trump had inked with the Saudis and the UAE during the final weeks of his first term in the White House. Among the items blocked were F-35 stealth fighter jets Mr. Trump had approved for sale to the UAE.
Mr. Biden separately halted U.S. support of a then-Saudi-led bombing campaign against Houthi militants in Yemen and slowed the sale of offensive weapons to Riyadh amid outcry over civilian deaths in Yemen and claims that the heavy-handed Saudi campaign was entrenching Iranian support for the Houthis.
Recent years have seen a surge in attacks carried out by the Houthis, including missile attacks on commercial ship in the Red Sea. The Houthis also claimed solidarity with Hamas.
It remains to be seen whether the Trump administration seeks to back a revamped Saudi campaign against the militants.
Mr. Saab, meanwhile, emphasized that perceptions of Iran are varied among the Arab powers.
“Some are more worried about the Iranians than others,” he said, adding that “there is always a ceiling when it comes to cooperating on the Iran threat from these countries because they’re worried about the ramifications of that cooperation internally.”
“A badly wounded Iran is still a very dangerous Iran,” said Mr. Saab, who added that some in the region fear “blowback from the Iranians because they still have capabilities and oh, by the way, they also still talking very closely with the Houthis, who can majorly disrupt … shipping that would very much be detrimental to the economies of these countries.”
He added that while “there’s an opportunity for cooperation,” the prospects for serious U.S.-Arab alignment are also tied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, more pointedly, Gaza.
The Trump administration is thus far struggling to grapple with frustration among Arab leaders over the Israeli military’s wide-scale bombing of civilian areas across the enclave.
The issue reared its head at IDEX when Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited the expo last week and faced pushback from top UAE leaders to President Trump’s proposal for the U.S. to take control of Gaza and relocate Palestinians as part of a grand reconstruction project.
The UAE’s president, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan used the meeting to affirm their “firm position rejecting any attempts aimed at displacing the Palestinian people from their land.”
Sheikh Mohammed reportedly stressed that reconstruction in Gaza must be backed by a “comprehensive and lasting peace” deal based on a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank.
The question is whether the Trump administration can reconcile the issue with wider security goals pertaining to Iran.
Mr. Harward suggested that “all the players understand we’re back to strategic deterrence and Iran has been calibrated.”
“Iran has operated unchallenged and unabated for several decades since they seized power in 1979,” Mr. Harward said. “And since no one has challenged them, they just continued to expand and grow … franchising in Lebanon with Hezbollah, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis and beyond.
“I think they have footholds throughout Europe, and the fact that they can threaten our people in the United States is completely unacceptable,” he said. “But that’s all based on decades of no one deterring them.
“How this administration is to embrace this opportunity,” he said, “will set the stage here in the region.”
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.