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With the political landscape shifting in the Middle East, diplomats say the president-elect will find it harder to win regional support
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Donald Trump’s policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran faces a challenge from Middle East partners who have lost faith in the US and are forming new ties with the help of China, diplomats and experts warn.
As Mr Trump prepares to resume office after a four-year hiatus, the political landscape in the Middle East has shifted significantly, with the president-elect and his Gulf buddies no longer obviously aligned on either Israel or Iran.
Mr Trump may now find it harder to win regional support for his hard line against the regime in Tehran, sources told The Telegraph, especially if it comes with a policy of little to no pressure on Israel.
“I think what is causing consternation in Gulf States is that Trump has chosen so many people who seem less America-first than Israel-first,” one Western diplomat said.
Saudi Arabia’s orbit gradually shifted away from Washington during the Biden presidency and last year it signed up to a deal, brokered by China, to restore diplomatic relations with Iran.
The relationship has only warmed since. Last month, foreign ministers from Gulf states met for the first time as a group with Abbas Araghchi, their Iranian counterpart.
Last weekend Iran hosted Fayyad al-Ruwaili, Saudi Arabia’s top military officer, and floated the idea of joint naval exercises next year.
At the same time Saudi Arabia has stepped up its criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu, with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s de facto leader, accusing the Israeli prime minister of “collective genocide” in Gaza on Monday.
It was all so different when Mr Trump came to office in 2016.
Previous American presidents had usually made their first overseas visits to Canada, Mexico or Europe. But when Rupert Murdoch, then almost as close a confidant as Elon Musk is today, reportedly suggested Riyadh instead, Mr Trump was happy to break with tradition.
Saudi Arabia and Sunni Arab states in the Gulf shared his hawkish views on Iran, fearing its nuclear programme would allow the mullahs in Tehran to establish Shia dominance over the Middle East.
They were therefore quietly open to the idea of normalising relations with Israel. Support for Palestinian statehood had been eclipsed by the Iranian security threat, against which Israel would prove a useful ally.
It also helped that the new president was fond of the Saudis, who had long figured out that the way to Mr Trump’s heart was through his wallet.
“I like the Saudis,” he told a campaign rally in 2015. “They’re very nice. I make a lot of money from them. They buy all sorts of my stuff, all kinds of toys from Trump. They pay me millions and hundreds of millions.”
The relationship blossomed over Mr Trump’s first term.
Gulf states cheered when he pulled the US out of Barack Obama’s nuclear containment deal with Iran and rejoiced when he authorised the assassination of Qassim Soleimani, Iran’s most powerful general, in January 2020.
The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan signed up to the Abraham Accords establishing diplomatic relations with Israel. Saudi Arabia was waiting for the right moment to follow suit.
And then Oct 7 happened, and Israel began its war in Gaza and later in Lebanon.
Amid growing public anger in Saudi Arabia, the crown prince has ruled out normalising relations with Israel unless there are “irreversible steps” towards Palestinian statehood. Such a move would be deemed unacceptable by Mr Netanyahu’s hardline government and seems even more unlikely under a Trump administration.
The president-elect has nominated a series of pro-Israeli hawks to senior positions, including Marco Rubio, Mike Waltz and Elise Stefanik – Mr Trump’s nominees as secretary of state, national security adviser and ambassador to the United Nations respectively.
Meanwhile, Mr Trump’s chosen ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has previously argued that “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian”.
The fear is less about the fate of the Palestinians — something politicians in the Middle East are more indifferent about than their public’s — than that Israel may now be tempted to launch more extensive strikes against Iran.
At a campaign rally in North Carolina in October, speaking after Iran launched missile strikes on Israel, Mr Trump urged Israel to “hit the nuclear first and worry about the rest later”.
The prospect of an Israeli attack against either Iran’s nuclear facilities or energy infrastructure causes deep alarm in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which fret that Tehran would retaliate by striking oil installations in the Gulf.
Yet fears of the US encouraging an Israeli escalation may be overblown. Mr Trump, whose instincts are anti-interventionist and who talks of wanting to make peace around the world, may well place more pressure on Israel than Mr Netanyahu is banking on, despite his rhetoric.
“He will continue America’s robust approach towards Israel but that doesn’t necessarily mean the United States is going to take as proactive an approach on Iran as Netanyahu wants,” said Sanam Vakil, Middle East director at Chatham House, the international affairs think tank.
“I would be surprised if there was a blank cheque because the risk of giving Israel a blank cheque doesn’t stop at Israel’s borders. There certainly will be spill over across the Middle East. I don’t think this administration wants to get tangled in Middle Eastern wars.”
Nonetheless, the Gulf States are cautious. They do not believe that Mr Trump would come to their aid if Iran did attack them — and not without reason.
In 2019, Iran was accused of mounting a drone and cruise missile attack on energy-processing facilities in eastern Saudi Arabia that temporarily knocked out half of the country’s oil production.
Although Mr Trump declared that US forces were “locked and loaded” to strike at those responsible, he ultimately took no military action — something that left Saudi Arabia feeling deeply shaken.
“The Saudis felt they could no longer rely on the US to protect them,” said another Western diplomat. “This helped lead to a softening of anti-Iran rhetoric and ultimately contributed to rapprochement.”
Gulf disillusionment has led to growing opportunities for China to strengthen its presence in the region, although few believe that Saudi Arabia and its allies will adopt a more antagonistic approach to the US as a result.
On one level, Saudi Arabia and its allies will certainly welcome a return of Mr Trump’s transactional approach. They have, after all, continued to invest in their relationship with him even after he lost office in 2020.
Six months after Mr Trump’s election defeat, Prince Mohammed ignored his financial advisers’ objections to plough £1.6 billion into an untested private equity firm founded by Jared Kushner, the president-elect’s son-in-law and former Middle East envoy.
Others in the Gulf have also deepened their financial relations with Mr Trump’s businesses.
Next year, work will begin on a Trump Tower, complete with a Trump Hotel and Trump residential units, in Dubai, while plans are under way for another Trump Tower in the Saudi city of Jeddah. Trump International Oman, a £3.2 billion development, is due to open in 2028.
Such business ties, coupled with Gulf willingness to buy billions of dollars-worth of US arms, have reaped and will continue to reap dividends.
In 2018, Mr Trump brushed off bi-partisan pressure to impose sanctions on Saudi Arabia after the CIA concluded that Prince Mohammed had probably authorised the murder and dismemberment of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
Mr Trump’s perceived indifference about human rights means his return will be welcomed, particularly by the UAE, which is accused of unleashing a humanitarian disaster in Sudan through its alleged support of a militia which human rights groups say is massacring civilians.
Yet even Mr Trump’s blind eye falls short of the kind of strategic support the Gulf States had yearned for.
“The message from the US has been ‘we aren’t going to stand in your way, but we don’t have your back either,’” the diplomat said. “The message has been heard loud and clear and Gulf rulers are adjusting their policies accordingly.”