Trumpian turmoil is coming to the Middle East

Donald Trump’s victory in last week’s US presidential election has left many world leaders feeling dejected. European leaders fear that he will browbeat them on issues ranging from trade to defense spending, while those in Latin America are terrified that he will punish them for immigration flows.

In the Middle East, however, the reaction has been more mixed. Some leaders are crestfallen, others elated. But those who are cheering now may be pining for a less capricious leader once Trump takes office.

Authoritarian rulers such as Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stand to gain the most from a second Trump term. Trump has praised both men, referring to el-Sisi as his “favourite dictator” and calling himself a “big fan” of Erdoğan, and will thus likely refrain from pressing them on human rights and democratic values, as prior US administrations have done.

These leaders will be pleased with Trump’s laissez-faire approach to foreign policy and lack of interest in details. And because America runs a trade surplus with Egypt and a small deficit with Turkey, they will not draw his administration’s trade-related ire, unlike Germany, Japan, and South Korea.

The Persian Gulf sheikhdoms will also benefit from a Trump presidency. Unlike el-Sisi and Erdoğan, the leaders of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates seek a muscular US foreign policy to weaken Iranian influence.

Trump’s revival of his hawkish rhetoric and “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran would please Bahrain’s Sunni monarchy, in particular, because it would likely distract the mullahs from stirring up the tiny island’s Shia majority.

The Gulf states are also well placed to exploit Trump’s transactional nature and his predilection for showmanship over substance: they can announce billion-dollar weapons deals with no intention of following through.

Other US allies in the region will suffer. Republicans will pummel Qatar for its support of Hamas and other Islamist groups. And American envoys will cease shuttling between Jerusalem and Beirut to end the bombing of Lebanon.

But the biggest loser of a Trump presidency may end up being the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD). The group is the Syrian branch of the Turkish Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has been fighting an intermittent insurgency against Turkey’s government since 1984, and most recently killed five people at an aerospace company in Ankara.

Trump’s aversion to American troop deployments, coupled with his affection for Erdoğan, could lead him to recall the roughly 900 soldiers stationed in Syria. Ostensibly there to prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State, they also protect the PYD from Syria and Turkey.

A PYD that lacks US support on the ground and fears a Turkish onslaught is likely to ask Russian or Syrian forces to redeploy to the border. For this reason, Syria could indirectly benefit from a Trump administration.

But America’s adversaries – Iran and its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah – should be most concerned about Trump’s return to the White House. Trump will likely give Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu carte blanche, lifting the few restraints US president Joe Biden has imposed in a failing effort to prevent a wider war.

The recent revelation of an Iranian plot to kill Trump is sure to incite his ire and may even influence his response. It is hard to imagine Trump objecting to Israeli attacks on Iranian oil and nuclear infrastructure, or expressing anguish about civilian carnage in Gaza or growing violence by Israeli settlers in the West Bank.

During Trump’s first term, Netanyahu merely wanted him to leave Israel alone – all would go smoothly so long as he did not promote a Palestinian state or criticise the expansion of West Bank settlements. But Israel now needs robust American backing for the bold policies that Netanyahu has been pursuing.

Trump will undoubtedly be happy to subcontract a war against Iran to Israel. But if the mullahs respond by targeting American interests, Trump may blame Netanyahu for dragging him into the type of conflict that he pledged on the campaign trail to avoid.

And when Netanyahu reneges on his promises – like he did to Biden, who reportedly responded by calling him “a fxxxxxg liar” and “a bad guy” – Trump will be just as furious, if not more so.

It is an act Trump knows well. After Netanyahu declared his intention to annex settlements at a White House event in 2020, a blindsided Trump apparently said, “I feel dirty,” and mused about endorsing his political rival.

Biden has tolerated Netanyahu’s dissemblance because he knows that weakening the Iranian axis is in America’s interest. Trump, with his sole focus on genuflection, may not be as understanding.

The return of Trump will upend US foreign policy, not least in the Middle East. A region that has endured wars, revolutions, and jihadist insurgencies can survive a bully in the White House. But whether America’s allies and adversaries gain and lose in equal measure remains to be seen. - FMT

Barak Barfi is a former research fellow at New America and a former visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.