[Salon] How Trump will approach the Middle East in a second term

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Throughout his campaign, former President Donald Trump shared few substantive clues indicating how he would handle some of the most intractable issues roiling Israel and the Middle East if he is elected to a second term.
With Trump declaring victory after sweeping key battleground states, lingering questions remain about how he would navigate ongoing turmoil in the region, despite his repeated claim that Hamas Oct. 7 attacks “would never have happened” on his watch.
In some cases, Trump has been noticeably silent on key events, while in others he has been consistently vague — perhaps most prominently in his calls for Israel to wrap up its war in Gaza without offering a plan for a cease-fire.
The former president has also suggested that he is open to renewed talks with Iran about a nuclear agreement he himself ended. And he has used contradictory messaging on Middle East policy to court different groups, such as Jewish and Muslim swing voters in the battleground state of Michigan.
Meanwhile, his decision to select Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) as his running mate has raised concerns among traditionally hawkish conservatives about whether Vance’s aggressive efforts to push the GOP in a more isolationist direction would extend to the long-standing alliance between the U.S. and Israel.
“I expect strong support for Israel and tough pressure against Iran,” Elliott Abrams, a former diplomat in Republican administrations who now serves as a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said in an email to JI. “Iran sanctions will be enforced, and Trump may threaten Iran that if an American is killed by an Iran-supplied missile given to the Houthis, or other weapons given to Shia militias in Iraq, he will react directly against Iran.”
Still, Trump’s allies — and even some Republican skeptics — insist he would be a reliable defender of Israel, pointing to a range of pro-Israel policies he enacted during his first term as a strong precedent.
Elliott Abrams, a former diplomat in Republican administrations who now serves as a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that “the best guide” to predicting what Trump will do in a second term “is what he did as president the first time.”
“I expect strong support for Israel and tough pressure against Iran,” Abrams said in an email to Jewish Insider on Tuesday. “Iran sanctions will be enforced, and Trump may threaten Iran that if an American is killed by an Iran-supplied missile given to the Houthis, or other weapons given to Shia militias in Iraq, he will react directly against Iran.”
Trump, he speculated, is also “likely to try to push the Abraham Accords forward, seeking Saudi-U.S. and Saudi-Israeli agreements” that have remained elusive during President Joe Biden’s time in office.
In an interview last month with Al Arabiya, the Saudi-owned news channel, Trump said expanding the Accords, his administration’s signature foreign policy achievement, would be “an absolute priority” if he wins the election, claiming that he would have added “12 to 15 countries literally within a period of a year” if he had won the 2020 presidential election.
“If I win, that will be an absolute priority,” Trump said. “It’s peace in the Middle East — we need it.”
Eric Levine, a GOP fundraiser who sits on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said he also anticipates that Trump “will look to expand the Abraham Accords,” calling it “a great achievement” that the former president “will want to build on.”
Michael Makovsky, the president and CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, told JI that “Trump would prefer that Israel conclude its major military operations by the time of his inauguration.”
“That said, he will focus on Saudi Arabia, which will want assurances from the U.S. that it will contain Iran,” Levine told JI. “Therefore, I expect he will reinstitute his maximum pressure policy. For the same reason, he is less likely to pressure Israel to not retaliate against Iran. I think he will give Israel a freer hand in Syria and Iraq.”
In Lebanon, Trump “may put a time frame on” Israel’s ground offensive, which he vowed to stop in a recent letter sent to Lebanese Americans, “but he will let Israel take out Hezbollah,” Levine predicted. The former president “will want the fighting in Gaza to stop,” he continued, “but I think we will accept an Israeli security military presence there.”
Michael Makovsky, the president and CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said in an email to JI that “Trump would prefer that Israel conclude its major military operations by the time of his inauguration.”
“But unless Israel strikes and significantly damages Iranian nuclear facilities before inauguration, the Iran nuclear threat will likely be one of the biggest challenges Trump will have to deal with early in his new term,” Makovsky added — noting that, unlike Biden, the former president will “likely implement the tough energy sanctions on Iran he imposed in his first term.”
Amid ongoing speculation over staffing decisions for top Cabinet posts, Makovsky suggested that “a key early indicator of the direction of a new Trump administration toward the Mideast will be whom he picks for” such positions as national security advisor as well as secretaries of defense and state, among other major roles.
“Will he pick, say,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who is among the most outspoken Iran hawks in the upper chamber, as secretary of defense, asked Makovsky, “or someone with views more in common with J.D. Vance,” who has said it is in Americans’ interest to avoid a war with the Islamic Republic. “Will there be a shared vision among these national security picks or more diverse or even clash in outlook?”

(TP-No, Vance said "punch them hard.)

“There’s no secret,” a Trump confidant told JI. “You know exactly what Trump did in the first administration, and he’ll do the same thing in the second.”
Trump’s campaign has not publicly indicated who would fill top foreign policy roles in a second term, though some names have reportedly been rumored to be under consideration — including Cotton, Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL), Robert O’Brien, who previously served as national security advisor, and Ric Grenell, a former acting director of national intelligence.
The former president’s transition team co-chair, Howard Lutnick, the billionaire financial executive who has long been dedicated to pro-Israel causes, has stressed he is searching for loyalists who won’t interfere with Trump’s “America First” policies.
Even as Trump continues to employ occasionally conflicting rhetoric on the Middle East that has sparked questions about his plans for a second term, a person with firsthand knowledge of the former president’s thinking said that such doubts are unfounded.
“There’s no secret,” the Trump confidant told JI. “You know exactly what Trump did in the first administration, and he’ll do the same thing in the second.”