President Trump’s Middle East policy shift, away from Iran and toward Saudi Arabia, is an important reminder of the serendipitousness of his victory over Hillary Clinton last November.
There had been a widespread sense of dread over President Obama’s having set the stage for Iran’s almost certain (if belated) emergence as a nuclear power and the dominant force in the region.
Despite Mr. Obama’s insistence that the Iran deal would somehow tamp down Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, many considered the agreement highly problematical for the United States, with its global presence and responsibilities, and also of course for Israel, a relatively close neighbor of Iran’s – and the country expressly threatened with destruction by Iranian leaders.
Indeed, Prime Minister Netanyahu was ferocious in his opposition to the nuclear agreement with Iran, to the point perhaps of occasionally going over the top, characterizing a nuclear Iran as Israel’s greatest existential threat going forward.
Mr. Obama rammed through the adoption the nuclear accord between Iran and several Western powers that ostensibly restricted Iran’s nuclear development. However, the agreement is set to expire within approximately twelve years depending on how certain terms are construed, with Iran thereafter on its own.
In addition, the deal freed up tens of billions of dollars for Iran’s unrestricted use as the world’s preeminent financier and supporter of terror and rogue nations, and for Iran to accelerate its influence around the globe.
And although Mr. Obama expressed the public hope that Iran would reform and reenter the community of nations, there were no requirements under the agreement that it abandon its disruptive activity or cease the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles – which would instantly enhance its nuclear capacity once it was able to resume its nuclear development.
All in all, it seemed that President Obama had concluded that since there was no stopping Iran’s rise to regional hegemony, he might as well settle for a quiet interlude of several years and hope Iran would come to its senses.
Many of us, though, were certain that after a relatively short hiatus, Iran’s pursuit of regional hegemony supported by a nuclear arsenal would resume, and inexorably so.
In fact, on several occasions since the adoption of the nuclear agreement, Iranian officials have demonstrated that any notion they would reform themselves, or were even contemplating warmer relations with the West, was fantasy. Indeed, if anything, Iran’s shrillness in calling for the destruction of Israel and the demise of the Great Satan, i.e., the United States, became even more frequent and pronounced.
But now President Trump has committed himself to building up Saudi Arabia as a countervailing Sunni Muslim force to the Shiite Muslim Iran. While few think this will magically neutralize the threat posed by Iran, there is the hope that a strong Saudi Arabia in the forefront of a Sunni coalition will blunt the Iranian threat.
The new reality certainly positions the U.S. to seriously undermine any Iranian projection of power, and the prospect of blunting Iran’s momentum on the world stage has become very real. So there is much for Israel to welcome in Mr. Trump’s policy turnaround. But there are also some serious concerns.
As part of the Trump reset, the U.S. is committed to selling hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of armaments to Saudi Arabia to buttress Saudi military capacity.
To be sure, the Saudis do not, at this point, pose the kind of threat to Israel that Iran does, and the Trump administration is insisting that the weaponry is all defensive in nature and that the U.S. is committed to maintaining Israeli military superiority.
But Saudi Arabia and the other Arab nations are sworn enemies of Israel even if some of them have lately been more reticent about loudly calling for its elimination. Moreover, things change over time and an arms windfall of such magnitude has to create a reality of its own. When does a mammoth defensive capacity effectively become an offensive one?
Further, the Trump administration is floating the idea of the formation of a NATO-type defensive alliance made up of Arab states to counter Iranian military capacity. Could Israel rest easy with any development of that sort?
It’s interesting that President Trump sees his new general Mideast policy as a necessary backdrop to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – the ultimate deal, as he describes it. He has indicated several times that the threat of a predatory Iran has created an overarching community of interests for Israel and its Arab neighbors – and indeed a broad and previously unimaginable range of contacts have become routine.
His stated goal is to translate this interaction into participation of Arab states in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on the theory that the former have abandoned strict fealty to the Palestinian agenda in favor of furthering their own with greater cooperation with Israel.
But it is hard to fathom any Arab country accommodating Israel’s minimal requirements of recognition as a Jewish state, no Arab right of return, Jewish control of a united Jerusalem as its capital, and Israeli retention of the West Bank settlements.
So at some point Mr. Trump is undoubtedly going to face the need for actually delivering on his campaign promises on these issues. And he will have to balance them against the dynamics of an anti-Iranian Sunni coalition. Should things come to that, we trust that members of the coalition – particularly Saudi Arabia – will be made to remember America’s military largesse.
Of course, it would have been salutary and most welcome if the president during his visit to Israel this week on the eve of Yom Yerushalayim celebrations had ordered the relocation of the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognized the city as Israel’s capital. But he didn’t, and that was disappointing, despite the concrete steps he has taken that hopefully will mark the beginning of the neutralization of Iran.
One more thing. When all is said and done Israel is a world-class military power and will, for the foreseeable future, be the most formidable military force in the region by dint of many factors, including its unsurpassed military technology on the ground and in the air. Israel can surely play a pivotal role in any Iran containment calculus.
We are confident that Mr. Trump will ultimately show that he fully appreciates not only what Israel has to offer in terms of world peace and security but also the legitimacy of its vigorous pursuit of its own interests.