TRUMP IN MIDDLE EAST
DONALD TRUMP HAS EXCITEDLY TWEETED THAT HE IS OFF ON HIS ‘BIG FOREIGN TRIP’ TO SAUDI ARABIA AND ISRAEL. WHILE THE WORLD HOLDS ITS BREATH, FOREIGN EDITOR DAVID PRATT TAKES STOCK OF THE MANY POTENTIALLY DISASTROUS PITFALLS THAT LIE AHEAD
THE Middle East is famous for its pithy, acerbic sayings. One of the most enduring in the region is that “optimists are the ones who say things have never been so bad; pessimists recognise they could still get worse”.
Such is the mood among many from Jerusalem to Riyadh this weekend as President Donald Trump begins what he described in one of his typically understated tweets as “my big foreign trip”.
Any American president’s maiden voyage to the Middle East is a tension-filled tightrope walk at the best of times. Suffice to say that for Trump these are far from the best of times.
At home, in his wake, as he leaves for his nine-day, five-country tour, lie myriad scandals and a White House under siege with one explosive revelation after another.
Rarely has there been such a degree of paranoia, self-sabotage and incompetence under a US presidency. It’s a climate summed up by Trump’s own language these last few days, during which it has become clear he told Russian officials that firing FBI director James Comey eased “great pressure” on him and that Comey was a “real nutjob”.
Inevitably, all this does not augur well for a high-stakes Middle East and European trip that will see Trump visit Saudi Arabia, Israel and the Vatican.
All this appears aimed at setting up a religious and political symbolism as part of an effort to connect three of the world’s great religions and the cobbling together of some vague, undefined super-deal for the entire Middle East region.
In Trump’s hands this, of course, has the potential to work to his advantage or have all the incendiary capacity to massively blow up in his face. As ever with Trump, other business will be done. It was earlier this month that Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, welcomed a high-level delegation of Saudis to a gilded reception room next door to the White House and delivered a brisk pep talk: “Let’s get this done today.”
Kushner was referring to a $110 billion-plus arms deal that the administration hoped to seal with Saudi Arabia in time to announce it during Trump’s visit over the next few days.
The arms deal is huge. On the Saudi shopping list are a missile defence system, armoured personnel carriers, long-range artillery, warships and a controversial sale of laser-guided bombs.
Last December, the Obama administration put a hold on precision-guided munitions it had agreed to sell the Saudis out of fear they would be used to bomb civilians in Yemen.
Saudi Arabia’s brutal bombing campaign has killed thousands of civilians, hitting hospitals, civilian residential areas and marketplaces in strikes many observers have said are tantamount to war crimes. The Trump administration has now freed up those weapons, making them part of the $110 billion package. In short, Trump sees an opportunity to repair relations with long- time US partners Saudi Arabia that grew frustrated with Obama.
The arms deal is also meant to be a cornerstone of Trump’s proposal to create an alliance that has been dubbed an Arab Nato. This would not be the first time an attempt has been made to create an Arab equivalent of the military alliance. In the past, however, intra-regional standoffs, centuries-old disputes and sectarianism prevented it from ever being established.
The question on many Middle East watchers’ minds is why, given the current parlous state of the region, would anyone imagine such a move would be any more successful now?
There are other concerns too, not least in terms of how such a build-up would be viewed in Israel.
“The United States consistently constrains its military sales to the Gulf to ensure that Israel maintains a so-called ‘qualitative military edge’ in the region. This is not just policy, it is law passed by Congress. Trump may march out of Riyadh victorious, only to find angry and resistant Israelis who will oppose these initiatives and demand new support,” observed Ilan Goldenberg, senior fellow and director of the Middle East Security Programme at the Centre for a New American Security.
“Back at home, Congress could block many of these sales, leaving the president with another embarrassing policy failure,” added Goldenberg.
Trump’s proposed creation of an Arab Nato is in great part motivated by what he sees as the way forward in the fight against Islamist-inspired terrorism.
According to White House national security adviser HR McMaster, the president, while in Riyadh, will “deliver an inspiring but direct speech on the need to confront radical ideology” at the newly inaugurated Global Centre for Combating Extremist Ideology.
Trump’s goal is seen as an attempt to unify America’s allies around a common set of objectives, including a harder line against Iran.
That toughening of position on Iran comes as reports confirmed yesterday that Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani has won a second term in office.
The news of Rouhani’s election victory will be welcomed by many in the West as the endorsement of a more moderate leader who agreed a deal with world powers to limit Iran’s nuclear programme.
However, it will do little to assuage a Trump administration generally seen to be gunning for Iran, a position its great rival, Saudi Arabia, will doubtless make clear during the US president’s visit.
Just how tough Trump’s policy of “containing” Iran has become was evident last week in Syria. On Wednesday, US warplanes for only the second time in six years of war targeted a military convoy of loyalists to the Syrian regime.
According to a US defence official, a convoy of 20 pro-regime vehicles was headed towards al-Tanf, a military base on the Syrian-Jordanian border. The base is occupied by US and British Special Forces that are advising an anti-Islamic State (IS) Syrian rebel group known as Maghawir al-Thawra, or the Commandos of the Revolution.
The convoy appears to have consisted not of regular Syrian army soldiers but of international Shia militiamen, many of whom are deployed or supported by Iran.
This strike against the Shia militiamen was a clear signal from Washington that containment of Iran’s influence in the
region is a top priority right now. With such a policy, of course, comes substantial dangers for Trump’s administration. Some Middle East watchers warn that Trump’s attendance at the Arab-Muslim (Sunni) summit in Saudi Arabia, far from making the region more stable, will only exacerbate the Sunni-Shi’ite conflict that lies at the heart of so much rivalry and violence between Riyadh and Tehran.
They point to the fact, too, that it would be naive in the extreme to think that Trump’s arms deal with Saudi Arabia will do anything other than shore up Riyadh’s ongoing war in Yemen or support for the Saudis’ own shadowy Sunni proxies elsewhere.
Many regional analysts say that Trump’s cosying up to Riyadh simply risks further alienating the region’s Shias, and ignores the fact that most of the Middle East’s “terrorism” in the shape of the Islamic State (IS) group or al-Qaeda has its roots and origins in Saudi Arabia, and the Sunni strain of Islam.
“The danger with Trump’s Iran policy is that he will hear from Gulf partners, especially Saudi Arabia, some bright ideas for pushing back against Iran in places and ways that make sense to them, but might not be wise for US interests or other equities in the region,” Ilan Goldenberg explained.
All these potential pitfalls come even before Trump makes other stops on his visit, including Israel and Brussels, where he will meet Nato leaders. Trump may not be in Jerusalem yet, but already the Israelis are smarting from the recent intelligence leak that Trump is accused of making available to the Russians information that originally came from Israel’s spy service, the Mossad.
Trump divulged the classified information gathered by Israel about specific terrorist plotting by the Islamic State (IS) group. The information reportedly revealed IS advances in bomb-making that could be used to mask an explosive device inside a laptop, and also referenced the city where the unfolding plot was being hatched.
John Sipher, who used to run intelligence operations against Russia for the CIA, says sharing information with Moscow carried high risks. “The Russians are the biggest and most capable worldwide service other than the United States,” he said. “Even giving them a little bit allows them to put it together.”
TRUMP is giving the Israelis other headaches, too, having declared his intention to be the first sitting American president to visit the Western Wall.
His officials have already had to reiterate that American policy remains for the disposition of Jerusalem – including the Western Wall – to be the subject of a negotiated agreement between Israeli and Palestinians. Such language has only angered Israelis, who view the Western Wall as part of Israel.
Any visit to this hotly-disputed site tends to be touchy to say the least among Israelis and Palestinians. This, too, in a year that marks the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Six Day War, when Israel fought off Egypt,
Jordan and Syria in June of that year, and Israeli paratroopers captured the Old City of Jerusalem, with its ancient Western Wall and the Temple Mount or Haram al-Sharif, as Arabs call it.
Not content with ignoring the sensitivities involved here, Trump aides have reportedly also only scheduled 15 minutes for a visit to Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial and museum.
As some observers have pointed out, this is roughly one-twentieth the length of time for a round of golf, and Trump seems to be making plenty of time for that throughout his tour.
Part of the problem here is that the Trump team is not only very inexperienced in executing such trips and badly briefed themselves, but morale is said to be low following the scandals back home.
All this leaves many observers convinced that Trump on present form would almost inevitably come seriously unstuck during his time in this already super-sensitive region.
“Imagine, for example, a Trump tirade on Comey, Russia, and the media in front of the Western Wall, or an off-the-cuff remark during his foreign-policy speech about Islam,” warned Goldenberg, thinking of the potential traps that lies in wait during the President’s tour.
“Like he often does with tweets at home, Trump could set off an earthquake not just in the United States but across the globe,” he added.
Despite all these hazards Trump will nevertheless most likely receive a warm welcome from Arab and Israeli leaders, who almost always project their deepest hopes onto each new American president. In Trump, many leaders in the region will find a kindred spirit in his hostility toward Iran, political Islam, and lectures on human rights.
His reception in Europe, however, might be an altogether different affair. Writing in the online magazine Politico, its chief international affairs columnist, Susan B Glasser, highlighted how comments like “chaos”. “circus” and “laughing.stock” are now commonplace among senior European officials in response to the recent White House meltdown.
Such anecdotes, says Glasser, have shaped how Europe’s leaders are preparing for Trump’s visit that has already been downgraded to a meeting from a summit.
Apparently, leaders have been told to hold normally longer remarks to just two to four minutes to keep Trump’s attention. The president himself is set to officially open a memorial to the victims of the 9/11 attacks at Nato’s new headquarters of which wreckage from the World Trade Centre is part.
“A Trump photo-op with a chunk of the World Trade Centre has been choreographed in the hopes of convincing the president, who called Nato ‘obsolete’, to reaffirm the basic principles of an organisation committed to the mutual security of its members,” says Glasser.
At the memorial opening, like every other event in Trump’s “big foreign trip” itinerary, few are holding their breath over whether he will say or do the right thing.