President Trump's Trip to the Middle East: Potential Positive and Negative Outcomes

President Trump's trip to the Middle East, starting in Saudi Arabia and ending in Israel and Palestine, produced mixed results. The trip's main events, which reflected at least a partial shift by the President toward a more centrist, traditional, yet problematic US Middle East policy, may surprise and confuse Trump's most dogged defenders and his most determined detractors which, in our highly charged partisan political atmosphere, may actually be a good thing. READ MORE

Appreciating the potential positive results first, as Senator George Mitchell commented, in the course of embracing his Saudi and Gulf Arab Muslim hosts, President Trump abandoned his volatile and provocative anti-Muslim rhetoric, which has included promoting a ban on Muslims entering the United States, and the idea of establishing a "Muslim Registry" for Muslim American citizens. The President's support for these hateful Islamophobic programs powerfully feeds ISIS' extremist ideology and strategies. ISIS very likely is using Trump's campaign rhetoric in its recruiting campaigns. In contrast, addressing the Arab-Muslim American summit and the inauguration of the Global Center to Combat Extremist Ideology in Riyadh, the President allied the United States with Arab Muslim efforts to combat Islamist extremism and terrorism. He called Islam "one of the world's great faiths," and exclaimed, "This is not a battle between different faiths, different sects, or different civilizations. This is a battle between barbaric criminals who seek to obliterate human life, and decent people who seek to protect it."

In relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to Secretary of State Tillerson, by a combination of his making peace an urgent priority and the force of his personality, President Trump applied real pressure on Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas to resume negotiations and reach a peace deal. One specific positive result of this pressure on Israel is that previously denied Palestinian construction projects in "Area C" of the West Bank will be allowed to be built. President Trump's Special Envoy, Jason Greenblatt, has impressed both Israelis and Palestinians with his capacity to listen to the fears and essential interests of both peoples. Apparently, despite his position during the campaign, the President has shelved the idea of moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem before an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement is achieved.

If only these developments were the "whole story" of President Trump's Mideast trip, but clearly they are not. Potential negative effects from his trip loom large and threaten to complicate and intensify already very dangerous violent conflicts in the region.

The President seemed enthusiastically to embrace the Saudi Arabian government's vision for the Middle East, despite the indisputable evidence that Saudi society has provided the seedbed for Islamist extremism. In doing so, the President abandoned US concerns for human rights, complicated US support for the Iran nuclear deal and, by concluding a ten year $110 billion dollar arms deal with Saudi Arabia and very likely more than a billion dollar a year arms deal with Egypt, reinforced the dangerous illusion that autocratic rule and military power are the answers to the region's problems.

In fairness, giving priority to corporate arms sales over tougher concern for human rights has been typical of US  Middle East policy under both Democratic and Republican administrations for decades.What's new is the threat posed by ISIS and the promise and failure of the Arab Spring, all three of which point to the desperate need for radical democratic and economic reform in sclerotic Arab Muslim countries. See Arab Human Development Report 2016  Youth 2009, Human Security 2004, and Gender 2004.

It was ironic that on the day President Trump was royally welcomed by the King of Saudi Arabia, Iran held democratic elections, in which 70% of eligible voters participated and 57% of them voted to give the moderate candidate, Hasan Rouhani a second term as President. President Rouhani's leadership in negotiating the Iran nuclear deal with the P5+1, seeking to reduce economic sanctions on Iran, and working to open-up Iranian society offer an extraordinary opportunity to ease conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and between Shiite and Sunni Muslims across the region. The United States has a vital national security interest to help, not hinder this potential process. President Trump's trip, especially his appearing to tightly tie US interests with Saudi hostility toward Iran, tragically takes us in the opposite direction and could intensify violent conflict in Yemen and elsewhere in the region. At the same time, President Trump's effort to involve Saudi Arabia and other Arab states more directly in the Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking process could have promising positive effects.

In addition to obvious benefits to both peoples, resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could possibly provide a key to unlocking prospects for wider peace in the region. That possibility may offer the most positive potential result of President Trump's trip. It may sound idealistic and unrealistic to say that Israeli-Palestinian peace could affect chances for wider regional peace, so let me explain why I think this may be true.

Involving Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations in the Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking process based on the Arab Peace Initiative provides both pressure and support for the Palestinian Authority to make necessary compromises, and provides parallel incentive for Israel since achieving peace with the Arab states, not just with the Palestinians, is a surer guarantee for Israel's security.

Currently, Iran continues its fundamentally hostile stance toward Israel and provides support to Hamas and Hezbollah which have launched violent attacks against Israel. Achieving an Arab-Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement could cause Iran to change its policy. In 1998, then Iran's President Mohammed Khatami wrote that if the Palestinians reached a peace agreement with Israel, Iran would support it. Khatami publicly endorsed Hasan Rouhani in Iran's recent elections. President Rouhani would very likely follow Khatami's example in responding to a comprehensive peace agreement.

If the United States can play a positive role in bringing this peace process to completion, it would mark an historic achievement by resolving the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also by renewing people's hopes for peace across the region and around the world.