On his first international journey from his second term, President Donald Trump has already spent some of his four -day visit to the Arab Gulf states in diplomatic matters.
On Wednesday, he met in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with a president in Syria after the Assad era (and the leader of the former Islamic rebels), Ahmed Al -Sharra, a day after the pledge to lift the US sanctions on the country that was liberated for the civil war.
In an hour -long speech in his leadership, he explained that the United States “does not have permanent enemies”, Mr. Trump talked about the possibility of relations between the United States and the prosperous Iran if Tehran has moved away from contracts of violent regional behavior and alleged stability.
Why did we write this
President Donald Trump’s prior agenda for his visit to the Middle East indicated that business will take priority for diplomacy. However, in the midst of every fuss, the outline of the emerging Trump external policy can be distinguished.
It gave some hints of the Middle East policy with a lighter imprint and reduce pressure on partners to obtain diplomatic results. Commentary on his speech, Raydeh, that Saudi Arabia will normalize relations with Israel “on its own time.”
But for the largest part, the President of America visited him to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, such as a business trip.
In the follow -up to “America First”, the President announced hundreds of billions of dollars in US defense industries contracts and hundreds of other billions of Gulf investments in the field of American artificial intelligence and chip. (It is worth noting that the billionaire of Mr. Trump was the emerging technology advisor and donor, Elon Musk on the trip.)
“Palace in the sky”
But Mr. Trump also mixed business and family business in America in ways that no American president had ever – and to some extent the warnings between some of his strong and most influential supporters. Wide -scale opposition to a 400 million dollar plane plane – a “palace in the sky” – as a gift from Qatar and under the claim that it will be a new air weapon, will revive him when he returns home on Friday.
If President Trump chooses to repeat his first innovation in the first term and make the first international Gulf in his second term, regional experts say, because this is the place where he understands the money-and the method of Mr. Trump’s business.
“Trump sees that the Gulf considers many countries that have a lot of capital, as the leaders want to offer the red carpet and host it in a doctrine rooms in a way that it believes,” says Elizabeth Dent, a great colleague in foreign and defensive policy in the Gulf at the Washington Institute for Policy near the East Policy. “All the deals announced are appropriate with the” America first “approach, which gives it great glamorous investments that it can bring to its base.
In Qatar, Mr. Trump announced that what he drafted is “the largest arrangement of aircraft in the history of Boeing” – the Qatar Airways deal to buy up to 210 Boeing aircraft.
An interview with the Qatari prince, Sheikh Tarim bin Hamad Al Thani, in the royal stadium building, the owner of the Mar Lago Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, surveyed the marble of the palace and the prince’s exposure: “This is what they call” Bevatho “,”.
“Because this is his happy place,” says John Tellenman, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. With sparkling real estate “owned by people who have links with the rulers, in the mind of the president [the Gulf] It is the world as it should be. “
Foreign policy determines
However, in the midst of all the noise of business, the outline of the emerging external policy of Trump can be distinguished by the obligations, resorting to military intervention rare but with overwhelming power when applied, and foreign partners see in terms of what they can do to America, as some experts say.
“They are advancing with a limited group of our responsibilities, but they use the hard power in its implementation,” says Daniel Pinyim, former Deputy Foreign Minister for the Arabian Peninsula. “They are trying to do less things, but they are trying to do them more strongly – and searching for partners to fill the gaps.”
As evidence, Mr. Trump’s bombing of the Yemeni Houthis-a targeted military intervention ended, as soon as he said that he had received guarantees of Houthi leaders that they were no longer targeting the charging ships that were distinguished in the United States in the Red Sea and neighboring shipping paths.
Mr. Penyem, who is now a co -fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, says. He lists Iran and reaches a new deal in its nuclear program, Saudi normalization with Israel, and the stopping of the Hamas Israel war.
“some [issues] Mr. Pinyim says that some progress “has witnessed some progress” even since the administration entered, referring to the United States’ initial talks, while “some [like Gaza] Even further.
According to what was reported, the United States submitted to Iranian negotiators a written proposal for a nuclear agreement when the two sides met on Sunday. Iranian officials denied the reports. President Trump said in his head on Tuesday that he had presented to Iran the “Olive Branch” to resolve the nuclear issue, but he said he was “that will not last forever.”
It seems that Saudi normalization with Israel is less imminent than it was in January, when many Trump aides suggest that Saudi -Israeli rapprochement could be the first major victory in the administration’s foreign policy.
It seems that the long-awaited diplomatic penetration is now largely suspended due to the return of Israel to the severe war in Gaza and the constantly absolute prospects for the two-state solution to the Palestinian issue, the result continues in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in demand.
To make, do not impose, peace
Mr. Trump has repeatedly threw himself as a peace maker but not as a peaceful owner, as he denying in his ancestors-the Republican and Democrat alike-who sought to reshape the Middle East in the image of the West and according to Western values.
He considers Saudi leaders to achieve a “modern miracle of the Arab road”, who used his speech to the bombing of “the new bes” and “the builders of the nation” who “failed” in “Kabul, Baghdad” and other places.
The president said: “It is very important for the broader world to know that this great transformation did not come from Western intervention or flying in beautiful planes, which gives you lectures on how to live and how to control your own affairs, no.”
For some regional experts, Mr. Trump’s approach to “all business all the time” towards the Gulf states – and to Saudi Arabia in particular – in the first months of his second term is part of the reassuring shift from a more traditional vision of a documentary partnership required by the first Trump administration.
“The United States must have a natural relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. We do not need to be treated as an outcast country as president [Joe] Benjamin Friedman, a priority policy manager, a research center in Washington, which promotes realistic American foreign policy, has sought to do at first.
But at the same time, he says, President Trump was in his first term “very close to the Saudis, giving them the feeling that they are a basic ally, we will enter from now on the defense.” “I feel a more careful approach [to the region] This term. It will be that, “We are dealing with them, but we do not pledge to fight for them.”
Ethical issues
However, while supporting what he considers the most realistic defense relationship to Mr. Trump with the region, Mr. Friedman regrets the weakening of the Wall of Protection for a long time between the country’s actions in international relations and the president’s personal business.
It is not only limited to Qatar’s gift from a plane of $ 400 million, but also billions of dollars in Gulf investments in the Trump family’s encryption project, he says: “It is frustrated to witness such a collapse of morals, laws and laws of corruption.”
Throughout the short week that Mr. Trump was far from Washington, the epic “Palace in the sky” has become the central point in a fiery storm on the presidential family transactions and its display of influence.
Critics note that the luxurious plane will require an expensive and time-consuming security upgrade and the achievement of systems that may mean that it will only be the Air Force Trump for one year at the end of his term-if any. This means that the aircraft, which will actually offer a gift to the Trump Presidential Library, will mainly become Mr. Trump in his private life after birth.
All this proves that it is too much even for some of the most enthusiastic supporters of the Maga world.
In his podcast on The Daily Wire this week, the conservative commentator bin Shapiro was martyred in the fabric of the jet deal and called on his listeners to look frankly in its effects. He said: “I think that if we have the names of Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, we will all be afraid on the right.”
