How President Trump’s Middle East tour signaled a bold reset in US foreign policy

Analysis How President Trump’s Middle East tour signaled a bold reset in US foreign policy
“I will be ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria in order to give them a chance at greatness,” Trump said. (AFP)
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Updated 20 May 2025
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How President Trump’s Middle East tour signaled a bold reset in US foreign policy

How President Trump’s Middle East tour signaled a bold reset in US foreign policy
  • From lifting sanctions on Syria to backing talks with Iran, Trump declared a readiness to end old conflicts, embracing transactional diplomacy
  • Trump’s Gulf-focused strategy prioritizes mutually beneficial partnerships over traditional loyalties, casting Israel as a costly, underperforming ally

LONDON: Standing ovations and scenes of jubilation are not normally witnessed at investment forums. But there was nothing normal about the speech President Donald Trump delivered at the US-Saudi Investment Forum in Riyadh last week.

Speaking at the beginning of a four-day tour of the region, Trump’s geopolitical surprises came thick and fast.

“After discussing the situation in Syria with the (Saudi) crown prince,” he said, “I will be ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria in order to give them a chance at greatness.”




Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman welcomes President Donald Trump to Saudi Arabia. (AFP)

The last few words were almost drowned out by the wave of applause, which was followed by a standing ovation led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Although the announcement came as a big surprise to most, including seasoned analysts and even some in Trump’s inner circle, it was not entirely unexpected.

In December, for the first time in a decade, US officials had flown to Damascus, where they met with Ahmad Al-Sharaa, the commander of Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham, which just two weeks earlier had led the dramatic overthrow of the Bashar Assad regime after 14 years of civil war.

As a result of that meeting, after which the US delegation said it had found Al-Sharaa to be wholly “pragmatic,” the US removed the longstanding $10 million bounty on his head. A month later, Al-Sharaa was appointed president of Syria.

The day after last week’s investment forum in Riyadh, Trump sat down for a face-to-face meeting with Al-Sharaa that produced what might well prove to be one of the most historic photographs in the region’s recent history: the Saudi crown prince, flanked by Trump and Al-Sharaa, standing in front of the flags of the US, Saudi Arabia, and Syria.

The photograph sent a clear message: For the US, and for a region all too often subject to the whims of its largesse and military approbation, all bets were off.

The day before, Trump had more surprises for his delighted audience at the King Abdulaziz International Conference Center.




President Donald Trump with UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. (AP)

“I have never believed in having permanent enemies,” the president said, and “I am willing to end past conflicts and forge new partnerships for a better and more stable world, even if our differences may be very profound, which obviously they are in the case of Iran.”

He praised local leadership for “transcending the ancient conflicts and tired divisions of the past” and criticized “Western interventionists … giving you lectures on how to live or how to govern your own affairs.”

In a message that will have echoed loudly in Kabul, Baghdad, and even Tehran, he added: “In the end, the so-called ‘nation-builders’ wrecked far more nations than they built — and the interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves.”

Responding to Trump’s announcements, Sir John Jenkins, a seasoned diplomat who served as British ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Syria, and as consul-general in Jerusalem, told Arab News: “I think this could be a real turning point.

“Post-Arab Spring demographics — lots of young people wanting a better life and better governance but not wanting to get there through ideology or revolution — and Mohammed bin Salman, Trump, and Syria have all come together at a singular time.”

Trump’s speech last week in Riyadh, he said, “was extraordinary, an intellectually coherent argument, and he means it.

“If you can form a cohesive bloc of Sunni states — the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the rest of the GCC, Jordan, Syria and Egypt — which all aim in different ways to increase prosperity and stability instead of the opposite, then you potentially have a bloc that can manage regional stability and contain Iran in a way we haven’t had for decades. And that gives the US the ability to pivot.”




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But a lot could still go wrong. “Iran, which is already trying hard to undermine Syria, will continue to play games,” said Jenkins.

“And then there’s Israel itself: Does it want strong and stable Sunni neighbors or not? It should do, but I’m not sure Bezalel Smotrich (Israel’s far-right finance minister, who this month vowed that Gaza would be ‘entirely destroyed’) and Itamar Ben-Gvir (the minister of national security who is pressing for Israel to seize and occupy Gaza) think so. That’s a headache for Israel’s Prime Minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu.

“But if you hook all this up to a possible US-Iran deal, which will give Iran incentives not to have sanctions come crashing back down, then there’s something there.”

For Al-Sharaa, even six months ago, the dramatic turnaround in his personal circumstances would have seemed fantastic, and as such is symptomatic of the tectonic upheavals presaged by Trump’s visit to the region.

Almost exactly 12 years ago, on May 16, 2013, the then-leader of the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, judged responsible for “multiple suicide attacks throughout Syria” targeting the Assad regime, had been designated as a terrorist by the US Department of State.

Now, as the very public beneficiary of the praise and support of Trump and the Saudi crown prince, Al-Sharaa’s metamorphosis into the symbol of hope for the Syrian people is emblematic of America’s dramatic new approach to the region.

In Doha, the president chose the occasion of a visit to a US military base to make nice with Iran, a country whose negotiators have been quietly meeting in Oman with Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, to discuss a nuclear deal.




Saudi Arabia signs deals worth more than $300 billion with US. (AFP)

“I want them to succeed,” said Trump, who in 2018 unilaterally withdrew the US from the original deal, fashioned by President Barack Obama and European allies, and reimposed economic sanctions. Now, he said in Doha last week, “I want them to end up being a great country.”

Iran, he added, “cannot have a nuclear weapon.” But, in a snub to Israel, which has reportedly not only sought US permission to attack Iranian enrichment facilities, but has even asked America to take part, he added: “We are not going to make any nuclear dust in Iran. I think we’re getting close to maybe doing a deal without having to do this.”

In fact, Trump’s entire trip appeared to be designed as a snub to Israel, which did not feature on the itinerary.

A week ahead of the trip, Trump had announced a unilateral ceasefire deal with the Houthis in Yemen, who had sided with Hamas after Israel mounted its retaliatory war in Gaza in October 2023.

Under the deal, brokered by Oman and with no Israeli involvement, the US said it would halt its strikes in Yemen in exchange for the Houthis agreeing to stop targeting vessels in the Red Sea.

On May 12, the day before Trump arrived in Saudi Arabia, Hamas released Edan Alexander, the last surviving US citizen held hostage in Gaza, in a deal that came out of direct talks with no Israeli involvement.




President Donald Trump shakes hands with Ahmad Al-Sharaa, president of Syria. (Reuters)

In a post on Truth Social, Trump celebrated “a step taken in good faith towards the United States and the efforts of the mediators — Qatar and Egypt — to put an end to this very brutal war.”

Trump, said Ahron Bregman, a former Israeli soldier and a senior teaching fellow in King’s College London’s Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, “threw Netanyahu, in fact Israel, under the bus.

“He totally surprised Netanyahu with a series of Middle Eastern diplomatic initiatives, which, at least from an Israeli perspective, hurt — indeed, humiliate — Israel,” he told Arab News.

“In the past, if one wished to get access to the White House, a good way to do so was to turn to Israel, asking them to open doors in Washington. Not any longer. Netanyahu, hurt and humiliated by Trump, seems to have lost his magic touch.

“Trump despises losers, and he probably regards Netanyahu as a loser, given the Gaza mess and Netanyahu’s failure to achieve Israel’s declared aims.”

It is, Bregman said, Trump’s famously transactional approach to politics that is shifting the dial so dramatically in the Middle East.




An aerial view shows a war devastated neighborhood in the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. (AFP)

“Trump looks at international relations and diplomacy through financial lenses, as business enterprises. For Trump, money talks and the money is not to be found in Israel, which sucks $3 billion dollars a year from the US, but in the Gulf states.

“Trump is serious about America First, and Israel doesn’t serve this aim; the Gulf states do. For now, at least, the center of gravity has moved to the Gulf states, and the Israeli status in the Middle East has weakened dramatically.”

For Ibrahim Al-Marashi, associate professor at California State University, San Marcos, the events of the past week stand in sharp contrast to those during Trump’s first presidency.

“During the first Trump administration, World War Three almost broke out, with aircraft carriers from my native San Diego deployed continuously to the Gulf to deter Iran, the (Houthi) strike on Saudi Aramco, and the assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad at the beginning of 2020,” he told Arab News.

“Five years later, the Trump administration seems to be repeating the Nixon-Kissinger realist doctrine: ‘America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.’ In that regard, his administration might forge relations with Iran as Nixon did with China.”

Kelly Petillo, program manager for the Middle East and North Africa at the European Council on Foreign Relations, likewise views last week’s events as the beginning of “a new phase of US-Gulf relations.”




President Masoud Pezeshkian, center, and the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran chief Mohammad Eslami during the “National Day of Nuclear Technology” in Tehran. (Iranian Presidency/AFP)

Among the remarkable developments is “Israel’s relative sidelining and the fact that Israel does not have the privileged relationship with Trump it thought it had,” she told Arab News. “The US agenda now is wider than unconditional support to Israel, and alignment with GCC partners is also key.

“Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE have clearly become of key strategic importance to the US, with new deals on the horizon and the promise of expanding these relations. The announcements of more commercial ties have been accompanied with political declarations too, which overall represented positive developments for the region.”

Ultimately, said Caroline Rose, a director at the New Lines Institute, “Trump’s visit to the GCC highlighted two of his foreign policy priorities in the Middle East.

“Firstly, he sought to obtain a series of transactional, bilateral cooperation agreements in sectors such as defense, investment and trade,” she told Arab News.




Trump “sought to obtain a series of transactional, bilateral cooperation agreements in sectors such as defense, investment and trade,” Caroline Rose told Arab News. (Reuters)

“The second objective was to use the trip as a mechanism that could change conditions for ongoing diplomatic negotiations directly with Iran, between Hamas and Israel, and even Ukraine and Russia.”

It was, of course, no accident that Trump chose the Middle East as the destination for the first formal overseas trip of his second presidency.

“The Trump administration sought to court Gulf states closely to signal to other partners in the region, such as Israel, as well as the EU, that it can develop alternative partnerships to achieve what it wants in peace negotiations.”

Although a strategy to move forward with specific peace negotiations was “notably absent during his trip,” it was clear that “this trip was designed to lay the groundwork for potential momentum and to change some of the power dynamics with traditional US partners abroad, sowing the seeds of goodwill that could alter negotiations in the Trump administration’s favor.”


Scuffles, insults as Israelis celebrate Jerusalem Day under shadow of Gaza war

Scuffles, insults as Israelis celebrate Jerusalem Day under shadow of Gaza war
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Scuffles, insults as Israelis celebrate Jerusalem Day under shadow of Gaza war

Scuffles, insults as Israelis celebrate Jerusalem Day under shadow of Gaza war
JERUSALEM: Crowds of Israelis streamed through Jerusalem’s Old City, where some scuffled with residents and hurled insults at Palestinians, as annual celebrations of Israel’s capture of east Jerusalem took place on Monday.
Jerusalem Day, as the celebrations are known, commemorates Israeli forces taking east Jerusalem during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Israel considers all of Jerusalem, including the annexed Palestinian-majority east, its indivisible capital. The international community, however, does not recognize this, and Palestinians seek east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.
Far-right Israeli minister Itamar Ben Gvir on Monday visited the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, to mark the occasion, which was being held for a second year under the shadow of the war in Gaza.
“I ascended to the Temple Mount for Jerusalem Day, and prayed for victory in the war” and the return of hostages held in Gaza, said the national security minister, whose past visits to the site have sparked anger among Palestinians and their supporters.
The Al-Aqsa mosque is Islam’s third-holiest site and a symbol of Palestinian national identity.
The Temple Mount is Judaism’s holiest place, though Jews are forbidden from praying there.
Every year, thousands of Israeli nationalists, many of them religious Jews, march through Jerusalem and its annexed Old City, including in predominantly Palestinian neighborhoods, waving Israeli flags, dancing and sometimes accosting residents.
The route ends at the Western Wall, the last remnant of the Second Temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, the holiest site where Jews are allowed to pray.
“After so many years that the people of Israel were not here in Jerusalem and in the land of Israel, we arrived here and conquered Jerusalem, the Temple Mount and the Western Wall,” said 21-year-old Yeshiva student Yosef Azoulai. “So we celebrate this day in which we won over all our enemies.”
Groups of Israeli youths were seen confronting Palestinian shopkeepers, passersby and schoolchildren, as well as Israeli rights activists and police, at times spitting on people, lobbing insults and trying to force their way into houses.
Some chanted “death to Arabs,” “may your village burn” and “Gaza belongs to us,” drawing the occasional uncomfortable look from families making their way to the Western Wall.
As evening settled in, large crowds had congregated to celebrate at the holy site.
Authorities sometimes order Palestinian shops in the Old City to shut, though business owners this year said they had mostly closed down out of fear of harassment.
Outside the Old City, former Knesset member Moshe Feiglin was advertising his far-right political party Identity.
“Every nation and every religion has its capital... but for some reason, all the nations want a part of our one and only holy city,” he said.
“Jerusalem belongs to the Jews and only to the Jews,” he added.
This year’s Jerusalem Day comes amid renewed calls by some Israeli right-wing figures to annex more Palestinian territory as the war in Gaza rages.
On Monday, the Israeli army said three projectiles were launched from Gaza, two falling inside the territory and one intercepted.
In 2021, Hamas launched rockets toward Jerusalem as marchers approached the Old City, sparking a 12-day war in Gaza and outbreaks of violence in Israel between Israelis and Palestinians.
Israel banned the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, from operating in east Jerusalem earlier this year over accusations it provided cover for Hamas militants, and on Monday, a group of Israelis forced their way into one its vacated compounds in the city.
“The group asserted they were ‘liberating’” the facility, UNWRA West Bank director Roland Friedrich said on X.
“The group brought flags and erected banners, seeking to claim the compound for the establishment of a new Israeli neighborhood. Israeli police, alerted to the scene, failed to protect the inviolability of the @UN premises.”
The police, who deployed in force, said that over the course of the day “officers have handled numerous cases of suspects involved in public disturbances.”
In the morning, peace activists handed out flowers to challenge what they saw as the main march’s divisive message.
Orly Likhovski of the Israel Religious Action Center said those taking part in the peace event were “not willing to accept that this day is marked by violence and racism,” adding they hoped to represent “a Jewish voice for a different kind of Jerusalem.”
Some Palestinians accepted the flowers, but one elderly man near Damascus Gate politely refused, saying: “Do you see what is happening in Gaza? I’m sorry, but I cannot accept.”
In a rare move, the Israeli cabinet met nearby in the predominantly Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, home to an archaeological site known as the City of David — believed to mark the biblical location of Jerusalem.
At the meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to “keep Jerusalem united, whole, and under Israeli sovereignty.”
Since June 1967, Israeli settlement in the eastern part of the city — considered illegal under international law — has expanded, drawing regular international criticism.

UK surgeon in Gaza says ‘never seen so many blast injuries’

Rescuers place a casualty to transport them on a stretcher, in Khan Younis, Gaza, May 23, 2025, in this screengrab.
Rescuers place a casualty to transport them on a stretcher, in Khan Younis, Gaza, May 23, 2025, in this screengrab.
Updated 26 May 2025
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UK surgeon in Gaza says ‘never seen so many blast injuries’

Rescuers place a casualty to transport them on a stretcher, in Khan Younis, Gaza, May 23, 2025, in this screengrab.
  • “I’ve never seen so many blast injuries in my life and I’ve never seen so many injuries in Gaza in my life,” said Victoria Rose
  • Rose said she had seen a lot of severe burns, typical injuries for people who have been in an explosion

KHAN YUNIS: A British surgeon visiting a Gaza hospital said Monday she had “never seen so many blast injuries” as Israel ramps up operations in the coastal Palestinian territory ravaged by 20 months of war.
“I’ve never seen so many blast injuries in my life and I’ve never seen so many injuries in Gaza in my life,” said Victoria Rose, a part of a British medical delegation to Nasser Hospital in south Gaza’s Khan Yunis.
Rose, who has previously visited Gaza to work, said she had seen a lot of severe burns, typical injuries for people who have been in an explosion.
“We’re seeing these injuries in really small children as well,” Rose said from Nasser Hospital’s paediatric wing.
With Israel conducting dozens of air strikes every day in Gaza since restarting bombardments on March 18, humanitarians have said that nowhere is safe in Gaza.
The surgeon added that the large burns she had witnessed during her visit “are very difficult to survive from even in the Western countries where there is no war, and we have functioning hospitals and all the medical supplies at our fingertips.”
“So, here, most of these burns are going to be unsurvivable.”
Rose said the other type of injuries from blasts occurred when “whatever is around you gets whipped up in the explosion and ejected at very high force, and that then hits the civilians and it causes penetrating injuries.”
Often, the victims suffer partial or complete amputations in the bombings, Rose said, and because they are living in tents they turn up with large amounts of dirt in their wounds.
“Our first course of action is to try and clean the wounds, and then to try and cover them and salvage as much of the body part as we can.”
These challenges are compounded by the dwindling number of functional medical facilities in Gaza, Rose said, including Nasser Hospital.
“On the second floor, one of the wards has been blown up, and also on the fourth floor the burns unit was blown up.”
The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said last week that “94 percent of the hospitals in Gaza are now damaged or destroyed, and half of them are no longer operational.”
Rescuers said Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip killed at least 52 people on Monday, 33 of them in a school turned shelter.


Sweden to summon Israeli ambassador over Gaza

Palestinians inspect the damage at school used as a shelter by displaced residents that was hit by Israeli military strike.
Palestinians inspect the damage at school used as a shelter by displaced residents that was hit by Israeli military strike.
Updated 26 May 2025
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Sweden to summon Israeli ambassador over Gaza

Palestinians inspect the damage at school used as a shelter by displaced residents that was hit by Israeli military strike.
  • Kristersson told Swedish news agency TT that the EU should impose sanctions and exert diplomatic pressure on Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza

COPENHAGEN: Sweden’s foreign ministry will summon Israel’s ambassador in Stockholm to protest against a lack of humanitarian aid to people in Gaza, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said on Monday.
Last week, under growing international pressure, Israeli authorities allowed a trickle of aid into the Palestinian enclave but the few hundred trucks carried only a tiny fraction of the food needed by a population of 2 million at risk of famine after nearly three months of blockade.
Kristersson told Swedish news agency TT that the European Union should impose sanctions and exert diplomatic pressure on Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.
“We have been incredibly clear about that, ourselves and together with many other European countries,” Kristersson told TT.
“That pressure is now increasing, no doubt, and for very good reasons,” he said.
The Swedish prime minister’s office confirmed to Reuters that Kristersson had made the statement.
Israel launched an air and ground war in Gaza after Hamas militants’ cross-border attack on October 7, 2023, which killed some 1,200 people by Israeli tallies and saw 251 hostages abducted into Gaza.
The Israeli campaign has since killed more than 53,900 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, and devastated the coastal strip. Aid groups say signs of severe malnutrition are widespread.


World Food Programme chief rejects Israeli claims of Hamas stealing aid

World Food Programme chief rejects Israeli claims of Hamas stealing aid
Updated 26 May 2025
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World Food Programme chief rejects Israeli claims of Hamas stealing aid

World Food Programme chief rejects Israeli claims of Hamas stealing aid
  • ‘No evidence’ militant group is involved in truck hijackings, Cindy McCain tells CBS
  • Aid vehicles being swarmed by ‘desperate’ people after months-long blockade

LONDON: UN World Food Programme chief Cindy McCain has rejected Israeli government claims that Hamas is looting aid trucks arriving in Gaza, The Independent reported.

The widow of late US Sen. John McCain has repeatedly advocated for Israel to allow more aid into the Palestinian enclave, which was placed under a months-long blockade in March.

The first aid trucks began arriving in the territory last week, but the Israeli government accused Hamas of disrupting the distribution process, claiming to have killed six people affiliated with the group near an aid point at the Kerem Shalom crossing on Friday. Hamas said the armed men were guarding against looting.

An Israeli military spokesperson told Reuters: “Hamas constantly calls the looters ‘guards’ or protectors’ to mask the fact that they’re disturbing the aid process.”

Speaking to “Face the Nation” on CBS on Sunday, McCain was asked by host Margaret Brennan: “Have you seen evidence that it is Hamas stealing the food?”

McCain replied: “No. Not at all. Not in this round. Listen, these people are desperate, and they see a World Food Programme truck coming in, and they run for it. This doesn’t have anything to do with Hamas or any kind of organized crime, or anything.”

She described the situation in Gaza as a “catastrophe,” and said the WFP would continue work urgently to transport food and fresh water into the enclave.

So far, the aid trucks that have entered Gaza are “a drop in the bucket as to what’s needed,” she told CBS.

“Right now, we have 500,000 people inside of Gaza that are extremely food insecure, and could be on the verge of famine if we don’t help bring them back from that.”

Contrary to Israeli claims that many of the aid trucks entering Gaza are being hijacked, McCain said they are being swarmed by “desperate” people. “Having been in a food riot myself some years ago, I understand the desperation,” she added.


UK must restart processing of Syrian asylum claims: Charity

UK must restart processing of Syrian asylum claims: Charity
Updated 26 May 2025
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UK must restart processing of Syrian asylum claims: Charity

UK must restart processing of Syrian asylum claims: Charity
  • More than 7,000 Syrians remain in ‘indefinite limbo’
  • Britain paused claim decisions after fall of Assad regime in December

LONDON: Government ministers in the UK are facing calls to restart the processing of Syrian asylum applications after new figures revealed that more than 7,000 people remain in “indefinite limbo.”

After the fall of the Assad regime in December, the UK paused decisions on Syrian asylum and permanent resettlement claims, the BBC reported.

The pause has remained in place for five months, but now many Syrians living in Britain have been left in limbo, awaiting decisions on their applications.

The Refugee Council charity has called for the resumption of claim processing on a case-by-case basis, while the government said decisions were paused “while we assess the current situation.”

The Home Office lacks “stable, objective information available to make robust assessments of risk” relating to Syrians, a source told the BBC, adding that Britain’s policy on the matter “will remain under constant review.”

The newest figures, for the end of March, show that 7,386 Syrians in the UK are awaiting an initial decision on their asylum claims.

After the UK paused decisions on Syrian asylum applications, the number of claims filed by Syrian nationals fell by 81 percent, figures show.

Those claiming asylum often lack the right to work in Britain, but are provided with government-funded accommodation and financial support.

This leaves many Syrians “stuck in limbo” and increases the burden on the taxpayer, said Jon Featonby, chief policy analyst at the Refugee Council.

At the end of March, more than 5,500 Syrians were living in UK government-funded accommodation.

The British government has pledged to clear the large backlog of overall asylum claims, but Featonby said the Syrian issue is creating a “blockage” in the system.

He added that many Syrians also fear the UK government changing its position on the Syrian Arab Republic and judging it a safe country. This could lead to the rejection of thousands of asylum applications.