As the second Trump administration consolidates itself, Arab media has found the President’s Middle East appointees a “confusing group of loyalists”, even as Israeli media has been startled by picks such as Michael DiMino, the new Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East who is vocally opposed to war with Iran and advocates a diplomatic approach in the region. Trump’s other picks such as Marco Rubio for Secretary of State and Mike Waltz for National Security Advisor are known hawks on Iran. (The nominee for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth awaits Senate confirmation.) Besides the (now paused) war in Gaza, how to deal with Iran will be the most prominent question for US Middle East policy in Trump 2.0. How has the region changed since Trump was last in the Oval Office (2017-21), and what factors could determine the alignment or divergence between Tehran and Washington now? Iran and Trump 2.0 Iran’s situation has evolved significantly since Trump 1.0. The anti-Israel ‘Axis of Resistance’ has been greatly weakened, especially over the past year. But Tehran has cultivated a new positive relationship with its Arab neighbours that sprang from the Saudi-Iran rapprochement brokered by China in 2023. Within Iran, a major shift has taken place. The economic and social tumult in the country worsened under President Ebrahim Raisi (2021-24), a conversative hardliner who at the time of his death last May had been in the race to succeed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as Supreme Leader. Under President Masoud Pezeshkian, Tehran has megaphoned its desire to engage with the West to lift sanctions, while also warning against underestimating its military capabilities and projecting a position of strength through nuclear enrichment. At the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 22, Iran’s Vice President for Strategic Affairs Javad Zarif said he hoped Trump’s second term would see a more “rational” approach towards Iran to ensure regional stability. But in their statements following Trump’s inauguration, both Zarif and Iran’s hardline leaders have made it clear that they should not be seen as being weak. It is evident that Tehran is looking for signals from Washington, even as it prepares for a return of the Trump 1.0 policy of “maximum pressure” through more sanctions. Importantly, Zarif said he believed that the 2018 decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal was imposed on Trump by hawks such as former NSA John Bolton and former US Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook. Bolton, Hook, and Hook’s former boss Mike Pompeo, who was Secretary of State from 2018-20, have not found a place in the second Trump administration. On January 23, two days after DiMino’s appointment as the Pentagon’s Middle East policy chief, the security protections of all three men were pulled. Government affiliated Iranian media have viewed all these as positive signs of change. Changes in the region When Trump first took office in 2017, the Arab world’s relationship with Iran was crisis-ridden. In 2016, Saudi Arabia and Iran had broken diplomatic ties over the execution of Sheikh Nimr, a Saudi Shia cleric. In 2017, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) declared there would be no dialogue with Iran, and then Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir accused Tehran of using its proxies to undermine the sovereignty of Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. The unprecedented blockade of Qatar by the Arab League during 2017-21 was triggered in part by Qatar’s seemingly warm ties with Iran. All of this dovetailed neatly with Trump’s “maximum pressure” approach. Today, Arab states are prioritising regional stability based on economic diversification. Catalysed by their opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza, they have deepened their rapprochement with Iran. Riyadh and Tehran are even exploring defence cooperation. In November 2023, MBS declared that “ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia are at a historic turning point”. That same month, the extraordinary joint summit of the Arab League and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Riyadh passed a resolution terming Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide, and called for a halt to the aggression. The current situation in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq has increased the Arab comfort for engagement with Iran — the Bashar al-Assad regime has collapsed, Hezbollah has lost its senior leadership in Lebanon, and Iraq is working to disarm Iran-backed groups or to integrate them in the Iraqi armed forces. At the November 2024 Arab-Islamic summit in Riyadh, MBS warned Israel against attacking Iran. Arab officials expect that Trump in his second term will recognise the new realities in the Middle East. The Saudi Foreign Minister this week said he did not believe the US would encourage war with Iran. Weighing engagement The ceasefire in Gaza has created conditions for deliberation and contact between Iran and the US. The Trump administration is pushing Israel to withdraw from Lebanon as per the schedule agreed with Hezbollah, denying the Israel Defence Forces the extension that the previous Biden administration had promised. The question is how Tehran and Washington could engage under Trump with neither party having to lose face before their conservative constituencies. Trump remains strongly pro-Israel, and had ordered the first significant direct attack on Iran’s extra-territorial capabilities with the assassination of Maj Gen Qassem Soleimani in Iraq in 2020. The constituency in Iran that Soleimani represented still exists. Whether “maximum pressure” returns will be also subject to the consideration of how new sanctions on Iran might affect global energy markets, which are already strained by US sanctions on Russia — one reason why the Biden administration did not strictly enforce oil-related macro-level sanctions on Iran. At a press conference in New York in September 2024, then candidate Trump had appeared to make an overture to Iran: “We have to make a deal [with Iran] because the consequences are impossible. We have to make a deal.” Trump’s (and Iran’s) dual perspectives notwithstanding, there is indeed some space for an alignment of objectives. The potential full withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, for example, is in line with both Trump’s anti-war objectives and Tehran’s goal of “expelling” “occupiers” from the region. Iran’s desire for a reduced US military presence in the Middle East aligns with Trump’s larger political philosophy. As Israel lobbies for a harsher US line against Iran in return for accommodating Trump’s demands in Gaza and Lebanon, the Arab states present their rapprochement with Iran as the key variable for stability in the region, which requires US support and Israeli cooperation to be preserved. The question is whether Trump will reconcile with a changed Middle East, or whether it will be the other way round. Bashir Ali Abbas is a Senior Research Associate at the Council for Strategic and Defense Research, New Delhi
