Trump 2.0 appointees embolden Israel’s Netanyahu in plot against Iran and reshaping of Mid-East

LONDON – Across the Middle East, the consensus is that Donald Trump’s electoral victory is good news for Israel, bad news for the Palestinians, and a terrible omen for Iran.

Yet, beyond this very broad perspective, much uncertainty persists around the Trump administration’s Middle East policies.

So, everywhere in the region, leaders rush to advertise their demands in the vague hope that they may influence or impress the Trump team.

Legally, US President Joe Biden’s administration remains fully in charge until Jan 20, 2025, when Trump and his ministers are formally sworn in.

In practice, however,

Trump’s electoral victory

has already fatally undermined the credibility of President Biden’s team and its ability to deal with the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, the two conflicts Mr Biden has pledged to end before he leaves the White House.

In early October, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin

issued Israel with an ultimatum,

giving the government one month to restore adequate humanitarian supplies to the Palestinians in besieged Gaza or risk restrictions on deliveries of American weapons.

In keeping with his usual tactics, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spent weeks simply ignoring the US notice and then offered a tiny concession at the very last moment:

A new border crossing from Israel into the Gaza Strip

was opened to humanitarian convoys on Nov 12, just 24 hours before the scheduled expiry of the US ultimatum.

The amount of daily aid now getting through is barely half the 350 aid trucks the US claims are necessary to keep the people of Gaza adequately fed.

Nonetheless, the Biden administration refrained from enforcing penalties, recognising that any punitive measures would likely be reversed by the incoming Trump administration.

With the Biden team’s influence waning, Mr Netanyahu is now largely unchallenged. A government reshuffle has also removed his chief domestic opponents. Negotiations on a ceasefire in Gaza are stalled. And the Israeli army has just expanded its offensive into Lebanon.

The latest senior appointments to Trump’s team only strengthen Israel’s influence in Washington.

Senator Marco Rubio,

the incoming secretary of state,

has laid all the blame for the killing of civilians in Gaza on Hamas, the Palestinian militant organisation. Mr Peter Hegseth, whom Trump just appointed as his defence secretary, is famous for claiming that the US must give Israel all the necessary weapons to “finish the job” of destroying Iran’s military capabilities.

Unsurprisingly, Israel’s hardline politicians now believe they have backing for pushing even further to the complete annexation of occupied Palestinian lands.

Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told a meeting of his Religious Zionism Party on Nov 11 that Trump’s victory offered an “important opportunity” to “apply Israeli sovereignty to the (Jewish) settlements in Judea and Samaria”, as Israeli extremists like to call the West Bank.

Mr Netanyahu has not publicly endorsed these territorial expansion claims. But he recently appointed Dr Yechiel Leiter, a die-hard supporter of illegal settlements on Palestinian territories,

as the Jewish state’s new ambassador to Washington

– a crystal-clear sign of Israel’s latest priorities.

Still, seasoned Israeli political observers doubt that the incoming Trump administration will go along with all of Israel’s demands, as Mr Netanyahu hopes. During Trump’s first presidential term, the US did toy with a plan that would have granted Israel about a third of the West Bank.

But that plan still envisaged the creation of an independent Palestinian state, something Mr Netanyahu strenuously opposes.

The plan was ultimately shelved by Trump in 2020 as part of

the so-called Abraham Accords,

which led to the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and some Arab monarchies in the Gulf.

Trump remains determined to broker the normalisation of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s biggest and wealthiest nation, a move he sees as essential to reducing America’s need to police the Middle East.

And the Saudis are now signalling to the incoming US administration that they will exact a hefty price for going along with Trump’s ideas.

In a speech to an Islamic summit on Nov 11, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – the kingdom’s effective ruler –

denounced Israel for committing “genocide” in Gaza.

He asserted Saudi Arabia’s determination to help “the brothers in Palestine and Lebanon to overcome the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of the ongoing Israeli aggression”.

This was Saudi Arabia’s strongest condemnation of Israel, timed to serve as a warning to Trump that if the incoming US administration tilts too far towards Israel, it will not be able to count on Saudi support.

Meanwhile, the Iranians have to perform an even trickier balancing act.

During Trump’s first term in office, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei repeatedly rejected calls for direct talks with the US. But Iran is in a more difficult economic situation today, and it is also more vulnerable after Israel destroyed Hezbollah, Iran’s chief regional proxy.

As a result, some top Iranian officials are expressing their readiness to engage with Washington.

Mr Masoud Pezeshkian,

elected president of Iran in July

on a moderate political ticket, has hinted at dialogue.

So has Mr Ali Larijani, a former Speaker of the Iranian Parliament and currently an adviser to Supreme Leader Khamenei. Mr Larijani recently said that although Trump “did not act wisely” in the past, “he may have gained more experience” and therefore could follow a “more constructive path” towards Iran now.

And Mr Brian Hook, who served as US special envoy to Iran under the previous Trump presidency and is now managing the transition among America’s diplomats, has reciprocated by denying the incoming administration’s desire to overthrow Iran’s current government.

Still, there is no doubt that Trump’s policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran will be reinstated. Given recent allegations from the US intelligence community that Iranian agents tried to assassinate him during the latest electoral campaign, it is unlikely Trump will be well-disposed to Iran.

Ultimately, however, the only point that all Middle Eastern leaders agree on is that Trump will make many future US policy decisions by himself rather than with the help of his advisers.

And in his usual unpredictable manner.