Trump and Harris on Middle East Policy
Are there major differences between the two candidates in approaches to the region, or are they mostly the same?
Political professionals often insist that Americans do not vote on foreign policy issues. There is reason to believe them. Issues like the economy, healthcare, education, and crime are often American’s top concerns with immigration being the most prominent issue combining foreign and domestic policy. The idea that President Joe Biden was going to lose November’s presidential election because of his handling of the war between Israel and Hamas rather than the problems at the southern border, the lingering effects of inflation, or his age and infirmity was unlikely. Nevertheless, Gaza and President Biden’s electoral prospects remained the storyline for some time after the Michigan and Minnesota primaries.
Yet, even if events in the Middle East will not likely be decisive in the election, it is important to understand how Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump might approach the region. This is a more difficult exercise than it seems at first glance. Trump’s peculiar style of governing and his disdain for the policy process suggests that the past may not be much of a guide for the future.
For her part, the Vice President is tethered to President Biden’s policies and only on a few occasions has she diverged—if ever so slightly—from him on the Middle East (or any other issue). Because it is so rare, those apparent and mostly rhetorical differences between Harris and Biden have been magnified and endlessly parsed by partisans seeking to promote their particular narratives in the election but shed little light on what Harris might do about the region once in the Oval Office.
Overall, it is hard to draw any firm conclusions about either candidate when it comes to the Middle East. There are both clear differences and some overlap between them.
Dealing with Iran
Trump’s possible return to the White House raises the prospect of another four years during which America’s role in the world is defined through an endless and chaotic stream of social media posts and competing interpretations of his words. That experience informs what analysts and journalists expect about U.S. policy in the Middle East during a second Trump administration. For example, in the hyper-partisan political ecosystem in which we are now all forced to exist, President Trump either kept Iran in check or was unnecessarily belligerent toward Tehran. In reality, his policy of “maximum pressure” was little different from President Barack Obama’s campaign of international sanctions to compel the Iranian leadership to the negotiating table. The result of Obama’s maximum pressure was the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Trump described that agreement as the “worst deal in history,” but that does not mean he did not want an agreement, he just wanted one that was “better” than the one his predecessor struck. Will Trump once again seek to draw the Iranians into a negotiation? No one knows. Trump hasn’t said much about Iran other than the fact that the country was broke and, in a box, when he was president. Since his self-image is one of a master negotiator, it is not unreasonable to believe that he thinks he can get an agreement with Iran. This may be a delusion, however. It seems unlikely that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would sign a new deal with the United States after Trump walked away with from the JCPOA.
As an aside, Iran was most definitely not contained throughout Trump’s tenure. Throughout his four years in office, Tehran and its proxies helped the Assad regime demolish Syrian society through mass bloodshed; armed Hezbollah with ever more sophisticated weaponry; consolidated a foothold on the Arabian Peninsula through an alliance with the Houthis; harassed shipping in the Gulf; shot down an American surveillance drone; and attacked two oil facilities in Saudi Arabia. In response to this last provocation, Trump did nothing (with bipartisan support), thereby tossing out four decades of declared U.S. policy to protect the oil fields of the region. He did order the assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Qods Force commander, Qassem Soleimani. Even so, the Iranians continued their malign activities to which Trump did not respond.
Given this record, it is hard to draw a sharp contrast between Trump and Harris on Iran. The current administration’s opponents argue that the White House has been weak with Tehran. This assessment is not wrong. President Biden spent the first two and a half years of his presidency engaged in negotiations with the Iranians to score a new nuclear deal. The administration has consistently “self-deterred” in the face of Iranian provocations or, when it has taken military action, signaled its unwillingness to take the fight directly to Iran and its IRGC.
The difference between the two candidates seems to be stylistic. At times, Trump is bellicose towards Iran, but only pulled the trigger once. More generally, Harris and the Democrats also talk tough—though without Trump’s bellicosity—while seeking to entice the Iranians into better behavior through the promise of sanctions relief.
The sharpest divergence between the candidates relates to the overall relationship with Iran. Vice President Harris presumably shares the general belief among Democratic foreign policy thinkers, analysts, and apparatchiks that with enough incentive, the Iranians will join the United States in forging a new bilateral relationship. There is very little evidence of this in Iran’s approach to the region. It is rather the opposite. Iran’s primary strategic goal is to push Washington out of the Middle East and is prepared to sow considerable chaos to achieve this goal. Trump and the Republicans do not harbor such fantasies, but they have never articulated a strategy for deterring and containing Iran.
U.S.-Israel Relations and the Palestinians
The American approach to Iran is bound up in the relationship with Israel. Here again, the differences may not be as drastic as the heated, emotional rhetoric around the allegedly unbreakable bonds between Washington and Jerusalem. The Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute lays out a range of Israel-friendly policies that Trump would presumably pursue. These include:
Terminating funding for the Palestinian Authority (PA);
Keeping what was an American consulate in East Jerusalem shuttered;
Withdrawing from the UN Human Rights Council (HRC);
Terminating American financial support for the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA); and
Promising to fight the boycott, divestment, and sanction movement at home and abroad.
Harris and the Democrats may be somewhat more indulgent of the excesses of the HRC, but the Biden administration did suspend the funding of UNRWA after the October 2023 attack on southern Israel and has consistently, and without fail, vetoed UN Security Council condemnation of Israel. There is no American consulate in East Jerusalem because the Biden White House could not overcome Israeli objections.
If the America First Policy Institute can be taken as a reflection of Trump’s actual thinking, there is a difference between him and Harris on the PA. Defunding it would force its collapse, the unintended consequence of which would be Israeli responsibility for the approximately 2.5 million Palestinians there. If she remains consistent with Biden, Harris will want to revive it. It is unclear how the United States can do that, but the divergence with Trump on this issue is clear. It also seems clear that Trump and Harris would differ on military assistance to Israel. It seems unlikely that the former would pause or slowdown weapons shipments to the Israel Defense Forces as the Biden-Harris administration has done. Knowing what we know about how important Israel is to Trump’s evangelical constituency—which tends to support maximal Israeli policies—it is likely that Trump would release whatever holds there are on weapons destined for Israel.
The remaining difference between the two on Israel relates once again to style. There is a view—one that Trump likes to cultivate—that the 45th president was the most pro-Israel president. He cites the U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem, recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and the Abraham Accords. These are undoubtedly pro-Israel moves, but there were sources of tension between the Trump White House and the Israeli government.
If Jared Kushner’s memoir is to be believed, Netanyahu’s trust deficit with Trump rivaled that between his predecessor, Barack Obama, and the Israeli prime minister. Still, these differences never spilled into public view—whereas Biden and Harris have been willing to let the press know of their abiding frustration with Netanyahu, even if it has not altered U.S. military support for the Israelis. In addition, it is hard to imagine that a new President Trump would publicly acknowledge the devastation that has befallen the people of the Gaza Strip. Even if the numbers of civilians killed there are a matter of dispute, the tragedy in Gaza is self-evident. That the Vice President’s words on this matter can be construed by some as anti-Israel speaks to the overwrought emotionalism of the bilateral relationship. Of course, Palestinians and their supporters dismiss Harris’s recognition of Palestinian suffering as empty words.
On the biggest issue of all—the two-state solution—Trump and Harris are in full agreement. They both support it—at least they both did prior to the war with Hamas. During his time in office, Trump tabled a plan called, “Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People.” Never mind the details, which were unworkable and offered the Palestinians little in the way of actual sovereignty, this was Trump’s version of the two-state solution—his “deal of the century.” The former president’s self-image as a dealmaker par excellence and his desire to show up and outdo an elite establishment he loathes motivates him. Despite the daunting obstacles, settling the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis seems like a perfect way to demonstrate both.
Trump has not talked about a two-state solution, and likely will defer to the desires of the Israeli government on this issue, but it will likely be hard for him to resist this goal. Harris, a standard Democrat, will devote time to Middle East peacemaking after the war’s end (whenever that happens), if only because that is what the American foreign policy community does.
The Saudi Relationship
And then there is Saudi Arabia. Like any president who entered the Oval Office at the time Trump was inaugurated, the Kingdom was the last of the big Arab states still standing. The manifold and complex problems of Egypt, Iraq’s ongoing instability, and the natural limits on small, wealthy states like the United Arab Emirates and Qatar elevated Saudi Arabia. Even if he was not inclined to forge good relations with the Saudis, geopolitics dictated that Trump would gravitate toward Riyadh. This is not a significantly different story from the Biden-Harris administration. At first, the White House sought to hold the Saudi leadership at arm’s length whereas Trump embraced them. Yet global developments forced Biden to capitulate. A fist bump is not the sword dance, but the practical effect was largely the same—a strengthening of bilateral ties between Washington and Riyadh.
It seems likely that Trump will pick up where he left off. He will, like Biden and Harris have, seek Israel-Saudi normalization, which is part of an effort to negotiate a security agreement between Washington and Riyadh. Here is the rub, however. Trump may not be willing to sign a security pact with the Saudis. This would run against the grain of his America First ethos and his belief—going back decades—that the Saudis should pay the United States for the security it provides the Kingdom. Harris would also be interested in expanding the Abraham Accords and in contrast to Trump, may very well remain inclined toward a security pact. Progressives are not likely to let her get away with it without a big fight over Saudi Arabia’s human rights record. In the grand scheme of things, a security agreement with the Kingdom is more important than Saudi-Israel normalization, but neither possible administration may be willing to do it.
Finally, Trump and Harris on the question of America’s role in the Middle East. While in office, Trump both withdrew and sent forces to the region—as developments dictated—while maintaining fidelity to the idea of “ending forever wars.” The Biden-Harris team also wanted to “de-emphasize” the Middle East and early on, withdrew forces and weapons systems from the region much to the lasting chagrin of the Saudis and Emiratis.
Both Trump and the Biden-Harris administration (and Obama before them both) were reacting to America’s over-ambitions to transform the Middle East that spanned the mid-1990s through two Bush administrations at the turn of the century. Yet, retrenchment was more a political position than an actual strategy. It is all moot now given America’s commitment to supporting Israeli security, ensuring the free flow of oil, and preventing challenges to both—which became more urgent since Hamas terrorists descended on Israel last October and went on a killing rampage.
Whether Trump or Harris is elected in November, their differences in approach to the region are smaller than what America’s political discourse suggests. Maybe that reflects the so-called “uni-party,” though more likely, it is the result of what Americans are willing to invest and defend—in other words, our nation’s interests.
Steven A. Cook (@stevenacook) is the Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of several books on the Middle East. His latest book, The End of Ambition: America’s Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East, was released this summer.
There are two reasons to be cautiously hopeful that Trump could be better than Harris on foreign policy. Their names are Robert F. Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard. Kennedy says nothing new on Israel but he has been very clear that he views the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine as a dangerous folly that is not in our national interest. Tulsi has long been a couragous voice against wars of choice and against the influence of the defense contractor lobby.
Biden Harris foreign policy has been nothing short of catastrophic.
We are on the verge of a war with Iran. If Israel attacks Iran, Iran will attack Israel and then the US will, as always, be 100% committed to defending Israel. In Ukraine, Putin and Russia cannot afford to lose this war and there is no reason why they should given their nuclear arsenal, large military, and much larger population than Ukraine. Russia is pushed into the arms of China. All of the above policies have had zero benefit to Americans, and meanwhile we can't even police our own southern border. Billions of dollars go overseas to kill and destroy instead of investing in our schools, roads, environment.
Trump could hardly do worse, whatever his faults.
There are several problems with this, but let me focus on one: the degree to which venality drives Trump's "policies" in the Middle East. He (and his family) clearly prioritize the tantalizing prospect of deals with Saudi Arabia and the gulf states: this may appear to benefit Israel (the Abraham Accords) but in the end it is a vulnerability for Israel because one doesn't know what it will trigger in the future. Similarly, his policies toward Israel and the Palestinians are susceptible to undue influence by domestic political and financial considerations, rather than considerations of either US interests or of finding some kind of stable peace. Just recall the gloating face of Sheldon Adelson at the ceremony moving the embassy to Jerusalem if you doubt this. I think a good case can be made that Harris will be more objective, more focused on real US interests, and much more interested in searching for a just peace with dignity for the Palestinians and security for the Israelis.