WhatsappPresident Trump’s Middle Eastern tour to Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar has left many people in Israel and elsewhere bewildered. The billions of dollars in arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE nor for the investment money flowing from these three countries back into the USA is what is strange on its own, but rather the geopolitical shifts these visits are creating that has raised eyebrows.
Trump’s visit to Qatar has made many in Israel and those who in the MAGA movement back in the USA who detest the double dealing Muslim Brotherhood Gulf Country, uncomfortable. The pushback is not necessarily against the business deals alone, but rather the clear conflict of interest those deals project and the adulation Trump and his special envoy Steve Witkoff place on the terror sponsoring nation that many find sickening.
While everyone is overjoyed that Idan Alexander, another hostage is released, it is clear the Emir of Qatar ordered Hamas to do it just before Trump visited. President Trump or members of his team for their part tried to pressure Idan Alexander to come and meet with him and the Emir during Trump’s visit to Qatar. Thankfully, the Alexanders declined and spared the world the propaganda the Qataris were hoping to get from the visit. Unfortunately, Steve Witkoff and Adam Boehler, the two Trump team members enamored with Arab leaders who bankroll terror are leading some hostage families to Doha to meet with the Emir and Trump during his visit. While no one can blame them, the idea that Jews have to grovel at the feet of their arch enemies to beg for them to release their loved ones hearkens back to the days of the Jewish Nation’s dark exile.
There is something surreal going on with President Trump’s visit to not only Qatar, but his meet up with MBS of Saudi Arabia. After all, even before he reaches Doha President Trump is set to meet with former ISIS leader and current dictator of Syria Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa aka Abu Mohammad al-Julani. This is the same Julani accused of ethnically cleansing Kurds, Allawites, Druze, and Christians in Syria. Unfortunately, President Trump decided while in Saudi Arabia to lift US sanctions from Syria - essentially paving the way for normalizing relations as well as removing the $10 million bounty on the former ISIS leader’s head.
True, the lifting of the sanctions came with stipulations, like joining the Abraham Accords, expelling foreign fighters, getting rid of Palestinian terrorist elements, fighting ISIS, and taking control of ISIS detention centers in Kurdish areas. While these are certainly noble goals, there was no mention on protecting minorities or pushing out Turkish occupying forces from the country. The chance of any of this happening while Qatar pumps money into Syria in an attempt to merge it into its growing caliphate, are slim to none.
It is clear Trump met with Julani as a favor to Saudi Arabia in an attempt to woo Syria away from the Turkey-Qatar access, but Julani is ISIS and will never switch sides. President Trump could have made an alliance between the Syrian Kurds, Israel, and the Druze, thus splitting Syria in two, but Qatar and Turkey has been against that. In fact, Trump has been supportive of Turkey’s occupation of Syria.
President Trump often says he will do business with anyone as long as it is a fair deal, but doing business with these sorts of regimes is never done just to make money. Places like Qatar use money to entangle countries into their web of influence. Many Middle East experts like to claim that Iran is the biggest destabilizer in the Middle East, but what they fail to state is that Qatar is for the Sunni world what Iran is for the Shiite world. The Qataris have perfected the art of manipulation. They host the largest American base in the region, while also hosting Hamas leaders as well as paying for most the Jihadists running around Syria and Iraq - the same Jihadists who are killing the minorities America claims to want to protect.
This is sort of paradox is what is driving people crazy. Sure there are a lot of people on the right in America who claim Israel controls US foreign policy, but what is becoming clearer during this trip is that the Gulf States - especially Qatar is gaining an outsized influence.
So will Trump fold? Probably not overtly, but by allowing Qatar to continue to be mainstreamed, meeting with the new Syrian ruler no matter the stipulations and verbally claiming Israel’s war against Hamas must end, the president is shifting pieces so fast that Israel is becoming worried whether he truly has their back.
Although the hostage talks are set to continue over the next few days, the real test is whether Israel finally decides to go into Gaza and finish the job of eradicating the Islamonazis in charge there. Trump ultimately wants quiet in the Middle East and for him at least what he sees is that it is Israel’s operation in Gaza that is holding his vision for a “New Middle East” back.
Perhaps the bigger issue at hand in all of this is a sort of businessman’s naivety on how the Middle East works. The US will have a new president in 3.5 years. The current rulers in the Middle East outside of Israel will most likely still be in power. Any deal Trump has them agree to can be abrogated once he leaves office. This is the challenge of this sort of American foreign policy. Jihadists no matter what clothes they wear never change, but American Presidents always do.
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