Overview
The incoming Trump administration will face challenges in the Middle East unlike anything seen since 1945. The region is embroiled in a slow-motion, high-intensity war that blazes across vast geographies and involves multiple traditional partners and non-state actors. During the past year, American military personnel have often found themselves in combat with Iranian proxies who launched a stream of missiles and drones against U.S. and partner civilian and military shipping. ISIS is a shadow of its former self, but shows troubling signs of expansion. However, Trump strategists, our regional partners, and adversaries also operate in a new world that may offer new approaches to intractable problems. Iran’s Axis of Resistance has suffered catastrophic defeats in Gaza and Lebanon. Tehran’s air defenses collapsed in the face of Israeli air strikes. The Islamic Republic has not seemed so vulnerable to foreign attack since the Iran-Iraq War.
America’s response must reflect the collapse of multiple assumptions that defined U.S. foreign policy in the region for at least two decades. Such a strategy in less turbulent times would test any administration. When one considers the urgent threats from China and Russia, an early, clear, and well-staffed Middle East strategy becomes essential for U.S. national security and global stability.
Defining America’s strategic goals in the region won’t be difficult. In the near term, preventing an intensification of regional conflict will be paramount while at the same time blocking Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon. Ensuring energy market stability and freedom of navigation for global trade are also priorities. Limiting Chinese and Russian influence over this key geography will also be important.
Executing a new strategy will take time and attention to three principles. First, we must tighten our partnership with regional players committed to transformational actions that contribute to stability in the Middle East and eastern Africa. Second, we need to build an international architecture that constrains ISIS, Iranian malign adventurism and the lethal reach of Tehran’s proxies. Doing so requires a serious effort to neutralize the reach of Iran’s Quds Force. Last, we need to be clear that we will not be put in a position where we seek solutions more than the parties involved. The previous Trump administration’s achievements against ISIS, ability to impose biting sanctions on Iran, and establishment of the Abraham Accords proves that success is possible.
The Enduring Importance of the Middle East
The Middle East remains central to multiple core U.S. national security interests.
- Stretching from North Africa to the Levant, Iran to the Arabian Sea, the region includes five strategic global chokepoints: the Strait of Gibraltar, the Bosphorus, the Suez Canal, The Bab al-Mandab, and the Strait of Hormuz. A vast percentage of international trade, energy, communications, and transportation pour through these arteries every hour. Depending on its destination, between twenty and thirty percent of global trade moves through these chokepoints. Between seventeen and thirty percent of global internet traffic transits fiber cables in Egypt and the Red Sea. The ambitious India– Middle East–Europe Corridor (IMEC) that would integrate the economies of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia involves multiple regional partners.
- The region’s religious sites are important to billions of Christians, Jews and Sunni and Shia Muslims who look to Jerusalem, Mecca, and Najaf daily. Influencing interfaith engagement, counter-extremism, human rights, and counterterrorism cannot be done without the cooperation of regional leaders.
- The region’s self-generated social and economic transformation will not only reshape its wealthy societies but also provide the investments needed to improve the stability of fragile regional states and overcome the developmental challenges of Africa. The assets managed by the Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC) sovereign wealth funds exceed a staggering USD four trillion, or more than thirty-seven percent of the global total.
- The region increasingly operates on a global stage. Israel offers world-class technology. The GCC countries are expanding infrastructure investments throughout Africa, Latin America, India, and Asia, competing with China and discouraging corruption. Traditional regional hydrocarbon producers are heavily focused on renewable energy production. The emphasis placed by the United Arab Emirates on COP 28 represented a new focus on a stable transition to greener energies, financial compensation for countries damaged by climate change, and investment in new energy technologies. Gulf leaders have embraced artificial intelligence (AI), as the foundation of their social and economic development for the next century. The AI investments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates alone will likely exceed one hundred billion dollars.
- Last, Beijing and Moscow also consider the Middle East important for their national interests and welcome opportunities to undercut American influence.
But if the Middle East’s opportunities are vast, so are its challenges. The region’s political topography is littered with broken states dominated by non-state actors and fragile states in critical locations. Many of the region’s trouble spots are dominated by Iran-sponsored militants or leaders incapable of reform Violent aggressors routinely use weapons designed to inflict mass casualties against civilian populations and will sacrifice their own people for propaganda purposes.
A World of Shattered Assumptions and New Realities
For the U.S. and its partners, events of recent years led to the collapse of longstanding assumptions about Iran and its proxies that shaped U.S. foreign policy for decades. For Iran, the new reality represents the most dramatic challenge to its national security strategies since the Iran-Iraq War. Revolutionary Guard strategists will likely take some time to develop a successor strategy, although Iran’s limited options and lack of allies makes reliance on unconventional, asymmetric tools and non-state partners likely. The catalogue of myths proven false over the past year is considerable.
- Myth: The U.S. is leaving the region and is no longer a dependable security partner for the area.
- Reality: The U.S. repeatedly deployed thousands of personnel and significant military assets to defend Israel and contain regional violence. China and Russia played no significant role against Iran or its proxies.
- Myth: US forces in the region will serve as a deterrent to Iran and its proxies.
- Reality: Despite the presence of powerful U.S. military assets, Tehran launched one of history’s largest missile attacks on Israel.
- Myth: Iran’s militias are not a strategic threat to the region or international community.
- Reality: The human, economic, and political costs of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthi actions and the Israeli response have been extraordinary.
- Myth: An Israeli attack on Iran is only possible with U.S. direct involvement. Since the U.S. is unwilling to attack Iran, Tehran can strike Israel without significant consequences.
- Reality: Although Israel enjoyed significant U.S. defensive support, Israeli Defense Forces conducted massive and complicated air strikes on Iran without U.S. assistance.
- Myth: An Israeli-Iran conflict would be intense and sustained. If Israel attacks Iran, Iran’s proxies will rise up and strike Israel to defend Iran. Tehran will not stand by while Israel assaults its proxies, especially Lebanese Hezbollah.
- Reality: The scale and intensity of Israel-Iranian attacks have been unprecedented, but as of early November 2024, intermittent. Iran’s proxies are no longer capable of strategic threats against Israel. Iran provided no significant support to protect Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Houthis from Israeli attack.
- Myth: The U.S. can remain outside of a war involving Iran and Israel.
- Reality: Tehran’s proxies have attacked U.S. military personnel dozens of times with powerful Iranian missiles and drones in Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and the Red Sea.
- Myth: The international community will quickly step in to end any conflict between Israel and Iran to prevent threats to regional energy production and transportation architecture.
- Reality: No international coalition has formed to halt regional violence. The U.S. and Europe have employed military and diplomatic tools to constrain Israel, blunt Iran’s attacks, and encourage diplomacy. The United Nations, China, and Russia played little role in the conflict
- Myth: If Iran or its proxies attempt to block international trade in the Red Sea, the U.S. and the international community will respond and quickly open the waterway.
- Reality: The disruption of Red Sea traffic continues. Despite dozens of Houthi attacks on US and European naval assets in the Red Sea, the Houthi threat received little attention during the July 2024 NATO conference in Washington.
- Myth: The international community -including Israel and the United States – will never allow Iran to militarize its nuclear program.
- Reality: Iran now routinely produces uranium enriched to sixty percent, generally considered insufficient for a nuclear bomb, but still military grade. Tehran’s lack of cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency has been extensive and well-documented. No country has ever expanded a nuclear program on this scale without eventually building a nuclear weapon. Iran’s rhetoric increasingly sounds as if it is moving towards a decision.
Approaching the Middle East in early 2025
Any long-term Middle East policy will be complicated, multifaceted and will compete with resources needed against other global challenges. Therefore, the initial approach should be aimed at calming the region to lay the foundations for future initiatives, such as Arab-Israeli rapprochement.
- Israel and the Wars in Gaza and Lebanon: Ending the wars in Gaza and Lebanon must be a priority, given the capacity of events to hijack any strategy. If the conflicts continue through January 2025, the U.S. should ensure that Israel has the diplomatic, economic, and military support to strategically neutralize Hezbollah and Hamas, end military operations as quickly and humanely as possible, and prevent Iran from rebuilding its shattered proxies. An international force will be needed to stabilize Gaza and the Lebanese Armed Forces must be deployed south of Lebanon’s Litani River. The U.S. should recommit to a two-state solution that also requires substantial security reforms by the Palestinian Authority and a commitment by Israel to establish boundaries of a viable Palestinian state. Regional partners should commit to cease any support or contact with Palestinian militants committed to violence or Iran’s Quds Force.
- Defense and Enhancing Military Partnerships: Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, will be eager for closer security ties with the U.S. The Trump administration should look for opportunities to expand military and intelligence cooperation with key Gulf partners and commit to their defense in case of an Iranian attack. The U.S. should press for progress on regional collective defense through integrated regional ballistic missile and cyber defenses.
- Deterrence and the Challenges of Iran and ISIS: The absence of red lines has brought the U.S. and Iran closer to war than at any time since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979.
- Washington should continue to prioritize diplomacy with Iran but must introduce coercion to make diplomacy meaningful. The Trump administration should announce that it will use military means to halt any Iranian effort to weaponize its nuclear program. The administration should initiate a multilateral effort to confront the Quds Force and punish those countries who enable its efforts. As part of this effort, Washington should undertake military action against Iran and its proxies if they attack U.S. persons, interests (including attacks on shipping), or the U.S. homeland.
- The incoming administration should initiate enforcement of oil sanctions against Iran to begin to starve the regime of revenue, to restore credibility to the U.S. sanctions regime, and to provoke a debate within the regime as to the consequences of its aggression.
- The threat from ISIS has diminished but the group has begun to rebuild itself in Syria. Regional actors should take the lead in countering ISIS resurgence, but they will require steady U.S. support.
- Enhance Economic Integration between the Region and the U.S.: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other GCC countries are committed to the use of artificial intelligence, advanced energy technologies, and global economic integration as the basis for their economic and social transformation. Cementing their programs with U.S. and allied firms on artificial intelligence, space, renewable energy, and encouraging the India– Middle East–Europe Corridor (IMEC) and the Group of Seven Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGI) will integrate our respective national economies much as oil has done since the 1930s.
- Build Congressional Support: Congressional: support will be important to support the military, technical, and policy engagements critical to reset regional policy. Congress must be carefully engaged to ensure this support.
The incoming Trump administration will immediately confront multiple high-priority global priorities and events will draw heavily on policy bandwidth. Early attention to the strategic foundations needed to constrain aggressors, demonstrate our values, and support future initiatives will be critical. A wise approach to the Middle East will require close partnerships with transformational actors, aggressive containment against Iran and its proxies, progress in the Israeli Palestinian conflict, and burden sharing by European and Asian partners.
Norman T. Roule is a former National Intelligence Advisor for Iran.
