President-elect Donald Trump’s January 6 warning that “all hell will break out in the Middle East” if American and Israeli hostages held by Hamas are not released by his first day in office is hardly an idle threat.
Nevertheless, while Trump’s pick for special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, indicates that U.S. negotiators are making progress in securing a hostage deal, a range of complicated and contentious regional issues beckon.
Though the incoming administration is hopeful they will not have to deal with the war in Gaza,the fragile situation in Syria following the recent collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorial regime and the even more pressing matter of Iran’s perilous campaign to cross the nuclear Rubicondemand America’s undivided attention.
The president-elect would clearly prefer to deal with matters in the Western Hemisphere (namely Mexico, Canada, Panama, and Greenland), but it is the inescapable issues in the Middle East that will necessitate regional friends, allies, partners, and interlocutors.
I’ve worked the Middle East beat for more than two decades. There’s never a dull moment. But the events of the past year have taken chronic conflicts to an entirely new level.
Just weeks before President-elect Trump was to begin his second term, Syria’s 50-year-old Assad dynasty folded like a deck of cards, therein setting the stage for a regional upheaval, dealing the incoming administration a challenging hand.
The exacerbation of Middle East disorders arrived against the backdrop of a war in Ukraine that had taken a turn for the worse, China boldly projecting military power in the Western Pacific, and an ISIS inspired attack on the American homeland.
If Washington plans to attend to vital national security interests in the MENA region in the year ahead, it will need cooperation from a variety of allies – especially Qatar.
The incoming American president assumes the highest office having pledged to end forever wars and avoid overseas entanglements. Living up to this commitment requires addressing the threat posed by Tehran at a moment when the Islamic Republic has lost geopolitical ground in the region and may be on the cusp of an historic political transition at home.
An Iran that is vulnerable is likely to behave impulsively – both on the nuclear front and in neighboring Iraq – if only to garner leverage ahead of what is certain to be a hardened American posture under Trump.
But Iran isn’t the only challenge in the region. Turkey’s emergence as the biggest beneficiary of the weakening Iranian grip over the Levant and its status as the principal backer of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), along with other militias that toppled the 50-year-old Syrian state, means that Ankara now maintains a disproportionate degree of influence in shaping the post-Assad order in the Levantine nation. This puts it at odds with its nemesis, the U.S.-backed Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces, which control large swathes of territory in the country’s east – stretching from the Turkish-Syrian border to the Euphrates river. This is a circumstance the Islamic State has exploited and willagain.
Meanwhile, Israel’s efforts to roll back Iranian influence on its northern flank in the wake of Hamas’ October 7, 2023,attack has had the unintended consequence of empowering Sunni jihadists. This explains why Israeli Defense Forces moved to create a buffer zone for an indefinite amount of time north of the Golan Heights stretching to Mount Hermon along the Syrian-Lebanese border. The situation has the potential to create friction between Syria’s new ruling elite dominated by Sunni Islamists and, by extension, further aggravate Turkish-Israeli relations, which are already in poor shape.
As these new dynamics play out, conflicts in Lebanon and Gaza linger. A fragile truce appears to be holding in Lebanon, but the violence is far from over. Similarly, the Hamas regime in Gaza has not been fully dismantled and the Palestinian Islamist group is still holding scores of hostages. Elsewhere, in Yemen the Houthis retain the ability to disrupt maritime traffic and mount attacks on Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. On a separate but related note, the Saudis and the Emiratis, while happy to see Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance cut down to size, are wary of Turkey’s growing influence in Syria via the empowerment of Islamists there.
The Trump administration will have to work with each of these regional players. But there is one common denominator– the energy-rich state of Qatar in the Arabian Gulf, a nation with ties to all of the aforementioned stakeholders. Doha maintained a positive working relationship with the first Trump administration, as evidenced by Washington’s mediation that produced a settlement between the Qatari emirate when it faced a Saudi-Emirati-Bahraini blockade.
More importantly, Qatar played a critical role in the 2020 agreement between the Trump administration and the Taliban, which allowed the U.S. to complete its military withdrawal from Afghanistan. Likewise, Qatar (along with Egypt) wields influence over Hamas, which will be critical in securing the release of hostages held in Gaza. Likewise, Doha has considerable influence over HTS and is the primary Arab state ally of Turkey.
These relationships will be helpful if the Trump White House wishes to keep conflicts in Syria at bay. The Qataris also have a relationship with Iran, which could be leveraged to induce behavioral change by the belligerent regime or at least buy time for the Iranian resistance to topple the mullahs from within.
The incoming Trump administration arrives in Washington at a moment of heightened global tensions and increased foreign policy challenges. If it is to succeed in not getting bogged down in a Middle East morass, it will need allies and intermediaries to help achieve its America First mission.
Ivan Sascha Sheehan is a professor of Public and International affairs and the associate dean of the College of Public Affairs at the University of Baltimore. Opinions expressed are his own. Follow him on X @ProfSheehan