Trump’s (Dis)Order and its Impact on the Middle East
A Crown Conversation with Eva Bellin
Organized and edited by Ramyar D. Rossoukh, Associate Director for Research
August 12, 2025
In his second term, President Donald Trump has upended long-standing U.S. approaches to the Middle East. Most notably, on June 22, 2025, he ordered direct strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, crossing a line previous administrations had long avoided. In this Crown Conversation, we speak with Eva Bellin about how this shift is reshaping a region already undergoing a profound reordering of power. Bellin argues that the administration’s transactional style is accelerating authoritarian entrenchment and weakening traditional alliances, with far-reaching implications for the growing influence of Gulf states, the prospects for U.S. involvement in ending the Gaza War, and the future of nuclear diplomacy with Iran.
You argue that there has been a significant shift in President Trump’s second term in how the U.S. engages with the Middle East. Can you elaborate on what defines this shift—and how it is shaping the region?
Eva Bellin: The Trump administration has introduced a new cast to the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. National interest has been reduced to transactional calculation, increasingly focused on serving the President’s narrow elite cohort above all else. Historic alliances, long founded on shared values, have been jettisoned in favor of short-term economic gain. Time horizons have shrunk, with policy initiatives timed not to the election cycle but to the news cycle—driven by the President’s embrace of distraction and confusion as tools of power.
This shift in U.S. conduct abroad is evident everywhere: from the turn in U.S. alliances in Europe—away from mature democracies like France and Germany and toward populist authoritarian regimes like Hungary—to the administration’s mercurial stance on Russia’s war in Ukraine, and its ever-changing positions on tariffs and trade. Never before has the U.S. exercised its great power in such cavalier and wanton fashion. This change is especially consequential in the Middle East, long shaped by U.S. power and rhetoric.
In the Middle East, the U.S. has long prioritized access to oil and gas supplies and the cultivation of allies in the war against terrorism and Islamic radicalism over commitment to value-driven projects such as democratization and the protection of human rights. While democratic promotion and rights protection have not been entirely absent from U.S. policy, they have consistently ranked lower on the list of strategic priorities in the region. [1]
There is little question that Trump’s shift toward a more transactional approach to international relations will reinforce authoritarian trends in the region and contribute to a retreat on human rights. Even during his first term as president, Trump expressed an approach often couched in the language of self-determination. While visiting Saudi Arabia in May 2017, he announced: “We are not here to lecture. We are not here to tell other people how to live, what to do, who to be…. we are here to offer partnership…to pursue a better future for us all.” The message, promising non-interference in the political conduct of leaders in the region, has been warmly received by local autocrats.
Trump has expressly conveyed his eagerness to do deals with Gulf leaders, regardless of their autocratic leanings. And the administration’s defunding of human rights and democratization programs—including the retraction of $3 billion a year of democracy aid and the retreat from human rights reportage by the State Department—will almost certainly undermine efforts to advance democracy and human rights globally, including in the Middle East. We are seeing a clear break with the efforts of past administrations which sought to cultivate democratic leadership and robust civil society organizations in the region through such programs as the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and the Human Rights and Democracy Fund (HRDF). All of these programs are now in jeopardy.
You mentioned Trump’s rapport with Gulf leaders. Before we turn to other issues, what should we understand about the current political landscape in the Middle East—and how might that shape the way the Trump administration engages the region?
Bellin: One of the developments least anticipated by scholars of the region has been the dramatic shift in regional power dynamics in the Middle East over the past 10 to 15 years. Specifically, we’ve seen a sharp decline in Egypt’s international sway, a significant contraction in Iran’s regional power, and a stunning rise in the influence of the Gulf countries.
For decades, Egypt was the undisputed center of gravity in the Arab world. From the second half of the 20th century through the early 2000s, Cairo shaped nearly every major act of war and peace in the region. Egypt’s leadership was a consequence of several factors: it commanded the largest army in the region, which gave it leverage in regional relations; the sheer size of its economy granted it influence, even if not prosperity; and it served as the cultural epicenter of the Arab world, with Cairene studios producing the music and films that set the tone for the entire region. And not to be ignored, for a good thirty years Egypt was renowned for its extraordinary leadership, first the charismatic Gamal Abdul Nasser, later the norm breaking Anwar Sadat, both of whom reshaped and re-envisioned the political landscape of the region in consequential ways.
Before the 1979 Iranian revolution, Iran was one of the United States’ most powerful allies in the region. After 1979, however, that power was reshaped in fundamental ways. Iran’s regional influence grew out of an ideological ambition to spread revolution and a network of front-line allies—Hezbollah in Lebanon, Assad’s regime in Syria, and others—that came to form the so-called “axis of resistance.”
By contrast, the Gulf states had long played a secondary role. Although they exercised influence through petro-dollars and, in the case of Saudi Arabia, exported an Islamist cultural vision, they were generally not viewed as major actors in regional diplomacy. Nasser famously dismissed them as mere lackeys of Western imperialism during his prolonged clash with them during the Arab Cold War. [2]
But over the past decade, this hierarchy has been upended. Egypt is no longer the epicenter of the region. Technological change has played a key role in this development. Wars are won today with missiles and drones, diminishing the relevance of manpower-based armies. The internet and social media have democratized the founts of culture, eroding Cairo’s cultural dominance. In addition, years of economic mismanagement and indebtedness have turned Egypt into more of a beggar than a regional leader. And the absence of charismatic or visionary leadership since Mubarak has only accelerated Egypt’s decline.
Iran too has seen its power contract—but for reasons far more immediate. Its decline has been much more shocking and unexpected—shaped by the unforeseen consequences of Israel’s response to the war in Gaza. First, Israel took out Hezbollah. Then, in December 2024, Syria fell. All this dramatically compromised Iran’s “axis of resistance.” Israel was freer to target Iran’s missile capacity and, eventually, Iran’s nuclear assets as well. Suddenly, the Iranian regime has proven existentially vulnerable in ways unprecedented since its rise through revolution.
Meanwhile, the Gulf states have emerged as regional leaders. Once dismissed as subservient to the West or anathema to other more “modern” Arab states, they are asserting themselves as economic and political leaders in the region. Saudi Arabia has begun charting a new economic path with the inauguration of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s Vision 2030 plan—a plan that promises to unlock new post-petroleum development possibilities and diversify the country’s assets economically, socially, and culturally. The UAE and Bahrain have launched the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations between Israel and many of its Arab neighbors and potentially carving a pathway to broader peace in the region. In an equally striking turn, over the past two years Saudi Arabia and the UAE have begun cultivating a rapprochement with their historic rival Iran, creating all sorts of new opportunities, both economic and political.
This regional power reset is not the work of the Trump administration. But it is one that Trump has eagerly embraced. Trump’s transactional approach to politics, his pursuit of personal and financial gain (for himself, his family, and his allies) has aligned seamlessly with the Gulf’s own deal-making ethos. Trump and the Gulf states understand one another and follow the money. Historical ties to Egypt be damned. And even long-standing enmity toward Iran can be set aside if there are deals to be had.
How do you see the U.S. invasion of Iraq and its aftermath fitting into this story of regional power realignments over the past decade?
Clearly, the U.S. failures in Iraq created an opening for the expansion of Iranian power, via forces allied with Iran based in Iraq. But over the past year, the disempowerment of Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Assad regime has irreparably compromised Iran’s position in the region. More importantly, the fallout from Iraq nudged the U.S. toward less and less engagement in the Middle East—creating a diplomatic vacuum that the Gulf states have eagerly filled, catapulting their international stature and influence.
For decades, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has drawn intense U.S. engagement, often with limited ability to shape outcomes. Why is that—and has anything changed under Trump, particularly in the context of the Gaza War?
Bellin: The Israeli–Palestinian conflict has proven to be the diplomatic graveyard for nearly every U.S. administration over the past 30 years—even those deeply invested in working toward a solution with vision and integrity. The conflict has underscored a cardinal truth in foreign affairs: great power does not guarantee omnipotence, and clientage or dependence does not ensure obedience.
There is no question that the U.S. and Israel have sustained a patron–client relationship over the past 50 years. Yet no case makes the truism clearer that patrons cannot necessarily dictate foreign policy to their clients, and that client status does not automatically spell obsequiousness or compliance. Power is a matter of both will and capacity; policy is ultimately a test of both.
In the case of U.S.–Israel relations, there is no doubt that the U.S. has the capacity—be it financial or military—to pressure Israel to comply with American priorities. But does it have the will to do so? Clearly, U.S. political will is divided. Not all Americans speak with one voice, and influential political forces—whether evangelical groups or Jewish lobbies—compromise the political will to press Israel on contentious issues such as ending the war in Gaza.
On the client side, clearly Israel lacks the capacity to sustain its position in Gaza without U.S. support. But it does have the will to resist. As Richard Haass notes, when the client values the outcome far more—especially when it believes an existential risk is at play—the client will resist its patron’s pressure, often successfully winning this test of wills.
How does this logic play out with Trump and the Gaza War? On the American side, the transactional inclinations of the Trump administration, combined with the President’s short attention span, spell little reason for optimism about resolving the Gaza War, or the Israeli–Palestinian conflict more broadly. Despite its great capacity, the U.S. shows no will to engage in the complex process of shaping a viable “morning after” scenario. Aside from vague remarks about building a Riviera on Gaza’s beaches—as quickly discarded as they were offered—the Trump administration has no vision and no will to see the conflict through to resolution.
On the Israeli side, leaders like Netanyahu, the right-wing parties now in government, and a significant portion of the Israeli public continue to see the war in Gaza as an existential battle, one they are unwilling to abandon.
Capacity aside, this imbalance in political will leaves little hope that the Trump administration will play a constructive role in finding a solution to this heartbreaking and horrific conflict.
Iran’s nuclear program also has long challenged U.S. policy. For years, officials debated striking Iranian nuclear sites but held back. That changed on June 22, when Trump authorized direct U.S. attacks. From your perspective, does this shift make a nuclear deal more likely or less?
Bellin: This is one area where the cavalier and transactional nature of the Trump administration may actually pay off in international affairs. Iran’s nuclear position, long viewed as a threat to regional and global security, has proven impressively resistant to reversal. And Trump’s team has little experience with, or deep knowledge of, the Iranian case to outmaneuver or manipulate it effectively. At the same time, other developments appear to have overtaken past realities.
To everyone’s surprise, the long-standing hostility between the Gulf states and Iran has softened somewhat over the past three years. This is thanks in part to initiatives undertaken by China—motivated by its interest in maintaining peace between its key economic partners in the region. China’s role has aligned with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s ambition to remake the region, foster Saudi economic growth, and establish himself as a regional leader. The result has been a dramatic turnaround in Saudi–Iranian relations, including talk of new trade deals and, most recently, even discussion of joint nuclear ventures for civilian energy needs.
The possibility of a nuclear “deal” is catnip for the transactional Trump administration. Whereas a more historically grounded or ideologically driven U.S. administration might be skeptical of this new direction in Iranian–Gulf relations, especially in Iran’s approach to retaining nuclear capacity, Trump’s lack of dogmatic commitments and extreme unpredictability may offer the kind of flexibility that proves unexpectedly productive in brokering a nuclear compromise.
There’s no question that Israel’s military strike on Iran, along with Trump’s capricious sign on with bunker-buster munitions, has shifted the landscape and may have made Iran more open to negotiation. And there’s also no question that the very mercurial nature of the Trump administration—its aversion to policy consistency and its embrace of transactional Gulf partnerships—could be the unlikely nucleus of a deal that might otherwise have been far more difficult to cobble together.
For more Crown Center publications on topics covered in this Crown Conversation, see: “What’s Next for Iran, Israel, and the U.S.” and “The New Rentierism in the Middle East: How Gulf Oil Wealth Has Kept Democracy at Bay since 2011.”
Endnotes
[1] Eva Bellin, “Reconsidering the Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Lessons from the Arab Spring,” Comparative Politics 44, no. 2 (January 2012), 127-149; Eva Bellin, “The Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Exceptionalism in Comparative Perspective.” Comparative Politics 36, no. 2 (January 2004), 139–157.
[2] Malcolm H. Kerr, The Arab Cold War, 1958–1970: A Study of Ideology in Politics (London: Oxford University Press, 1971).
The opinions and findings expressed in this Conversation belong to the authors exclusively and do not reflect those of the Crown Center or Brandeis University.