Donald Trump may be a lame duck but here's how he's trying to leave an anti-Iranian legacy in the Middle East

As US President until 20 January, Donald Trump still wields enormous influence on world affairs (Picture: Getty Images)

A lame duck at home, the American Constitution gives the executive branch (the presidency) wide powers to go it alone abroad without the need for approval from the legislature (Congress).

One of these, as commander-in-chief, is the use of military force.

We discovered that since his humiliating election defeat President Trump had been toying with the idea of attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities, which thankfully he was talked out of by advisers who said it might lead to a wider war in the Middle East.

But is it mere coincidence that just a few weeks later Israel is accused of assassinating Iran’s top nuclear scientist following a meeting with the US and Saudi Arabia at the very highest level?

The president is also granted powers to make treaties and still wields enormous influence on world affairs, although that wanes as his departure date looms.

Iran's fascist dictatorship boasts of its 'different' human rights as the execut...

We know that Trump wants to use his remaining time in office to end a three-and-a-half-year-long blockade of Qatar by a quartet of countries led by Saudi Arabia, dispatching his son-in-law and foreign policy adviser, Jared Kushner, to the region this week.

The row, which saw Riyadh unjustly accuse Doha of cosying up to Tehran and supporting terrorism, is viewed by the White House as weakening the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC), an important alliance of Arab states seen as a bulwark against Iranian expansion.

A strong Israel and a strong Saudia Arabia

Then, last week, came the news that Israeli leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, had flown to historical enemy Saudi Arabia for a hush-hush meeting with the country’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS)

One purpose of this was to reaffirm the resolve of both countries to oppose an expected move by the incoming Biden administration to bring back Obama’s 2015 Iran Deal, famously described by Trump as “the worst ever”.

In Trump World, everything the president does in the Middle East has to be viewed through an anti-Iran prism and for an anti-Tehran legacy to endure he needs to leave behind a strong Israel and a strong Saudi Arabia.

Let’s not forget that his very first foreign trip after taking office in 2017 was to Riyadh where he signed an arms deal worth $110bn, and he has been a strong ally of MBS ever since despite the horrors of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, the war in Yemen and jailed women’s rights activists.

The other purpose of that clandestine meeting between Netanyahu and MBS was to get Saudi Arabia to sign up to the Abraham Accords. These are treaties or ‘normalisation agreements’ between Israel and previously sworn enemies in the Arab World which do not contain any pre-requisite of a two-state solution to resolve the Palestinian issue.

Under a controversial policy championed by Kushner, the Palestinians are now the bad guys who’ve never done anything right, whose leaders have been difficult and who cannot be allowed to stand in the way of aligning the Gulf states with Israel against Iran.

A pro-Israeli peace deal

No meaningful attempt at finding a solution to the Middle East problem, that hornet’s nest which has bedevilled US presidents for decades, has even been attempted.

In a foretaste of what was to come, Trump announced in 2017 that the US was moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, thereby recognising the divided city as the capital of Israel and ignoring pre-1967 agreements which ruled East Jerusalem to be the capital of any future Palestinian state.

Boasting that if Kushner cannot find a Middle East peace deal then nobody can, the president then announced a peace deal that was so weighted in Israel’s favour that the Palestinian leadership dismissed it out of hand.

That was last January, followed by news in September that Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates had agreed to the accords with Israel which were signed amid great fanfare at the White House.

But the big prize was always going to be Saudi Arabia, the largest economy in the Middle East, the custodian of Islam’s two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina, and strong links with the third most important shrine, the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

What a coup it would be to get the Saudis to agree to the accords, the country whose former ruler, King Faisal, had famously said in 1973: ‘‘If all Arabs agreed to accept the existence of Israel and divide Palestine, we will never join them.”

Biden backs two-state solution

Unlike his elderly father, King Salman, MBS is from a different generation which sees the economic and regional benefits of aligning closer to Israel and is not as opposed to a deal as his forefathers, even if the Palestinians are sold down the river.

If Trump had won a second term then it almost certainly would have happened but with Biden an avowed supporter of a two-state solution, the odds of that happening must now be lengthening.

But that isn’t stopping Trump from trying.

Ten days after the election, he dispatched Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to the region hoping to use shuttle diplomacy to force things through.

Pompeo was there when Netanyahu and MBS had their secret meeting in Neom, the futuristic new mega-city being built in the desert near the Red Sea. Was this where the idea of Mossad taking out of the Iranian scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was agreed?

After all, Netanyahu had identified him as Nuclear Public Enemy No 1 in a speech in 2018.

Talks with Taliban

Prior to that America’s top diplomat had the dubious distinction of being the first member of any US administration to tour an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, despite the land being part of Palestine in any two-state solution.

It happened a year after Trump overturned decades of American policy in the Middle East by declaring Israeli settlements on such land to be legal.

Pompeo was also in Qatar – one Arab country which has come out against the Abraham Accords which it sees as a betrayal of the Palestinians – to try and broker an end to the Saudi boycott.

While in Doha, he also had meetings with negotiators from the Afghan government and the Taliban as the Trump administration looks to speed its troop withdrawal from the region before he leaves office, despite warnings from military leaders that it could lead to the insurgents sweeping back into power.

Who’d have thought it? Afghanistan and the Middle East still dominating American foreign policy almost 20 years after 9/11. Some things never change.

Anthony Harwood is a former foreign editor of the Daily Mail

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Donald Trump may be a lame duck but here's how he's trying to leave an anti-Iranian legacy in the Middle East – Anthony Harwood