Podcast: Michael Doran on Donald Trump’s Middle East Policy

Podcast: Michael Doran

President Trump and his team came into the White House determined to reverse the course of American foreign policy. Most every president does. It’s what President Obama wished to do vis-à-vis President Bush, President Trump vis-à-vis President Obama, and President Biden vis-à-vis President Trump. Where Biden was for, Trump would be against; where Biden was left, Trump would be right; where Biden was blue; Trump would be red. Every question of foreign policy with any relevance whatsoever to the cut and thrust of domestic American politics would henceforth be set in the opposite direction.

In the Middle East, President Trump thought that his predecessor was too acquiescent to Iran, too squeamish about empowering the Israelis to protect themselves, and too untroubled by Houthi attacks. For President Trump and many of his supporters, the quintessential act of the Biden administration was the withdrawal from Afghanistan in the fall of 2021—a symbol of American weakness, incompetence, fecklessness, and delusion.