What will a second Trump presidency mean for the Middle East?

For anyone who has family or friends in Gaza, or any connection to Palestine, the choice between Donald Trump – a man who enacted a ban on visas to people from a list of Muslim countries, is widely perceived as a fascist, and tried to stage a coup the last time he lost an election – and Kamala Harris – the vice president presiding over the United States’ full partnership in Israel’s genocide in Gaza – is a cruel one.

For voters in swing states, it’s even more difficult.

Already angry with Harris and current President Joe Biden for their unflagging and absolute support for Israel’s genocide, Harris’ ongoing pandering to Israel and pro-Israel voters while seeming to go out of her way to alienate Arab and Muslim Americans at every turn only makes it worse.

While a small handful of Muslim leaders have recently endorsed Trump, most of those refusing to vote for Harris recognise the former president for the autocratic narcissist he is.

It is a mark of both the crime being committed and the contempt Harris has communicated to those who object to that crime that so many people cannot bring themselves to tick the “Kamala Harris” box even when Trump is the alternative.

Refusing to vote for Harris is a choice, and it’s an understandable one. Indeed, some of the criticism anti-Harris voters face, often laced with shaming, hostility and even bigotry, is itself unconscionable.

Still, it is important that those who either refuse to vote in the presidential race or vote third party – and certainly those relatively few choosing to vote for Trump because of Gaza – fully understand the ramifications of their vote.

Raised tensions

There are many arguments for why Trump is a singular danger: his open alignment with the growing, global, populist right; his demonisation of, and incitement to violence against, many marginalised communities; his reckless, transactional and self-serving approach to foreign policy; and his apparent desire to rule the US as an autocratic, fascistic dictator are some.

Many others have made the case against Trump on those issues.

But even if we confine the discussion to Middle East policy, there are serious concerns regarding Trump and scant reason to believe he won’t be even worse than the Democrats, hard as that is to imagine.

Some contend that Trump is averse to war. He certainly says so and likes to claim that he didn’t start new wars when he was in office. But was that due to Trump’s “restraint”, or was it because of other parties being the adults in the room?

The most obvious counter-argument is Trump’s assassination of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani, an act for which Iran decided not to retaliate in order to avoid a war. He presided over a massive expansion in drone strikes, including increasing their frequency and easing regulations regarding reporting on them.

Trump also helped create the conditions that led to 7 October and everything that Israel has done since.

He did this with the Abraham Accords, a naked attempt to isolate the Palestinians and strip them of the one bit of diplomatic leverage at their disposal: normalisation between Israel and the Arab states.

Prior to that, Trump had broken with years of precedent by refusing to issue the presidential waivers that kept the US embassy in Tel Aviv rather than Jerusalem and kept the PLO offices in Washington open.

This ruptured diplomacy between the Palestinians and the US, confirming for Palestinians that there was no diplomatic path towards freedom.

When the American embassy officially opened in Jerusalem, Trump and the Israeli leadership celebrated while Israeli troops gunned down Palestinian civilians gathered at the Gaza separation barrier during the Great March of Return.

As part of moving the embassy, Trump recognised a united Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, effectively recognising Israel’s claim to all of Jerusalem. Trump also recognised Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights.

And Trump caused enormous chaos with impulsive decisions. He unilaterally abrogated the Iran nuclear deal. That deal, which even his own cabinet members affirmed was working, had stopped nuclear escalation and reduced regional tension. Trump reversed that.

Because of his ignorance of the region and his susceptibility to flattery, Trump gave a very public green light to Saudi Arabia’s blockade of Qatar, which raised tensions throughout the region.

‘Finish the job’

Some say that was the past.

At a pro-Trump rally in Dearborn, Michigan – a key state in this election and one where Arab and Muslim American votes are critical – Bilal Alzuhiry, a local imam, said: “I would, especially now, like to talk about the present and future. I don’t want to talk about the past.”

So what does a second Trump term look like, in terms of what we know and what Trump himself is saying?

Foreign policy is not generally discussed much by any presidential candidate, and it is certainly not where Trump feels most comfortable. But he has said some things that we should all be aware of.

On Gaza, his complaint against Israel is not about genocide, but about the genocide going too slowly. “Biden is trying to hold [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] back,” Trump said.

He added: “He’s trying to hold him back, and he probably should be doing the opposite, actually. I’m glad that [Netanyahu] decided to do what he had to do, but it’s moving along pretty good.”

Earlier this year, Trump called on Israel to “finish the job” in Gaza, meaning that it should escalate the mass slaughter it was already engaged in.

Given these comments, it is impossible to imagine that Trump would even consider putting the kind of pressure on Netanyahu that has been proven to be required to rein him in: stopping the flow of weapons to Israel.

This isn’t hypothetical. In a recent call with Netanyahu, Trump told him he should “do what he has to do”. According to Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, Trump “expressed his awe for [Israel’s] military operations and what they have done”.

Repression

While protests in the US have already been met with state violence, especially at universities, Trump would likely do much worse. He has talked about using the National Guard, or even the military, against protesters. The ability of activists to impact policy would thus be even more limited.

He has also talked about deporting all non-citizens if they are “pro-Hamas”. Let’s recall that Israel’s supporters, across the political spectrum, consider anyone protesting against the genocide in Gaza to be “pro-Hamas“.

Trump had these ideas the first time around. He wanted to use the military during the protests after George Floyd’s murder by police in 2020 but was dissuaded. He also spoke of war against Venezuela and Iran, but could not get his top staff on board.

Given his stated desire to have generals around him who would do what he wanted without question, we can be reasonably sure a top criterion for Trump’s staff in a second term would be obedience. We won’t have the guardrails in a second Trump term we had in the first.

All of this is only regarding the Middle East, an arena where Biden’s policies have been so bad that it is possible to make a case that Trump’s might not be worse than Biden’s vice president.

Everyone should vote according to their conscience and use their best judgment.

Some of us, like myself, live in states where the presidential election is a foregone conclusion, and we can feel much freer in not voting for someone with as much blood on their hands as Harris. But if I lived in a swing state, I probably would force myself to vote as impactfully as I could against Trump, which means voting for Harris.