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If Iran is a sitting duck and Joe Biden a lame duck, what is Donald Trump? Some might say a bird of prey; others a vulture. A minority think he is a dove. In reality few people, probably including Trump, have a clue what he will do in the Middle East or beyond. The world is used to an America that conforms to a pattern, even if it traduces its own rules when they are inconvenient. With Trump such clarity vanishes. Does he see the fall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as good news, bad news or a matter of indifference? It is hard to say.
What is clear is that Assad’s collapse is a bad moment for the four-member “axis of upheaval”. Two of them — Russia and Iran — have lost their most important Middle Eastern friend, who they could do nothing to save. All four of its core members, including China and North Korea, have been reminded that even the most brutal regimes can suddenly dissolve. The same applies to the axis’s back-up singers in Cuba and Venezuela. In terms of raw geopolitics, the past week has been good for the US. But it says little about what is to come.
Iran has rarely been more exposed. Having taken out most of the regime’s air defences and missile production facilities, Israel’s window of temptation to strike with greater devastation is rising. Iran has also lost most of its proxy shields. Hizbollah has been severely weakened; Hamas is a shadow of itself; and Syria is now hostile territory. Moreover, Benjamin Netanyahu’s stock line that Biden has been holding him back will soon end. The question is which path Trump will take.
Chaos is a playground in which Trump thrives. It is also his preferred management style. Trying to divine Trump’s wishes through his appointments is futile. On the one hand there is Marco Rubio, for secretary of state, and Mike Waltz as national security adviser. Both are conventional hawkish Republicans — longstanding critics of Assad, Iran, Russia and China. On the other there are figures like Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s pick as director of national intelligence, who has for years expressed admiration for Assad and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. The worldview of incoming vice-president JD Vance is closer to Gabbard’s. Vance has lauded Assad as a protector of Christians.
The radically diverging foreign policy instincts of Trump’s picks suggests one thing: he likes his underlings to be at each other’s throats. Which of those two worldviews will gain ascendancy, or whether Trump’s actions will be driven by hidden commercial motives, is unknowable. Even Israel should be confused. Trump 2.0 could be the most militantly pro-Israel administration in US history. It will also include domestic hardliners who are close to America’s extreme antisemitic right.
The choices facing Iran are unenviable. Towards the end of his first term, Trump ordered the killing of Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s most powerful military figure, in a drone strike. This was the first time since the second world war that the US had overtly assassinated a foreign official. Yet it followed months during which Trump had declined to respond to Iranian attacks on American naval vessels and on friends, including Saudi oil facilities. Both Trump’s action and inactions were a surprise.
The effects of Trump’s policy of maximum pressure on Iran, and his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear treaty, was to drive Tehran to aggressively ramp up its nuclear programme. It failed. But in chaos there is also opportunity. Today’s Iran is no longer a regional superpower. Its new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, was elected on a vow to restore prosperity, which will not be possible without a relaxation of US sanctions. Pezeshkian has put out feelers to Trump.
Last month, Elon Musk, the mega-billionaire at the heart of Trump’s court in Mar-a-Lago, met in New York with Iran’s ambassador to the UN. It is not known what they discussed. Even if it was unauthorised, the precedent of Musk’s freelancing is bizarre. The message emanating from Trump’s Palm Beach beauty contest is that all things from war to peace are possible. Trump’s foreign policy will be a golden age for middle men. His cirque du soleil lands in Washington next month.
Will there be a pattern to this? Trump is returning at a point when it is no longer possible to talk of a global order. He is both harbinger to the dying of the old and its accelerator. The risks of war and a new era of nuclear proliferation are growing. Yet the outgoing Biden administration has been bereft of answers. Trump might choose to play midwife to the new. But he seems likelier to reap the chaos.
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