As President Donald Trump’s Middle East strategy takes shape following his mid-May trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Syria appears to be taking an increasingly central role for his administration.
Officials in Riyadh, Doha, and other regional capitals have successfully identified shared interests with Washington, utilizing the Syria file as an area where regional issues can be addressed, or at least mitigated and controlled. That shared interest hints at the Trump administration’s broader regional strategy, albeit one that continues to struggle with harmful inconsistencies that ultimately undermine the approach, like the Israel-Iran war.
Washington has rapidly shifted its approach to Syria. In May, Trump suddenly advanced sweeping sanctions relief and diplomatic normalization with Damascus at the behest of Gulf leaders like Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after the Assad regime’s December collapse. While there are sound humanitarian considerations for making these moves, such logic is unlikely to be at play in today’s Washington.
Author
More on Middle East
Events on Syria
