To seal the recent Gaza peace deal, President Donald Trump asked Arab states to, once again, find a compromise with Israel. Despite Trump’s promises to the contrary, they had to accept seriously watered-down language on a future Palestinian state and a partial, rather than full, Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Coming on the heels of Israel’s missile strike on Doha that also rattled Arab states, Trump may now feel all the more pressure to appease the United States’ Arab partners, like he did last month when he offered a formal security guarantee to Qatar (a first for any state in the Middle East) to quiet Arab doubts about U.S. reliability as a security partner.
Are more U.S. pledges now on the way?
Saudi Arabia is pushing for a U.S. security deal, but taking on new commitments isn’t worth the real and potential costs to U.S. interests. Instead, Trump needs to stay focused on the heart of the problem and maintain pressure on Israel to curb its regional aggression. Coupled with Arab states shouldering the burden of their own security, pressure like this is best for ending conflict in the region.
The United States has a bad habit of making new commitments to states in the Middle East when it wants to either expand or maintain regional order and peace. New pledges are the goodies Washington hands out to keep everyone in—or sometimes to expand—the fold.
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