Above photo: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman addressing the summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Arab League in Riyadh, on November 11, 2024. Saudi Press Agency.
Recent events in the Middle East show regional leaders shifting positions and alliances.
As they prepare to stave off a regional war under the unpredictable incoming Trump administration.
Donald Trump’s electoral victory means that other states, particularly in the Middle East, have to prepare for a range of possibilities. At a summit in Riyadh earlier this week, the League of Arab States and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) came together to discuss Israel’s genocide in Gaza, its violent incursion into Lebanon, and the threat of regional war in preparation for dealing with the incoming American administration.
The meeting and recent events have showed the Saudis, Qataris, and the rest of the Arab and Muslim world are trying to consolidate their positions, to maximize their options and flexibility, as they prepare to try to stave off a regional war under conditions that are wholly unpredictable and unstable with Donald Trump.
Positive Steps Out Of Riyadh
Over the past few months, Saudi Arabia has been gradually stepping up its rhetoric around Israeli actions. This process took another step forward at the Riyadh summit when Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (known as MBS) referred to Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide.” Given how carefully Saudi Arabia has stepped around such a clear identification of what Israel is doing, this was an important and long overdue step.
The summit managed to put out a statement that condemned Israel’s genocide as well as its violations of other states’ sovereignty—crucially, including Iran—and called for the implementation of “relevant” UN resolutions and International Court of Justice (ICJ) decisions.
The endorsement of ICJ resolutions is important, as it strengthens global support for the Court and helps to demonstrate that, while the United States and Israel may see the ICJ as a tool they can use or ignore as they please, the Muslim world supports a court that applies the law equally. That implication may someday come back to bite dictatorships like Saudi Arabia and many of the other states involved in this summit, but for now, it is an important statement.
Beyond the words, though, Saudi Arabia is working to unify the Muslim and Arab world, and is including Iran in that process. This is a remarkable shift. Ten years ago, the Saudis were ready to pull out all the stops to prevent the Iran nuclear deal and any effort to resolve their disagreements with Iran through compromise rather than regime change in the Islamic Republic.
The day before the summit in Riyadh, Fayyad al-Ruwaili, the chief of staff of the Saudi military, visited Tehran and met with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Bagheri, in an effort to boost security cooperation between the erstwhile bitter rivals.
The timing of all of this is no coincidence. While the summit was important for the affairs of the Arab League and OIC, it also sent a message to the incoming American administration that the Arab world and the larger Muslim world were united in their opposition to the U.S.-Israeli aggression.
The parties were all able to agree on a statement backing a two-state solution as well. While that is simply grasping at a failed solution whose time has passed, it says some things. One is that the Arab League and OIC are willing to deal with Israel if it stops behaving like a serial killer and abandons apartheid. The other, more immediately important, is that they are not happy with the idea of some temporary solution in Gaza, especially one where Arab governments would act as a sub-contractor to a new Israeli occupation there. They want a real solution.
These are important messages, and they are likely not lost on the Biden team, which, whatever else they may be, is composed of professional diplomats. It is less certain that Trump’s incoming team understands these messages, as they are not just novices but dilettantes and are not accustomed to the subtleties and nuances of diplomatic messaging.
Where Does Qatar Stand?
Mere days before the Riyadh summit, Qatar announced that it was withdrawing from its role as mediator between Israel and Hamas. The reason cited was that “neither side” was serious about negotiating, a statement more in tune with Washington’s talking points over the past year than with Doha’s.
The decision came almost simultaneously with the revelation that the United States had told Qatar to kick the Hamas leadership out of their country after Hamas had refused to release a few hostages in exchange for a few days of so-called “ceasefire.” The two are clearly related.
Although it seems to have fallen down the memory hole for most, in late 2011, the U.S. administration of Barack Obama requested that Qatar host Hamas’ leadership, which was, at that time, relocating out of Syria in the wake of attacks by numerous parties on Palestinian refugee camps. Hamas had broken with the Syrian government over the violence and the logical relocation point for them would have been Iran.
But Obama wanted to maintain a line of communication with Hamas’ leadership, a position that Benjamin Netanyahu quietly agreed with. So the President asked Qatar to host Hamas and act as a go-between since neither the Americans nor the Israelis could be seen as communicating directly with Hamas and trying to do so, though Tehran would have been exceedingly complicated.
Qatar, which has good relationships with Muslim Brotherhood chapters across the region and which always enjoys playing a key diplomatic role in the region, agreed. They have been reliable mediators ever since.
The Biden administration’s demand that Qatar kick Hamas out was little more than petulance over the group’s decision to stick to the vow they had made earlier, that any further hostage releases would only come as part of a permanent ceasefire deal. That they would not budge from that stance angered Biden and so the demand was made of Qatar.
But Doha has been trying to thread the needle since that request came in. The Qataris quit as mediators, in part due to increasing demands that they “pressure” Hamas, when there really isn’t much they can do to press Hamas more than Hamas is already being pressed by the Israeli onslaught, Palestinian suffering, and divisions among the Palestinian people about them.
More than that, with Donald Trump entering office and a steady drumbeat over the past year of demonizing Doha in Israel and in Washington, the Qataris surely recall how, on the one hand, Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner were eager to do business with them; while on the other, Trump’s ignorance and the ease with which he can be manipulated led him to trigger the Saudi-led blockade against Qatar, a troubling split in the Gulf that also has fallen down the memory hole for most of western media.
Qatar is denying that they told Hamas they must leave. It seems likely that they did relay the American demand but without a time frame. That leaves the door open for reversing their decision on mediation if Israel and Hamas decide to negotiate in what Doha considers “good faith.” That would also mean rescinding the eviction order to Hamas.
Qatar’s dance between the various forces is something they are adept at, and in this case, it dovetails very well with the Saudi efforts at marshaling Islamic unity to try to avert a regional catastrophe. After all these decades, few give any credence to the idea that Arab and Muslim state leaders care about the suffering of the Palestinian people.
But they all realize that without a resolution in Gaza—indeed, on the larger issue of Palestine—a war between Israel and Iran that sets the region ablaze is only a matter of time. The United States has failed to veer the region from that course due to its myopic and obstinate support of Israel. That was true under Biden, and it will be more so under Trump, whose key advisers have even less understanding of the region than Biden’s, or any other administration in American history, and are even more zealously Zionist.
Without knowing exactly how Trump will approach these issues, Qatar’s resignation as mediator leaves their options open.
The last time the idea of evicting Hamas from Qatar arose, Hamas’ leadership moved to Turkiye. However, Washington found communication much more difficult at that time and asked that Hamas move back to Qatar. It is likely that Hamas would go to Turkiye again, especially given that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan just cut off all ties with Israel. However, that also means that Ankara can’t be an effective mediator.
Given that there will be even fewer adults in the room in both Washington and Tel Aviv than there have been, it is fortunate that at least the Arab and Muslim leaders, who mostly have little real concern for Palestinian lives, are at least choosing to act pragmatically. Pragmatism is going to be in short supply for the foreseeable future in Israel and the U.S.
What Can Be Expected From The Trump Administration
Trump has presented himself as the anti-war president, but he was nothing of the kind. Indeed, while he increased the United States’ military aggressiveness considerably, he was actually restrained by some members of his cabinet, and sometimes by his own enemies, from leading us into all-out war on several occasions.
But those advisers are not going to be there this time. Trump is already surrounding himself with sycophants and has also brought in some of Washington’s most hawkish figures to run his foreign policy. From Iran regime change agitator Brian Hook and militarists like Mike Waltz to neoconservative Marco Rubio to far-right Christian nationalists like Mike Huckabee and Pete Hegseth, Trump’s team is stacked with people who support the aggressive use of American military force in pursuit of policy goals.
Yet many of Trump’s supporters favor an isolationist foreign policy which they believe Trump pursued in his first term, although he didn’t. And the one thing we do know for certain about Trump is that his decisions waver from day to day depending on his mood and whims. Hence, Middle Eastern countries are trying to be prepared for whatever might come their way.
Trump has already put together a team of people so radically pro-Israel that many of them would go too far even for some of Israel’s leaders. Yet it’s also a team of people who will obey their president without question. So what is it that Trump wants?
It’s clear that Trump will largely support the ambitions of Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli settler movement, over the course of his term. That will mean a very permissive attitude toward more Israeli land grabs and settlement expansion, and expanding Israel’s grip on Jerusalem, although actual annexation may take some time. Of course, this will lead to violence, and Trump will doubtless allow Israel to proceed without restraint in its aggression.
But at the outset, Trump seems to very much want the current chapter behind him. This is probably based on a desire to portray the current genocide in Gaza and massive aggression in Lebanon as the result of Joe Biden’s weakness and incompetence. In this, he’s not wrong, although Biden’s blind ideological support of Israel is at least as big a factor.
But Trump clearly doesn’t want to inherit this problem. So he’s told Netanyahu to “finish the job.”
The response from Israel that seems to be taking shape is one where Netanyahu does stop the daily bombing in Lebanon, continuing it only sporadically, and finds some sort of agreement that can force Hezbollah to remain some 18 miles north of the Litani River. At that point, Israel would begin the return of its citizens to northern areas.
Netanyahu is hoping that this will be enough for Trump, because he clearly has no intention of withdrawing from Gaza. The ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza and the recent statements about staying in Gaza through 2025 makes it clear that Israel intends a permanent takeover of Gaza, with the genocide there continuing apace.
Will Trump stand for that? Probably. Does he understand that there is no way to calm the regional tensions under those conditions? I believe that he does not, and this is why the Arab monarchies are acting.