The CEO of peace: Trump's profit-driven Middle East diplomacy rattles Israel

RU

Business above all

Trump’s Gulf tour had all the hallmarks of a business trip. The U.S. president was showered with praise — something he relishes — and, according to the White House, he secured investment deals worth more than $2 trillion. These agreements allowed Trump to draw a sharp contrast with Joe Biden. Unlike his successor, Trump claims, he is focused on America’s prosperity — specifically the creation of tens of thousands of new jobs.

The deals announced include the largest civilian aircraft order in Boeing’s history, weapons sales, investments in factory construction, and partnerships in artificial intelligence, new technologies, and energy.

The sums pledged by Gulf monarchies are striking, even when taking into account the fact that they stretch over a ten-year time horizon: $600 billion from Saudi Arabia, with a promise to push that to $1 trillion; at least $1.2 trillion from Qatar; and $1.4 trillion from the UAE. But there’s a caveat: not all of these agreements were finalized during Trump’s visit — or even after his return to the White House. For example, discussions of Emirati investments date back to March, when UAE National Security Adviser and Abu Dhabi Deputy Ruler Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan visited Washington.

The Washington Post also pointed out that deals between Amazon and the UAE’s state-owned telecommunications company were announced back in October — before Trump was even elected. At the time, the figure mentioned was around $1 billion, not $181 million. The paper also noted that many of the projects had been in the works for years, with some even initiated during the Biden administration. For example, in August, the American firm Jacobs was informed it had been selected to help upgrade the King Salman International Airport in Riyadh.

A similar story applies to several arms deals. In 2022, the Biden administration notified Congress of its intention to sell Qatar a $1 billion counter-drone system developed by Raytheon.

Again according to The Washington Post, the $2 billion drone deal between Qatar and General Atomics was also years in the making, and the paper passed along skepticism about whether some of the Arab states in question — Saudi Arabia in particular — will follow through on the massive commitments they made to Trump.

It was telling that during his meeting with Trump, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced only $300 billion in deals. A source told The Washington Post that ahead of Trump’s visit to Riyadh, the royal court had surveyed the country’s top businesspeople to find out how much they had invested in the United States over the past two years, meaning that those figures could have been included in the post-meeting investment announcements.

“The Washington Post is trying — and failing — to discredit the trillions of dollars in great deals President Trump secured during his Middle East trip,” said White House Press Secretary Anna Kelly. Yet at the same time, she acknowledged that the announced deals included “confirmed investments” from companies that had signed agreements in the region before Trump’s return to office.

Still, Trump appeared pleased and lavished praise on the leaders of all three countries he visited. At no point before or during the trip did he raise the issue of human rights violations — a topic often emphasized by Democrats. Trump avoided such criticism during his first term as well. It was, after all, thanks to his backing that Mohammed bin Salman avoided pariah status after the brutal murder of Washington Post columnist and Saudi national Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

Back in 2017, Trump declared that Qatar had “historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level.” His remarks followed the blockade and economic boycott of Qatar by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt, as the four Arab states accused Doha of supporting extremist groups in the region and aligning too closely with Iran. Just weeks earlier, Trump had completed his first presidential trip abroad, which included stops in Riyadh and Jerusalem, and the American leader openly acknowledged that his Saudi interlocutors had urged him to take a hard line on Qatar.

Nevertheless, the Trump administration never took serious action against Doha, even as it ramped up pressure on Tehran — most notably by withdrawing in 2018 from the nuclear deal signed three years earlier by Iran, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, and Germany. The agreement had required Tehran to limit its nuclear program and submit to inspections in exchange for international sanctions relief. Under Trump, the U.S. not only reimposed old sanctions on Iran but also introduced new ones. As for Doha, by 2018 then–Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was calling Qatar “a strong partner and a long-standing friend.”

One key reason was Qatar’s strategic importance: the country hosts the largest U.S. air base in the Middle East, which also serves as the forward headquarters of U.S. Central Command. During active military operations against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and the war in Afghanistan, the base was vital, and it still serves a critical role in countering Iran and maintaining regional stability.

Later, Qatar would become both a mediator and venue for talks between Washington and the Taliban regime in Kabul, culminating in the signing of the Doha Agreement in 2020. The deal provided for the withdrawal of NATO forces from Afghanistan and recognized al-Qaeda as a terrorist organization in Taliban-controlled territory.

A key factor in these developments was Qatar’s sharp increase in lobbying expenditures in Washington, which became particularly noticeable after the 2017 economic blockade. Even earlier, Doha had begun paying top U.S. universities to operate campuses on Qatari soil. According to data from the U.S. Department of Education, Qatar has since become the largest foreign donor to American institutions of higher education.

The problematic nature of this trend became especially apparent amid pro-Palestinian demonstrations on American campuses following the outbreak of war in Gaza in 2023. The Trump administration expressed concern about what was happening on campus but avoided linking the unrest to Doha.

Still, Qatar is hardly the only country lobbying for its interests in the U.S. The question is which one is doing it most effectively at the moment. Trump sees all regional players as important, though he tends to place greater emphasis on Saudi Arabia — this was his third visit to the kingdom. However, Washington no longer needs to balance between Riyadh and Doha, as the boycott of Qatar was ultimately lifted in 2021. That has significantly simplified doing business in the region for all stakeholders —Trump and his family included.

As U.S. media have noted, Trump’s business empire has ties to all three countries he visited. These include deals involving cryptocurrency and construction projects. In addition, the UAE and Qatar invested around $1.5 billion in Affinity Partners, a private equity firm founded by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Saudi Arabia also contributed funding.

The White House denies that Trump’s actions in the Middle East are driven by his business interests, but questions are increasingly being raised about who is more dependent on whom — the Gulf monarchies on the U.S., or the other way around. For now, it appears to be a mutually beneficial partnership. But business is at the foundation of it all, and for that, peace in the region is essential. That’s the much harder part.

Trump wanted to make peace for everyone

“Incredible opportunities are within reach for this region. If we can simply stop the aggression from a small group of bad actors,” Trump declared at the U.S.–Gulf Cooperation Council summit in Riyadh, held on the second day of his tour. The Gulf monarchies, for their part, of course prefer to keep wars at bay so as not to disrupt business.

“Peace to Prosperity” was the official title of the 181-page document Trump unveiled in Washington in January 2020 in the presence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It outlined Washington’s vision for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and addressed the interests of neighboring countries. Trump’s team decided to dramatically shift the long-standing “land for peace” approach to Middle East diplomacy, which had taken hold after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War (the Six-Day War), when Israel significantly expanded its borders.

Even before the document’s publication, Trump’s plan was informally being called the “deal of the century.” The idea was that if Israel and the Palestinians reached mutual compromises and signed peace agreements that were approved by Arab countries, the Middle East would receive about $50 billion in investment for roughly 200 projects. The proposed distribution: $27.8 billion for Palestine, $7.3 billion for Jordan, $6.3 billion for Lebanon, and $9.1 billion for Egypt. At the time, Syria was not included in Trump’s plan.

But nothing came of it. The Palestinian side concluded that Trump’s plan had been drafted in Israel’s interest, and Trump did not deny this, stating that while any compromise was possible in the name of peace, Israel’s security must not be called into question. Moreover, the Palestinians were not prepared to give up the right of return for millions of refugees or to accept other fundamental concessions, including on the question of territory.

It was also impossible at the time to imagine how the requirement to demilitarize the future Palestinian state could be implemented, especially given that this would involve the disarmament of terrorist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The internationally recognized Palestinian Authority (PA) had no control over the Gaza Strip, where Hamas seized power in 2007, and even in the West Bank, the PA’s influence was rapidly dwindling.

Thus Trump’s plan was shelved. Instead came the Abraham Accords — the first normalization agreements between Israel and Arab countries since the 1990s, signed with the UAE, Bahrain, and later Morocco and Sudan. At the time, there was much talk of future economic prosperity for the region, especially if the list of signatory countries expanded.

For Israel — and especially for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — this was a major achievement: with Trump’s help, it became possible to forge partnerships with Arab states without resolving the conflict with the Palestinians. The only thing missing for a complete triumph was normalization with Saudi Arabia. This was Netanyahu’s dream and one of Trump’s main foreign policy goals during his first term, later shared by the Biden administration.

In 2023, leaks increasingly suggested that an agreement between Jerusalem and Riyadh had nearly been finalized. But after Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 and the subsequent war in the Gaza Strip, the situation changed dramatically.

By mid-May 2024, according to the Gaza Health Ministry — which, like all official institutions in the strip, is controlled by Hamas — more than 53,000 Palestinians had been killed in the Strip due to Israeli actions, over 120,000 injured, and about 14,000 were missing. Most of the victims, it said, were women, children, and the elderly. However, a study published in December 2024 by the British think tank Henry Jackson Society stated that the Health Ministry figures included natural deaths (about 5,000 at the time the research concluded). It also noted frequent misclassification of the age and gender of the deceased in Gaza. For its part, the IDF reported the elimination of at least 17,000 Hamas and other militant fighters.

Riyadh cannot ignore the situation in Gaza, including the humanitarian crisis. Otherwise, it risks losing credibility in the Islamic world. Therefore, normalization with Israel is off the table — for now. And that was one of Hamas’s goals when it launched its largest ever operation against Israel.

This hypothesis was discussed early in the war, and now it is being confirmed by various sources, including via documents that, according to the Israeli military, were discovered in the Gaza Strip. One of them was reported last week by The Wall Street Journal. It concerns minutes from a meeting of Hamas leaders in Gaza, headed by Yahya Sinwar, in early October 2023. According to the report, Sinwar told his associates that extraordinary actions were needed in order to derail the Saudi-Israeli deal, which could have led to the “marginalization of the Palestinian cause.”

He warned that the deal would “open the door for most Arab and Islamic countries to follow the same path.” As a result, an order was given to execute a plan for an attack on Israel, which Hamas had been preparing for several years. The outcome was the war in the Gaza Strip, which also affected Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Iran, after pro-Iranian forces chose to support Hamas.

Trump’s return

During his campaign, Trump pledged to make peace in Ukraine and the Middle East. In his inaugural speech, he said his administration would “stop all wars” and, more importantly, would not enter new ones. This immediately raised a question: what about Iran, which Trump had repeatedly threatened? There was speculation that upon returning to the White House, Trump would approve an Israeli strike on Iranian strategic facilities. It was also expected that the new administration would fully back Israel across the board. And initially, that was the case — Benjamin Netanyahu was the first foreign leader invited to Washington after Trump’s inauguration.

At that time, the U.S. president also announced a plan to turn Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East” — in part by relocating Palestinians from the territory. Trump explained that reconstruction after the war would take several years, and that living on the strip in the meantime would be impossible.

Such a radical approach to the problem — and, more importantly, the U.S. willingness to take responsibility for what was happening in Gaza — pleased Netanyahu. But at the same time, Arab countries opposed the idea of relocating Palestinians, and since then, Trump has repeatedly stepped back, stressing that there would be no forced resettlement.

Ahead of Trump’s visit to the region, pundits actively discussed the fact that this time the U.S. president had not included Israel in the itinerary of his tour. Moreover, at the last minute, a planned visit by U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth — who was supposed to arrive in Israel a day before Trump’s arrival in Riyadh — was canceled. This sparked a wave of media reports about a cooling in relations between the U.S. president and the Israeli prime minister, who was reportedly resisting calls to end the military operation in Gaza.

These discussions were fueled by a series of unpleasant surprises for the Israelis: the start of direct U.S. talks with Hamas behind Jerusalem’s back, the unexpected halt of the military campaign against the Houthi movement Ansar Allah (which since 2023, in a show of support for Gaza, had virtually blocked the Suez Canal by attacking both passing ships and Israeli territory), and most notably, the announcement that U.S.-Iran nuclear talks would resume. Trump made this announcement in Netanyahu’s presence, having invited him to Washington for a second visit in April. Notably, Netanyahu is considered one of the key figures who persuaded Trump to pull out of the “nuclear deal” in 2018.

During his Middle Eastern tour, Trump also announced the lifting of sanctions on Syria and met with the country’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who had led the terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham before the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. The meeting had been brokered by Ankara and Riyadh and was held despite the fact that Israel has been doing everything possible to destroy Syria’s military potential, including by significantly expanding the buffer zone between the two countries. In short, it seemed the situation was not shaping up in Israel’s favor.

Trump himself, however, denied speculation of a rift with Netanyahu. In an interview with Fox News following his return to Washington, he asked whether he was disappointed with the Israeli prime minister's behavior. Trump answered:

“No… He’s got a tough situation. You have to remember there was an October 7 that everyone forgets. It was one of the most violent days in the history of the world — not the Middle East, the world… That problem should have never happened.”

Despite Washington’s ongoing efforts to secure a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, Trump did not interfere when Israel increased its military pressure on Hamas. Notably, it was during Trump’s visit to the region that Israel struck the European Hospital in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, claiming that Hamas leaders were hiding there in underground tunnels.

The target of the operation was Muhammad Sinwar — the younger brother of Yahya Sinwar, one of the masterminds of the October 7 attack, who was killed by Israeli forces in October. There has been no official confirmation of Muhammad Sinwar’s death, but Arab sources report that his body was found alongside those of other senior militants. Israeli sources have also said the operation was likely successful.

And apparently, Trump has not abandoned his plans for the Gaza Strip. Just last week, reports emerged that the U.S. president is considering relocating Palestinians to Libya (previously, other countries had been mentioned). In addition, while in Qatar, Trump reiterated that the United States wants to take control of Gaza, which he said would then become a “zone of freedom” — without elaborating. However, American private military companies are already active in Gaza: they monitored the implementation of the ceasefire deal that Trump managed to push through by his inauguration, even if it was never fully enacted. It is also expected that U.S. personnel will soon take part in distributing humanitarian aid in Gaza.

Crucially, in discussions about the new ceasefire and Gaza’s future, the U.S. fully aligns with Israel’s stance on the complete disarmament of Hamas. Saudi Arabia and the UAE share this position. As in Trump’s first term, achieving this goal remains challenging but is now far more attainable.

In some ways, Trump has been fortunate. By the time of his return to the White House, the Middle East’s landscape had shifted dramatically. The wars in Gaza and Lebanon, along with the fall of Assad’s regime, weakened Iran’s regional influence. Tehran lost control of Syria, and Israel dealt a severe blow to Iran’s main proxy, the Lebanese Hezbollah movement. Ultimately, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia succeeded in installing allies in Lebanon, and Hamas has been weakened.

None of this would have been possible without Israeli military operations. Yet this does not mean Trump will refrain from pressuring Israel — and Netanyahu personally — to finally make peace. His administration has shown growing impatience. The ideal outcome for Trump would have been a ceasefire in Gaza during his regional visit, but he had to settle for the goodwill gesture that saw the release of the last American hostage held by Hamas. For that, a trip to Israel was not strictly necessary — Steve Witkoff was already there, persistently working to broker a compromise between the parties.

The region’s future hinges on numerous factors: the results of talks between the U.S. and Iran, the new Lebanese authorities’ success in limiting Hezbollah’s political sway, developments in the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict beyond Gaza, and internal politics in Israel, where the ruling coalition could collapse at any moment, potentially triggering early Knesset elections. But above all, the biggest variable remains Trump’s unpredictability — and that hasn’t changed.