Key issues driving US-MENA relations under the next US administration

This article is based on content originally published on our partner platform Seerist, the augmented analytics solution for threat and risk intelligence professionals.

The US and the Middle East have been intertwined since the middle of the 20th century, a fact brought into fresh relief by the current Israel-Hamas conflict. As the US presidential election approaches, organisations around the world should consider the key issues that will drive US-Middle East relations during the next US administration – no matter who wins in November.

Different presidents, different styles?

The Middle East policies during the presidencies of Donald Trump (2016-20) and Joe Biden (2021 to present) on the surface appear vastly different. Trump warmly embraced allies in the region, especially in the Arab Gulf, and this culminated in his failed Palestinian peace plan. Biden, on the other hand, made clear that the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) was not a priority, preferring to focus on restoring the political, security and economic partnerships with European states and Pacific allies that he perceived had been damaged under the Trump administration.

However, what these differing trajectories hid was a uniting theme: an overriding commitment to being less directly involved in the region at the expense of long-standing regional ties, and with no clear conception of the US relationship with the region, particularly the value that relationship brings to the US as a global power. This lack of clarity has defined MENA’s own increasingly complicated and at times contradictory attitude toward its counterparts in Washington. The now-presumptive Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, is unlikely to err from this path and return the MENA region to a more central place in US foreign policy.

What does the Middle East want?

Regardless of which candidate wins on 5 November, the most influential Arab states in the region (the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states and to a lesser extent Egypt and Jordan) want two things from the US. First, they want more active US involvement in regional security, including through enhancing Arab Gulf states’ missile defence systems and military readiness. Second, they desire less direct US political interference in the region and more space for the region to create and implement – successfully or unsuccessfully – its own solutions for regional political and security issues.

Amid this potentially conflicted position, aligning regional capitals’ and Washington’s strategic goals and tactical policy steps over the next four years will be vital in two key areas: the Israel-Hamas conflict (and the question of Palestinian statehood) and Gulf regional security.

Israel and Palestinian statehood

No single issue has brought the region and the US more closely together in the last decade than the Israeli action to combat the Islamist militant group Hamas in the wake of the 7 October 2023 attacks, and the subsequent renewed focus on the question of Palestinian statehood.

The engagement of major regional players – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan – is primarily driven by their concerns that not achieving an end to the current conflict is domestically untenable and will endanger regional security. But the Biden administration’s commitment to a ceasefire as a first step – a prelude to a sustainable end to the war that could then precipitate talks on the final status of a Palestinian state – has meant that those major players are still willing to work with US negotiators. This will continue in the sunset months of Biden’s term, and is likely to be a component should there be a Harris administration from January 2025.

Both Harris and Trump would continue to support Israel. But they would find it difficult to enlist Arab state support for a post-conflict solution for Gaza or to work toward Palestinian statehood unless they could build more consensus than currently exists. Neither president appears likely to achieve this consensus under the current circumstances.

What will become of this cooperation under a new administration? Most governments in the region will tread carefully regardless of which candidate is elected. Both candidates have an established history of significant support for Israel beyond US treaty obligations and cross-cutting support from voters. Arab states are sceptical that any US administration is willing to impose costs on any Israeli government to deliver a Palestinian state – costs that are inevitable if the 1967 borders that are the current basis for a future state are imposed.

The expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank has made a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders effectively impossible. A plan with new boundaries – if one can be created – will be very difficult to sell to Arab polities as a viable and just solution to the Palestinian question. This in turn will make justifying a normalisation of diplomatic ties with Israel – first, by Saudi Arabia, and in time other Arab nations – very challenging. Arab recognition of Israel is now a core policy aim of the Biden administration as it enters the campaign season, and Trump has indicated that he also intends to pursue Arab state recognition of Israel.

Whether this project survives the election will be dictated by the next US president’s ability to gain concessions from Israel on multiple issues, including on settlement activity and on finding a middle ground that Arab states are willing to accept and support.

How much Arab states are willing to concede in a plan that is not based on the 1967 borders is not clear. Any new thinking in the region will remain ambiguous as long as regional political elites see proposing a not-1967 plan as a greater risk to domestic and regional political stability than sticking to the status quo – no matter how unworkable that status quo is.

Arabian or Persian Gulf?

The demands from the Gulf Arab states for the incoming US administration are similarly challenging. They want to enhance national defence systems for deterrence to dissuade Iranian paramilitary and proxy activities to (largely) sustain the Gulf’s maritime security. They want to do this while also not ruining the gains in bilateral ties made between Iran and, respectively, Saudi Arabia and the UAE in the last two years – and they don’t want the US to rock the boat with Iran enough to prompt a full-on nuclear breakout.

How the next administration navigates these conflicting policy areas will influence land and maritime security in the Arabian Peninsula, whether there is an improvement in the security environment or a deterioration. It will also dictate the potential for negative (or positive) knock-on effects in key economies such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as foreign investors do not want to invest in a region that could tip into conflict. Ultimately, any economic impacts of a real or threatened regional conflict will weigh much more heavily on regional political and economic stability than the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Challenges multiplied

No incoming US president will be able to meet the region’s contradictory aims – stronger defence and security ties but with less US involvement in regional political problem-solving – simultaneously.

This sets the stage for a new raft of challenges from 2025 to 2028, including the regional impact of a potential US-Saudi mutual defence treaty, potential US support for a Saudi civilian nuclear industry, what the next phase of US-Iran relations may bring, and the policies of any post-Netanyahu government in Israel.