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ON HISfirstJCPOAJCPOA unYour browser does not support the element. day as president-elect, Donald Trump united the Middle East. Everyone agrees his second term in office will transform American policy in the region. But no one agrees on what that policy will be. Though his election probably heralds a dramatic shift, the direction he will take depends on who has his ear.Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, was quick to curry favour. He was among the first world leaders to congratulate the president-elect on what he called “history’s greatest comeback”.He reckons that a Trump administration would give him free rein to continue Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon: there would be no more nettlesome American calls for a ceasefire (not that Joe Biden’s cajoling amounted to much). He has good reason to believe that. In his first term, Mr Trump showed little concern for the plight of the Palestinians. He supported the growth of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, drafted a peace plan that was deeply skewed in Israel’s favour.But Mr Trump ran for office on a pledge to calm the region. “I’m going to stop the wars,” he said in his election-night victory speech. America has sent Israel $18bn in military aid since October 2023, and at least four American soldiers have died in connection with the fighting. Some in Israel wonder if Mr Trump will balk at the cost and demand that Mr Netanyahu end the war before he takes office. “Do you really think Trump wants this hanging over the first year of his presidency?” a Western diplomat in the region asks rhetorically.If he limits Israel’s ability to fight Iran and its proxies, Mr Trump will disappoint hawks in both Washington and Jerusalem. In his first term he abandoned the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (), the 2015 agreement that imposed limits on Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief. Mr Biden tried unsuccessfully to revive the deal. With Iran now enriching uranium to 60% purity, a hair’s breadth from weapons-grade, the is a dead letter. Mr Trump may have to decide whether to negotiate a new deal or approve military action against Iran’s nuclear sites.He has promised not to allow Iran to build a bomb. At the same time, he seems unenthusiastic about a conflict. “I don’t want to do damage to Iran,” he said on November 5th, adding that he wanted it to be a “successful country”. Some Iranians joke that the regime should offer him a property deal: the best way to clinch a new nuclear accord would be to throw in a contract for a Trump Tower in Tehran.The people around him have mixed opinions. His first cabinet had close ties to the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, a bellicose Washington think-tank that advocates regime change in Iran. Some of its members may find roles in a second Trump administration.At the other end of the spectrum is J.D. Vance, the vice-president-elect, who does not seem keen on a new war in the Middle East. In an interview last month he said that America and Israel would sometimes have diverging interests, “and our interest very much is in not going to war with Iran”. Project 2025, a right-wing blueprint for Mr Trump’s second term, calls for sanctions on Iran but stops short of recommending military action. Instead it argues that America’s Arab allies must do more to protect themselves from Iranian threats.Such talk worries Gulf states. The last time around, they welcomed a president whose first foreign trip was to Riyadh. But they came to resent the transactional nature of their relationships with Mr Trump, which forced them to spend billions of dollars buying American weapons. Now they also worry that his promised trade war with China will be a drag on oil prices (Brent crude briefly fell by more than 2% the day after Mr Trump’s election).No one is sure how Mr Trump will govern this time. Last month he promised to bring peace to Lebanon. He did not say how. Will he demand that Israel withdraw its troops and agree to a ceasefire? Or will he back a wider ground invasion in the hope of uprooting Hizbullah for good?The answer will probably depend on his advisers. Mr Netanyahu hopes to sway Mr Trump, but their relationship is fraught: the president-elect has harboured a grudge against the Israeli prime minister since 2020, when the latter congratulated Mr Biden on his electoral victory while Mr Trump was still disputing the result.In 2022 Mr Trump’s daughter, Tiffany, married Michael Boulos, whose father, Masaad, is a rich Lebanese-American businessman. The elder Mr Boulos has been advising the president-elect on the Middle East—hence Mr Trump’s newfound interest in Lebanon.Mr Trump’s swift and clear victory rules out the possibility of a post-election period of uncertainty in which Iran and Israel escalate their conflict. It also leaves Mr Biden with 75 days in which he can confront Mr Netanyahu. In the stretch between election and inauguration American presidents often pursue a less deferential policy toward Israel. In 2016 Barack Obama decided not to veto a Security Council resolution that condemned Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Bill Clinton used that period in 2000 to present the “Clinton parameters”, a last-ditch effort to reach an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.Neither of these moves amounted to much, but they were signals of American frustration. Mr Biden could go much further, if he were prepared to spend his final days in a confrontation with Mr Netanyahu. Mr Trump might not mind if he did.
