Can Trump Remake the Middle East?

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Dana, thank you so much for joining me. Your most recent essay for Foreign Affairs is in our current issue. It’s called “The Narrow Path to a New Middle East.” We’ll get to that piece, but also to much else happening in the region, including in the last few days.

DANA STROUL

I’m glad to be with you all. I have been a long admiring reader of Foreign Affairs, and am so pleased to see my piece in print.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Let’s start with President Trump’s trip to the Middle East last week. It was his first foreign trip this term. It’s not exactly the list of countries you probably would have picked for his first trip or even his first trip to the Middle East; he went to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar. You know what the headlines were: the airplane from Qatar at one end of the spectrum and the meeting with the new Syrian leader and the commitment to lift sanctions on Syria at the other. But beyond the headlines, what struck you as the significance of the trip for the region and for the U.S. role in it?

DANA STROUL

Well, first of all, there is symmetry in the fact that President Trump chose those countries as his first scheduled intentional trip abroad. So if you think back to the first Trump administration, he chose Saudi Arabia for his first stop then, and a lot of the focus was on combating violent extremism. Remember, Trump, then Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, President Sisi of Egypt, all touching the orb, talking about how they can work together to solve the ills coming out of the Middle East. And of course, President Trump and his first administration went on to solidify agreements such as the Abraham Accords agreements, which normalized relations between Israel and the UAE, Israel and Bahrain, later Israel and Sudan, and then Israel and Morocco, which have opened up the opportunity to strategically shift the landscape and relationships of the Middle East.

So one is just the symmetry that Trump likes the theater and the atmosphere of the Middle East. If you think about the imagery of his first trip, he brought many of his children. And these are monarchies, and so if you think about the first summit of President Trump with all of the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council, he was sitting there, the kings and the sultans were flanked by members of their inner circle who are also their family members, and that felt very comfortable to President Trump. His son-in-law was there, his wife was there, his daughter Ivanka Trump was there, all in that first administration. And what we’ve seen since that first trip in 2019 is that during his administration and after, President Trump and his family have maintained very deep ties to the Middle East. So that’s the personal pageantry of what we saw.

I also think it’s important to situate last week’s trip in the broader context of how the Gulf countries fit into the global order. And a lot of what we saw last week is continuity, and what I mean by that is that in the Biden administration, you also saw this shift from focusing not on the Gulf leaders as partners in the region to address problems in the region, but as partners on a global scale for global impact. So think back to President Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia in the summer of 2022. There’s this big statement called the Jeddah Communique, and it actually talks about the ways in which the United States is going to partner with all of the countries in the Middle East on things like food security, 5G communications, maritime security. So the idea is partnering for a greater good for the greater global order, not just about problems in the region that you need to address in the region.

So, fast-forward to this trip, that’s basically what we saw. It was President Trump talking to the leaders of the Gulf, not just about what the United States is going to deliver for the Middle East, but actually what the Middle East is going to deliver for the United States. A lot of the announcements—the investment deals, the commercial deals—were about financial flows from the Middle East to the United States. And what the United States is going to send back are things like increased opportunities for collaboration with semiconductors and artificial intelligence, transactions which will enhance the sale of military equipment to the Middle East. But also, what the leaders of the Middle East are offering President Trump are ways to wind down wars and resolve what he wants, which is peace through strength.

So it’s not just what the United States is going to do in terms of funding, but big policy shifts. So Trump has been clear he doesn’t want war, and the leaders of the Gulf monarchies that he met also do not want war. So he’s actually quite aligned in his vision for the Middle East with them, and that’s what they talked about: how to avoid war with Iran through diplomacy on the nuclear program, how to avoid more instability in Syria by lifting sanctions and actually trying to bring Syria into the international fold, and perhaps wind down the war in Gaza by renewed emphasis on ways to get Hamas to demilitarize and the hostages to be released.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

A lot of the commentary is focused on the fact that Israel was not on the itinerary, that Prime Minister Netanyahu seemed to be kind of left off that list. And obviously, some of those topics you just mentioned are not exactly aligned with where Israeli policy is or the direction Israeli policy seems to be. Do you think that’s a significant signal? Is that a meaningful warning, in terms of where the U.S.–Israel relationship goes from here, or is that kind of reading too much into it?

DANA STROUL

Well, in terms of presidential trips, I do think it’s noteworthy that when President Biden did his trip to the Middle East, he went to Israel first, and then he flew directly to Saudi Arabia, which was the first time a president has done that. The significance of a direct flight, when you think about it—in many of these countries for a very long time, Israel wasn’t even on their map. So you could not fly directly from Israel to other places in the Middle East, you had to touch down somewhere else first. And this was a real nod to the strategic intent of the United States, which is to increase opportunities for normalization between Israel and its neighbors.

But we’re in a vastly different strategic context right now. And on the one hand, I don’t think this is only about daylight retention between Washington and Jerusalem. After all, Netanyahu has visited the Oval Office twice in the first 100 days of the Trump administration. It’s quite clear from the readouts that there’s daily interaction between Trump administration officials and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s team. And of course, President Trump’s envoy to work on a lot of these issues, Steve Witkoff, was in and out of Trump’s meetings in the Middle East because he was actually working with the Israelis and others on these big negotiations that matter a lot for Israel and for the United States.

On the other hand, we are, I think, at a point where we could see more tension between the Trump White House and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s team. And the biggest two issues of course are Gaza and Iran, and a close third would be Syria. So on Iran, there’s no question that what Trump heard across all of his meetings last week is, “We do not want more war. War is bad for what we, the leaders of UAE and Qatar and Saudi Arabia, are focused on,” which is economic growth and social transformation in their own countries. So think about Saudi Arabia and Vision 2030, which is a sweeping transformation across the country. Another war and even the potential of a direct war between the United States and Iran should diplomacy fail is terrible for business and terrible for these guys’ economic plans, not to mention the impact it would have on global energy markets and particularly oil sales. So what President Trump has heard is, “We want you to keep negotiating. We think there’s a diplomatic path out.”

And of course, I think it’s important to remember that before President Trump flew to the region, the brother of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Khalid bin Salman, went to Iran, meets with the Supreme Leader, and delivers a letter from King Salman of Saudi Arabia. So unprecedented diplomatic activity and all the signals are, “We want everyone to keep talking not to go to war.” And of course, that’s not where Israel is. Israeli officials have been very clear that they see a very small window here for military action against Iran’s program, and they do not think that Iran is going to be willing to make a negotiated deal that would prevent further enrichment, which is viewed as the path to a nuclear weapon.

Secondly, on Gaza, there’s a split screen in the Middle East. In Israel, all you see are images of the hostages still held by Hamas, and in the rest of the region, all you see are images of Palestinians suffering in Gaza. And again here, the leaders of the region want this war to stop and President Trump heard consistently from them that they are willing to do certain things to wind down this war, to support the humanitarian situation, but the military campaign has to stop and of course, we’re seeing increased diplomatic activity to try to broker that.

And finally, on Syria, there’s no question that when Trump shook hands with the new President of the transitional government in Syria, Ahmed al-Shara, and announced sanctions relief, that is a sea change and that is exactly what the leaders of the Gulf want. They want sanctions lifted by the United States so that they can get involved economically and start to rebuild and reconstruct Syria. And frankly, that’s not what Israel wants and we can see that by the continued military strikes that Israel is taking deeper and deeper into Syria. They don’t trust Ahmed al-Shara. And the significance of the Trump meeting and the sanctions relief demonstrates that the United States is now working with its Gulf allies to test out working and embracing Shara and his government, which certainly makes people in Israel very nervous.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

I want to dig in on each of those issues, but first linger on one other aspect of the trip, and that was the speech that President Trump gave that is, I think, being hailed by some as kind of a Trump Doctrine for the region or a kind of shift in the U.S. approach to the region. If you read it alongside speeches from George W. Bush and Barack Obama in Cairo in 2009, as many people are, the clear message seems to be, “We don’t really care. We, the United States, don’t really care what your domestic model is, what human rights you may be violating, whether you’re democratic or not, as long as it doesn’t threaten us and as long as we’re making some of those big deals.” I think in some ways this change has been happening over several years; it wasn’t like the Biden administration was especially focused on promoting internal transformation in the Middle East, but Trump, in his way, said it kind of more crudely and colorfully than others have.

Is this a real change? Does it mean a significant shift for the U.S. policy towards the region and for the region itself?

DANA STROUL

I don’t think that the speech itself denotes a significant change because, as you said, this is pretty much where U.S. policy has been moving anyway. And I think a lot of that is about the American debate, about the American role in the world, and how involved the United States should be in encouraging certain kinds of changes in other governments. And you can see this very much in a lot of the foreign policy establishment and criticism of decisions of the George W. Bush administration, who had quite maximalist objectives in terms of democratic transformations in Iraq and of course Afghanistan. And now, more than two decades since those events, a lot of the cabinet-level officials and people in the Trump administration experienced the effects of the George W. Bush administration’s policies in Iraq because they were the boots on the ground. And so I think that in some ways this reflects a change in how Americans think about their role in the world.

And of course, from the Obama speech in Cairo talking about the need for change and inclusion in the Arab world, we’ve seen quite a sea change from that, of course, with the experience of the Arab Spring, and how there’s not one country or society that came out of those protests in a more democratic way. But you can see that the policies were already shifting in how the United States was spending its assistance dollars, in what messaging was, publicly. There was not significant amounts of public criticism by Biden administration officials, and not really from Trump administration officials, about the internal politics, domestic developments, human rights concerns, in a public way. I can say, at least in the Biden administration, those issues were of course raised privately.

But compare what Trump’s message was in the Middle East during his big speech in Saudi Arabia to Vice President Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Dialogue, where he actually accused European governments of suppressing free speech. I was struck by, listening to him criticize European governments about transparent speech, freedom of information, and thinking, “I wonder if that’s the same message that’s going to be carried to other parts of the world,” and now we have the answer, which is, no. So it’s selective engagement and selective criticism on these issues.

So having said that, I think what was most interesting to me about the Trump speech was not that he said it out loud, but how critical he was of the United States to a foreign audience. On the one hand, I actually think that’s an excellent display of democracy. I think it’s important for foreign audiences to hear different leaders and different members of different parties and representatives be openly critical of different decisions of the United States. And arguably, everyone should be able to criticize their governments and that there should be an ability to see differences in nuance and that societies and governments are not monolithic in views or policies, that they actually change. But the way, of course, in which Trump did it was quite direct. I’m sure it was music to the leaders of the Middle East’s ears.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

I admire your ability to find this inspiring thread and that speech as a good message for democracy, but we’ll take it. One issue you did not mention and that took up a lot of the oxygen in the administration’s Middle East policy in the weeks or months before the trip was the campaign against the Houthis, trying to reopen shipping through the Red Sea. That was, of course, most famously—or infamously—described in the Signal chat that Jeffrey Goldberg was part of. But as we look at what that campaign actually achieved, it’s a little hard to tell what changed: whether the Houthis actually adjusted behavior, whether anything was achieved, whether the kind of policy logic that drove the campaign was justified. How do you read the results and the answers to that ultimate question about whether it was worth it?

DANA STROUL

First of all, on the Signal chat, setting aside the wild revelation that these kinds of issues were being discussed on a platform such as Signal, I thought it was a perfect insight into the ideological camps and the really tough decisions facing this administration, which is: how much of the burden on any particular issue should the United States carry, as opposed to our partners? And you could see that cabinet-level officials were saying, “Well, we can do this now, but we’re going to have other people pay later.” And then questions about the resource constraints.

So first of all, to me, this was a first test of the Trump administration’s application of true military force in pursuit of an objective. And on the one hand, if you look at the War Powers notification that President Trump sent to Congress, he authorized this campaign called Operation Rough Rider, under his Article Two authority to defend U.S. interests and U.S. forces. And so the objective of the campaign was actually narrowly crafted, at least in the ways in which the executive communicated to the legislative branch, that the intent was for the Houthis to stop putting U.S. military vessels and U.S. interests at sea at risk. And at least what we know about the terms of the cease-fire—which frankly there hasn’t been a succinct public articulation of what it is—but at least in President Trump’s speaking publicly about it, he said, “The Houthis committed to not firing on U.S. military vessels, so we’ll stop firing on them, and leave the rest of it to the region.” So, that’s number one. Number two—

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Can I just interrupt you on that, though? They weren’t particularly firing on U.S. military vessels before the campaign started, is that right?

DANA STROUL

They were, actually. They’ve been firing at U.S. military vessels. And in fact, we had one of our aircraft carriers in the Red Sea who had to do a very abrupt maneuver away from a Houthi missile, and the report is that that is how an F-18 fell off the aircraft carrier into the Red Sea. We’ve had multiple U.S. naval vessels transiting the Red Sea who have had to shoot down Houthi drones, counter Houthi sea missiles, air missiles, etc. So absolutely, the U.S. military has been at risk from Houthi attacks.

But more than that, it’s not just about the U.S. military; it is about the basic principle of freedom of navigation in some of the world’s most strategic waterways, and for multiple administrations, this has been a top priority. So generally, if you look at our national security documents, our core interests in the Middle East are countering Iran, countering terrorism, upholding freedom of navigation, and Israel’s security. So if that one is still holding for the Trump administration—freedom of navigation—I don’t think you can look at the way in which Operation Rough Rider ended and say freedom of navigation has been restored. In fact, as soon as that cease-fire was called, we’ve still seen the Houthis launch ballistic missiles at Israel, and just recently they’ve announced that they are going to try to impose a maritime blockade on Israel as a forcing function for the new Israeli military campaign in Gaza. So did this campaign take such significant Houthi capabilities off the field that the Houthis can no longer threaten freedom of navigation? No. I think that’s the second point that’s really important here.

And third is that it’s not just the U.S. audience that’s looking at this; it’s our adversaries. So the Trump administration has continued to say that although they prefer diplomacy to address Iran’s nuclear program, they maintain the willingness and the readiness to launch military operations against Iran. But if you’re Iran and you’re looking at how this cease-fire between the Houthis and the United States just happened, your conclusion is probably to question whether or not Trump and his team have the wherewithal to see a military campaign all the way through. And what I mean is, what we were talking about in terms of a military campaign in Yemen, it’s nothing compared to what military strikes on Iran’s nuclear program would be, but for certain, it’s not something that’s going to happen in one night. We’re talking about a campaign.

And in terms of a campaign: for this campaign in Yemen, the Trump administration sent two aircraft carriers, many more missile defense assets. They were reportedly working to organize a ground campaign with Saudi- and Emirati-backed local forces. All of that would have created significant military pressure on the Houthis if it had gone on for a long period of time. But as it was in this short campaign period, I think the lesson is that if you give the Trump administration a way out to not continue to use military assets, deals are possible, even if it doesn’t fundamentally change the reality on the ground.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

It’s kind of astonishing watching from some distance how many outside powers have attempted to really defeat the Houthis and how little progress they’ve made, despite having seeming advantages in firepower. That’s everyone from us and the U.K. to the Saudis and Emiratis and Israelis. You were involved in some of this effort when you were in the Pentagon during the Biden administration. Why is it so hard? Why have the Houthis proved so difficult to meaningfully deter or defeat?

DANA STROUL

Well, first of all, if you look at the Saudi-led coalition that started in 2015, they committed to an air campaign, nothing on the ground. And so, I can’t think of an example in recent history where an exclusive air campaign without an articulation of any kind of ground game can dislodge an entity that we see as a terrorist organization, but has entrenched itself throughout the economic, social, and governing fabric of a society.

So, think about the Defeat ISIS campaign, which started during the Obama administration and was carried through the Trump administration and the Biden administration. The United States led the air campaign and we didn’t have significant numbers of U.S. forces on the ground in either Iraq or Syria, but we were certainly enabling, training, equipping, and advising local partners on the ground in order to take the fight to ISIS. And the idea that an air campaign only would have dislodged ISIS in the period of years that it did, I think it’s just not the way military campaigns go. So you’re right, the Saudis learned that lesson from 2015 until quite recently by relying only on an air campaign. And we saw the Saudis abandon or veer away from a decision to focus exclusively on military means and actually work through some accommodation through this political process with the Houthis.

And the same thing when Operation Rough Rider in Yemen started by the Trump administration, which is an exclusive air campaign without talking about what’s going to happen on the ground, how you’re going to dislodge the Houthis from the ground, and how you’re going to attend to the needs of the civilian population, is unlikely to create the definitive or decisive shift we need to see. And I’ll note here also, there was a lot of criticism of the Biden approach to this issue, which was, one, to form a defensive coalition, which involved many, many governments and actors who were all working together to try to support and provide reassurance to vessels transiting the Red Sea. And then separately, there was a series of offensive military strikes that were designed to take Houthi military capabilities off the table. A lot of the criticism of the Biden team was, “You’re not investing significant resources to take this threat off the table. You’re basically doing half measures.”

So one way to look at this is, if the Trump administration had asked certain questions about the nature of Houthi entrenchment in Yemen and what it would really take to neutralize this threat, one is: an air campaign only was not going to be sufficient. And two is: you have to look at the resource commitments. Are we willing to pull significant military capability out of other theaters like the Asia-Pacific theater or maybe even a Europe theater in order to sufficiently have military capabilities to get at the Houthis? What about the air defense capabilities we would need to support our partners and provide them reassurance that the United States has its back? Very important, but there are trade-offs in other theaters. And the same thing with our young men and women in uniform who have had their deployments extended over and over and over.

So in the Biden administration, I think there was a calculated decision that the amount of resource prioritization, funding, munitions it was going to take to change the situation on the ground. Having looked at the Saudi-led coalition, what the Israelis were doing, what the Emiratis had done. The decision was: we are going to uphold this principle of freedom of navigation, but actually trying to remake Yemen is not something we’re going to do, compared to the maximalist objectives as articulated early on in the Trump administration, and where we ended up, which is actually this is a really hard problem, and it would have taken months of a military campaign combined with other elements of U.S. national security to actually significantly change it.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Your recent piece in Foreign Affairs is focused on constructing a region or regional order that can effectively and enduringly contain destabilizing activities from Iran. So much of the attention on Iran during the trip and more broadly at this moment is about the prospects for a new deal. It’s obviously impossible to know from the outside exactly where those discussions stand. But as you watch them, how do you see the prospects of a new deal? Do you see any overlap between Iranian demands and interests at this point? And what would, to your mind, be a reasonably good deal from an American perspective and that it gives us assurance that the nuclear program in Iran is contained effectively?

DANA STROUL

So what I wanted to articulate in that article was that the ways in which we have traditionally, at least in Washington, thought about the Middle East and the realm of the achievable, has changed in very fundamental ways, primarily because of what the Israelis have done to set back and dismantle the tentacles of how Iran has projected power and kept the region unstable for so many decades.

Hamas is without question significantly degraded, even though we’re still in a military campaign situation in Gaza. The picture in Lebanon has completely changed. Hezbollah is not out of the game, but certainly down; there’s new leaders there. The idea that Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow—on the situation in Syria, we can imagine new opportunities. We obviously have already talked about Trump taking steps in that direction. The Iran backed militias in Iraq are certainly thinking through their positioning because they understand that they’re next and they’ve seen what the Israelis have done in Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza. And now, of course, the Houthis, there was some military pressure they felt for some period of time, which shows us that military pressure can achieve some objectives, just not all objectives. So when you look at all of that, we have to rethink what military force can achieve. But what we know from plenty of examples in recent history and long history, is that military force and some sanctions pressure on their own are not going to achieve the end states that are in the U.S. interest or in the region.

Wars end not just with military force, but with political processes, hard compromises, and rebuilding. And those are the tools that right now the Trump administration seems to be dismantling, whether it’s winnowing down the size of the State Department; undoing the U.S. Agency for International Development, which historically has done the most of our foreign assistance; offering early retirement to a lot of our technical experts who know how to do stabilization and reconstruction, which is foreign assistance, but in a post-conflict environment is inherently political so you really need experts at the local level. You need partnerships, you need understanding, you need money, and you need to be able to work with allies and partners. And a lot of the steps we’re seeing the Trump administration take now put at risk those kinds of things, which lead to sustainable outcomes that could prevent return to war.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Can I ask you to put that in somewhat more concrete terms? When you look at this set of tools that you would have been thinking about deploying if you were in government and you imagine what it will take to really indefinitely contain Iran in the region, what is something you would have done with those tools that you don’t think will be available to policymakers in the coming months?

DANA STROUL

The big area that I’m worried about is post-conflict reconstruction and stabilization, and Syria is the poster child for this, in my view. This is a society where the traditional social contract and connective tissue that keeps a society together—one that’s as diverse geographically, sectarian, religious, ethnic as Syria—together. All of that over decades has been eroded by the policies of the Assad regime. And then on top of that, layer in the civil war, Iranian intervention, Russian intervention, violent extremists, ISIS, al-Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which is President Ahmed al-Shara’s group before he came down from Idlib and took over Damascus. We are seeing examples of sectarian and reprisal violence already. These are not issues that are going to be solved in a month or even a year. These will take generations of healing.

When we talk about a future of inclusive governance for Syria, it’s arguable that the current leaders in Damascus don’t have the skills—they have been fighting for their life and for survival. So to expect them to turn around and know how to deliver economic stabilization or the appropriate kind of governance where everyone perceives that they have a voice and a role in those critical decisions—how do you draft a new constitution? How do you hold free, fair, and transparent elections? And these are really tough issues. And the United States has had decades of experience doing this, and it’s not only about the money we bring to the table; it’s about the expertise. And those are the people that are being told they are the deep state, they’re the enemy, they’ve been corrupt, they misuse U.S. taxpayer dollars, and have been either fired or offered early retirement. So I worry that there’s an entire body of experts out there who will no longer show up. And if we don’t have a role in helping Syria recover, we are only setting them up for another round of violence.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Let me just try to channel some of the skepticism that I think you would hear from both people in the Trump administration, but also plenty of other skeptics in the restraint camp, also some on the left, who’d say, “Look, we sent all those people to Iraq and Afghanistan over the years. We offered that expertise and it did not exactly have great effects. Is it really going to make the critical difference here?”

DANA STROUL

Well, we’re about to find out. So first of all, Iraq is not, I think, a model of Jeffersonian democracy as we here in the United States would define it. I would say, first of all, we are sort of undergoing our own debates domestically about the relative separation and responsibilities of power, but Iraq is about to have another cycle of parliamentary elections. There have been very big concerns, but also we’ve seen that some of the institutions are resilient enough to fight back. We know that most Iraqis are nationalists and don’t want to be subservient to either Tehran or Washington. We’ve worked with Iraq on a variety of things that I think are important to us, whether it’s defeating ISIS or limiting certain kinds of Iranian malign influence in Iraq. Is it perfect? No. Is this a partner we can work with? Probably.

And so I think first of all, it’s, what do we expect in these deeply torn post-conflict societies? And secondly, I’m not suggesting that the United States should be the lead donor, the organizer in charge all the time. I’m saying that there are specific kinds of expertise, and that we can be part of a process.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

To linger on Iran, do you think a deal is likely and would that be a good thing, to your mind?

DANA STROUL

So the question is not, is a deal likely? It’s, is a good deal possible? And this is where I want to get back to something that I said in my written piece, which is that the region has fundamentally changed, that the table has been reset, and Iran is on its back foot not only because its terrorist infrastructure has been degraded, also because Israel has struck inside Iran twice, has left the regime more vulnerable. And now we know, as more sanctions come online, the regime is vulnerable abroad, it’s vulnerable at home.

So the question on the deal is, given all of those factors, what kind of deal can we get to that would provide the reassurance the international community needs, and especially Israel needs, that Iran doesn’t have a pathway to a nuclear weapon?

So what’s concerning about the rhetoric around the diplomacy in Iran’s nuclear program at this point is that Iranian messaging seems to suggest that they’re ready to accept the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, so the agreement negotiated by the Obama administration a decade ago. And arguably, given where Iran is now, we should probably be aiming for something much more stringent than that, given how much of a back foot Iran is on. The big criticism of the Iran nuclear agreement a decade ago was that it only required Iran to pause certain activities. It did not require Iran to dismantle that nuclear apparatus. And it permitted them to enrich a low level of uranium, which Iran argued was for civilian purposes. But if there’s any domestic enrichment, then Iran will always have a pathway to a nuclear weapon.

And so the question is, is the Trump administration so eager to prevent another war or preclude having to make a decision about military action, that it’s willing to accept the Obama status quo ante? Or can we utilize the leverage of the moment, given how much of a back foot Iran is on, and get something that’s more stringent, more robust, and really permanently blocks Iran’s pathways to a nuclear weapon?

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Does Israel have the capabilities to use military force on its own?

DANA STROUL

Absolutely, Israel has the capabilities to use military force on its own, and we just saw that demonstrated twice in 2024. But I think what’s important to note here is that there are different military objectives. So what Israel did was respond to Iranian direct attacks on Israel twice last year. If we’re talking about military strikes against Iran’s nuclear program, we’re talking about a much more serious piece of business. We saw Israel show us twice that they could sustain their own airstrikes inside Iran over one night. That’s not what we’re talking about when we’re talking about taking out Iran’s nuclear program.

And so one is, we need to think about this not as one night of action, but as a campaign that would go on for a very long period of time. And secondly, part of Iran’s program, it’s very well documented now, is deeply buried. We’ve seen the United States demonstrate that it can take out deeply buried targets in Yemen. And arguably when those B-2s were deployed to Diego Garcia and took out some Houthi capabilities buried deep inside mountains, the signal was not just to the Houthis; it was to Tehran, that we have the capability to take out part of your nuclear program that you think are deeply buried and protected from military strikes.

So yes, the Israelis have capability to do something, but over what period of time, given all of their other military commitments, I think that’s an open question and that’s why the Israelis are certainly going to be eager to understand what military capabilities the Trump administration would be willing to put on the table to support them.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

You noted earlier President Trump’s declared interest in ending the war in Gaza. It’s hard to know exactly what that means at this point. As you look at Israeli objectives, we’re talking in a moment when it seems to be preparing for or beginning a major new offensive, but it’s a little hard to know exactly what that will look like. What is your understanding of Israeli objectives and Israeli’s theory of victory at this point? I think there have been at many points, you’ve heard a lot of frustration from you and your colleagues in the Biden administration about the lack of a real Israeli theory here. Do you see one now? How do you read what the Israelis are doing at this moment?

DANA STROUL

The Israeli government, or at least the Netanyahu administration, has articulated, I think it’s fair to say, two sets of objectives. One is to get the remaining hostages that Hamas holds released. And number two, to affect the dismantlement of Hamas’ organization by one, forcing it to completely disarm, two, to get its leadership to leave Gaza, and three, to ensure that Hamas no longer holds a position of governance in Gaza. So that is defeat for Hamas and Hamas’ theory of victory is just to survive, and I think that’s why we’re seeing an impasse in these negotiations that are currently taking place in Qatar that Steve Witkoff is involved in, that Egypt is involved in, as well as an Israeli negotiating team on the ground in Qatar, and then also in Egypt. The hostages could be released now if Israel just said, “We’re going to cease fire and we’ll agree to ending this war.” Hamas could also just agree to release the hostages now and prevent the rest of this siege from happening, which will put at risk more innocent Palestinian civilian lives in Gaza. The question is on the end state.

So for Hamas, if they release the hostages now and Israel agrees to a cease-fire, Hamas gets to survive, and that is the objective that’s in conflict with the theory of victory as Prime Minister Netanyahu has articulated it. And this is where in terms of disarmament, getting Hamas to relinquish any form of governance in Gaza, both directly or indirectly. When we talk about these technocratic committees, it just means Hamas is directing from the outside. And then where are Hamas leaders going to go? So I think the theory of victory for Israel and the theory of survival for Hamas are in direct conflict, which is why we’re at this impasse in the hostage negotiations.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

You wrote in a piece last fall that the IDF, the Israeli military, was starting to see shortages of certain kinds of equipment. There were real questions about whether it could in fact continue its offensive at a large scale for a sustained period of time. There were concerns about manpower and reservists in Israel being willing to fight. There are economic problems. How do you assess its ability to continue fighting now?

DANA STROUL

We are continually seeing these strains on the Israeli defense forces. So as an example, there are more reports and more frequent reports of reservists refusing to show up for another round of fighting in Gaza. The munitions and resupply for the Israeli military is certainly an issue, although at this point it’s not an issue of the Trump administration being unwilling to supply them. I think it’s a question of how fast the defense industry can move to get those.

But taking a step back, when you think about the kinds of military commitments that the Netanyahu government has signed the IDF up for, we’re talking about a campaign in Gaza where if you listen to what the Netanyahu governing coalition is saying, they’re saying, “This time when we clear Hamas out of an area in Gaza, we’re going to stay, and we think we’re going to have to stay for up to a year.” So that is a significant amount of boots on the ground in Gaza. The IDF already has significant boots on the ground requirements in the West Bank, which is also a tinderbox which could go off at any moment.

The IDF has remained in five points inside Lebanon and is still undertaking a pretty regular series of strikes to take out different Hezbollah leaders, other leaders, and weapons caches when they see violations of the cease-fire there. The activity inside Syria is far beyond the disarmament agreement of 1974, even strikes near Damascus, and then talks about different Israeli actions to protect the Syrian Druze community. We’ve continued to see rounds of Israeli strikes in Yemen, and then of course it’s no secret that the IDF is preparing for strikes inside Iran. This is a serious amount of business and requirements on a very small military who’s never been tested like this before and has sustained this level of kinetic action and multiple campaigns for as long as it has, ever, in the history of the state of Israel.

So the questions about manpower, it’s why we’re seeing these debates in Israel about ultra-Orthodox service in the IDF. We’re seeing pushback. They’re trying to figure that out. All of this is about manpower, about readiness and levels of exhaustion of the IDF. And the societal debate you’re seeing in Israel about this, I think, exposes the fact that people are very nervous about how they’re going to sustain these levels of commitment.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

In some ways, one of the most straightforward ways to understand what the Israeli strategy is, is to listen to some of the more extremist members of Netanyahu’s cabinet who talk about expulsions of Palestinians from Gaza and reoccupation of at least parts of Gaza, as well as expanding the occupation of the West Bank. Do you see that as a serious threat to Israeli policy right now? Do you think that’s the right way of reading it?

DANA STROUL

What’s interesting right now about reading Israeli society is that the polling of what most Israelis want is really at odds with what Netanyahu and his governing coalition are speaking about. More than 50 percent of Israelis—the polling numbers are just striking—would say, “We want to end this war now and we want the hostages released, even if it means that we don’t achieve the rest of those maximalist military objectives at this moment in time. We can always go back and fight Hamas, but these hostages, they do not have a lot of time. We choose to sacrifice the rest of those objectives and get the hostages out right this minute.”

And what’s clear is that there are serious constraints on Netanyahu’s maneuvering ability because of these far-right voices in his governing coalition who are talking about things like reoccupying Gaza, opposed to delivering any humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians, which is a violation of the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law. We are seeing more politicians outside of Netanyahu’s governing coalition being extremely critical of the governing coalition. So I think it’s fair to say that where Netanyahu is is quite different from where the majority of Israeli society is.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

If you took seriously President Trump’s goal of ending the war in Gaza, what would you suggest that he do in order to exert real leverage on the actors there?

DANA STROUL

First of all, President Trump built up significant goodwill during his trip to the Middle East, and I think that there are real opportunities to work with our partners who share the goal of ending the war in Gaza. So what’s striking about what we’re hearing from the capitals of the Middle East is a commitment to mediate between Hamas and Israel, but not really willingness to hold Hamas truly accountable for its actions. We heard the foreign minister of UAE in an interview on Fox right after the President Trump trip say, “Look, the hostages have to be released immediately.” That’s Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed. He’s absolutely right. All the other leaders of the Middle East, all the other foreign ministers, should be joining him. Hamas should just release the rest of the hostages, and Hamas should disarm. And we should be working with our partners on a way for the remaining living Hamas leaders to exit Gaza so that Palestinian civilians, many of whom are taking to the streets protesting Hamas, have a chance at a better life. They don’t want to live under the yoke of Hamas. So I think number one is a missing element right here, is that we should be asking our partners to do more and take stronger positions against Hamas.

Number two, we should be working with our partners. The United States has always been, I think, a really important convener and facilitator between Israel and its neighbors in the Middle East. Now is a perfect time to be doing that. And thinking through for Palestinian civilians that would voluntarily leave Gaza, they deserve to have a place to go. A lot of them want to leave and go somewhere else in the Middle East. And we’ve seen our partners in the Middle East be extremely generous for Iraqis fleeing violence in Iraq, for Syrians fleeing violence in Syria—there should be a way to do this. Yes, the historical narratives around this are hard, but I think that some of these things would build the goodwill and confidence to then also really push Israel on how to tend to the needs of the innocent Palestinians in Gaza and how to differentiate between near- and short-term goals, of both ensuring that Hamas can never return to the military and governance position it held in Gaza, but also the imperative to get these hostages out now because they just don’t have a lot of time.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

It does seem, though, that the other piece of this is providing some other political formula for Palestinian leadership in Israel has been rather resistant to allowing any of the seemingly plausible versions of that to come into effect. Is there a way to put pressure on Israel that we haven’t tried so far? Or are there other ways to achieve that political outcome that seems to not really be in the interest of the Israeli government at this point?

DANA STROUL

Absolutely. At least from what I can tell from the public discourse, there’s been no pressure on Israel to articulate what an acceptable Palestinian leadership and governance for Gaza would be. There’s not a lot of great options, but the Palestinian Authority has been, at different times in its history, able to deliver reform and services to this population in the West Bank. And if there was political will to work alongside countries like the UAE, I think we could help the PA get to a position where it could responsibly govern in Gaza. But that’s going to take a lot of steps and, by the way, some assistance. A lot of that assistance is suspended at this point in time. So again, leadership, coaching, resources, and assistance, lots of those things are the tools that the Trump administration is taking off the table right now.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

But it is worth saying that it did not seem like the Biden administration put much pressure on this front either. You were out of the administration for most of this, so you don’t have to comment on policies that you were not involved in, but there was not a lot of use of American leverage on this part of Israeli policy under Biden either.

DANA STROUL

I think that’s fair, but I also think it’s important to think through what the priorities were at different points since October 7. So at a different point, there were so many more hostages held by Hamas. The imperative was humanitarian aid, so a lot of the engagement in the previous administration was really working through unlocking the humanitarian space to get more of that delivered. And there was no cease-fire, not a meaningful cease-fire, to even contemplate what ending the war and what non-Hamas governance would look like.

We’re at a different spot now in the war, and so arguably it is absolutely time to be thinking through what that governance framework would look like. To his credit, Steve Witkoff has talked about the Cairo statement that came after the “Gaza Riviera” saga, shall we call it, as a good start, and I think that’s right. I think that that was Arab leaders going further than they had before, but it didn’t go as far as we needed it to go. It’s something to work with, and that’s where you need a truly empowered team; it can’t just be one guy. You need a team of diplomats who understand what the president’s vision is and can actually work through the mechanics and the steps, the confidence building, the assistance and the tools necessary to empower a credible, reasonable alternative to Hamas in Gaza. And absent that, we are setting Israel up for a forever war, which is terrible for Israel, terrible for Palestinians in Gaza, terrible for the region, and terrible for the United States.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

I want to close by stepping back and getting at some of the big questions that you alluded to earlier in our conversation. There’ve been probably four American administrations that have set a strategic goal of shifting resources and deprioritizing away from the Middle East. I think all four of them have failed to one degree or another. Certainly that was true of the Biden administration, but you go back to Obama and Trump one, you saw versions of this as well.

As you look at it, and I know it’s probably never fun to be a regional specialist talking about why people should think less about your region or talk less about your region, but as you look at this question, is the assumption behind this wrong? Is the notion of deprioritizing the Middle East and American foreign policy just fundamentally mistaken, or have we gone about this the wrong way? Is there a better way of making this shift?

DANA STROUL

I would say that if the goal is deprioritizing the Middle East, then we’re going about it wrong. The Middle East is critical for U.S. interests, and whether it’s not paying attention to the things that come out of the Middle East, whether it’s Iranian-supported terrorism, jihadist terrorism, ISIS, October 7, Houthis shutting down the Red Sea, all of these have impact not just in the Middle East, but on a global scale. That’s number one.

Number two, I think the question is not about reprioritizing or deprioritizing; it’s a question of balancing. And some of that when we talk about the Middle East, we tend to talk about stuff and money. So how much security assistance our military aid goes to the Middle East? How much of our aircraft carriers and military forces are deployed to the Middle East? And there tends to be an association that this stuff and human lives is equivalent with U.S. commitment to the Middle East. And I think what we need to be thinking through is a paradigm shift in how we approach what a reasonable level of resourcing in US commitment is.

That’s why, in my view, things like the U.S.-Saudi defense treaty or even civilian nuclear cooperation, the ways in which we are actually upgrading our non-security and non-defense partnership with these countries is actually really important, because these governments and these societies in these countries can partner with us to achieve objectives, not just in the Middle East, but on a global scale. It’s going to require attention and investment, but it doesn’t mean over-prioritizing compared to other theaters. I think we can do this, but some of it is about how we think about our resourcing and our commitments, and some of it is about a shift in the paradigm, and that is going to take work by our partners as well to understand that they shouldn’t be measuring U.S. commitment and how much stuff we’re parking in the region. It’s about a mutually beneficial ecosystem where we’re coordinating with each other, not just for regional impact, but for global impact. And that’s going to be a generational project.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

I suspect we will have more opportunities to talk about and to read you on that project. Dana, thank you so much for joining me today and for the great string of recent pieces.

DANA STROUL

Thanks so much.