Trump is rattling sabres over Iran while quietly echoing the Obama playbook

For all the bluster, the US president is not what you might call a ‘hard Iranxiteer’

Donald Trump wants you to think he is pressuring Iran with an iron fist.

His secretary of state Mike Pompeo sounded bullish when he announced in Cairo last week that the goal was to expel “every last Iranian boot” from Syria, crushing the Iranian power that emerged from President Barack Obama’s “dire misjudgements”.

And reports on Sunday night claimed Trump’s national security advisor John Bolton had asked the Pentagon to draw up options for military strikes against Iran last year, after two incidents in Iraq which were referred to as “acts of war.”

However, the devil is always in the detail. It’s not clear how serious those plans were, and certainly nothing came of them. And in the meantime, Trump has been making all his own “misjudgements” by withdrawing from Syria, and giving away all America’s cards for free.

To understand Trump’s strategy in the Middle East, look no further than Israel.

When Pompeo was traveling around the region, trying to clear a path for the military drawdown, Bolton was doing the real business. He was in Israel reassuring Netanyahu, not on Israel’s security (as this is guaranteed by the US no matter what), but rather on America’s burgeoning new ties with its historical Arab foes.

The US is using Iran to prompt Arab states to cement their new and ongoing normal relations with Israel.

In May, Trump decided to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal and re-impose fatal economic sanctions, with a stated goal to reduce Iran’s oil exports to zero. Everyone thought: That’s it, Iran is done! But it didn’t take long for eight countries to receive waivers allowing them to carry on buying Iran’s “sanctioned” oil. America’s Middle East allies were left baffled.

The waivers stopped an imminent hike in oil prices, which would have jeopardised Trump’s economic narrative at home. That gave Iran some time, and allowed its hawkish leaders to mount a backlash. More importantly, those waivers showed that Trump’s strategy is a show of power, an extortion based on maintaining cash flow and political position.

Every time Trump appears to destroy the Obama legacy it rallies support with his base. No wonder Cairo was Pompeo’s first choice to announce America’s radical diversion from the policy Obama once revealed from the very same city. The message is loud and clear: America no longer cares for the Muslim word (as Obama tried to promote in his 2009 speech), but at the same time won’t withdraw from the region.

It is a paradox, but it is true that since Trump’s inauguration, US influence in the region is on the wane. The Iraqi government’s traumatic birth, after May elections in which Iran gained an upper hand, was a total American defeat. The war in Yemen continues, with the Stockholm Agreement left on the verge of collapse. The gulf dispute between Qatar and its neighbours is being left unresolved. Human rights have rarely been so low on a US administration’s agenda.

And in the midst of this , Trump wants to simply walk away from the US’ much-needed role in Syria. Russia will happily fill the gap, and that is not some off-the-cuff strategy. In the Middle East, Vladimir Putin reaps what Trump sows, even on the only serious American achievement in the region; the not-quite defeat of Isis.

The two super powers dance round each other. Putin knows that Trump’s only interest is Israel, and he has no problem with it as long as Russia can meddle in every other havoc-wreaking conflict in the region. Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Oman in October was a weighty statement that Washington’s focus is to bring Israel in from the cold.

Pompeo claimed credit for that trip, as well as for the visit of an Israeli minister and judo team to the UAE last year. Qatar is piggybacking on a deal to transfer millions of humanitarian dollars to Hamas via Israel to cement its own relationship with the Israelis. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi stated, in a painful interview with 60Minutes this month, that his country’s cooperation with Israel is at its “closest ever.”

Although many in the Trump administration are hardcore believers that “regime change” is necessary in Iran, Trump’s policy, in fact, seems closer to Obama’s than any previous Republican president. He has said he would “love to negotiate" with Tehran. The Iranians "are not ready yet,” he said, “but they will be."

On Friday, Pompeo revealed that Arab foreign ministers will take part in a meeting in Poland next month to discuss tackling Iran’s influence. On Sunday, the Israeli media confirmed that Netanyahu (who is also the foreign minister) had received an invitation. Trump is doing what he can to nudge Israel into the same room with the Arabs. Obviously.

In other words, Trump wants a soft exit from his Iran problem. For him, it was never about the Arab world and the Arabs’ interests; it has always been about the terms of the deal. He is not what you might call a “hard Iranxiteer”.

The Arabs have long confronted Iran without openly pursuing cooperation with Israel, and for years that behind-closed-doors approach has worked for everyone. Trump, however, wants an arrangement where Israel has a place at the table. For him, it is not an alliance against Iran, it is an alliance with Israel.

And it won’t end there. If the “Arab coalition” with Israel holds, then in all likelihood it will be called on to do heavy lifting in Trump’s so-called “deal of the century.” This latest bid to make meaningful progress on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was due to be unveiled but has been kicked down the road as the region’s complications intervene.