Trump and the Middle East, With Steven A. Cook (Transition 2025, Episode 2)
Steven A. Cook, the Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies at CFR, sits down with James M. Lindsay to discuss how Middle Eastern countries are reacting to former President Donald Trump’s election victory and his potential policy for the region. This episode is the second in a special TPI series on the U.S. 2025 presidential transition and is supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
James M. LindsayMary and David Boies Distinguished Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy and Director of Fellowship Affairs
Ester Fang - Associate Podcast Producer
Gabrielle Sierra - Editorial Director and Producer
- Steven A. CookEni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies and Director of the International Affairs Fellowship for Tenured International Relations Scholars
Transcript
LINDSAY:
Welcome to The President's Inbox. I'm Jim Lindsay, the Mary and David Boies distinguished senior fellow in U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. This is the second episode in a special presidential transition series on The President's Inbox. From now until Inauguration Day, I'm sitting down with experts to unpack who will staff Donald Trump's next presidential administration and how he and his team will likely approach the many foreign policy challenges they will face. This week's topic is the Middle East.
With me to discuss how countries in the Middle East are reacting to Trump's election victory and what he plans to do in the region is Steven Cook. Steven is the Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa studies here at the Council. He has written four books on the Middle East, the most recent being The End of Ambition, America's Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East, which was released this summer. Steven is also a columnist at Foreign Policy Magazine, where he recently wrote a piece titled "Trump and Harris on Middle East Policy." Steven, thank you as always for joining me on The President's Inbox.
COOK:
It's great to be back, Jim.
LINDSAY:
Steven, help me understand how capitals in the Middle East are reacting to the news that Donald Trump is returning to the White House in January and perhaps could go country by country, and let's start with Israel.
COOK:
Just generally, Jim, by and large, there's lots of relief. People are welcoming a new Trump administration.
LINDSAY:
Why is that?
COOK:
Well, I think that there's a general sense that President Trump was a stronger advocate and a stronger...For Washington's regional partners, that the United States under Trump was more committed to regional security and stability, was tougher on Iran. Trump for all of the uniqueness, let's put it that way, or for all of the uniqueness of the first Trump administration, he generally followed a fairly traditional American approach to the region, strong support for Israel, strong support for America's Arab partners, and lots of pressure on Iran.
They like that. They didn't like George W. Bush's Freedom Agenda. They didn't like President Obama's nuclear deal with the Iranians. They didn't like President Obama's pivot to Asia. They didn't like President Biden's efforts to rejoin the nuclear deal with the Iranians. I think there's a lot of relief that Trump is coming back. You mentioned Israel. In Jerusalem, the Israeli press reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was one of the first, if not the first world leader, to call President-Elect Trump and congratulate him on his victory. That was very important for Netanyahu, because when Joe Biden won the election in 2020, he called President-Elect Biden to congratulate him, which rubbed President Donald Trump the wrong way.
LINDSAY:
President Trump thought it was disloyal.
COOK:
He thought it was disloyal. President Trump was contesting that election. Now Prime Minister Netanyahu is looking at four years, or at least two years, because he has two more years left in his government before he faces election, at least two more years, but maybe more of working with Donald Trump. In Saudi Arabia, the UAE, they were also very quick to publicly congratulate the President. King Abdullah of Jordan did the same. The Iraqis did so through social media without a telephone call. The Iraqi prime minister is not someone who's personally close to President Trump having come to power after he left office. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. Very, very positive statement about-
LINDSAY:
Why is that?
COOK:
Well, those two had a very strong personal connection. They have strong respect for each other, and they personally enjoyed each other's company, and President Biden and President Erdogan did not have that personal chemistry. Trump also has been much more, at least in his first term, was much more willing to hear out President Erdogan on the presence of American troops in Syria and who those troops were working with, which a group called the People's Protection Units, which the Turks believed to be part of a larger terrorist group called the Kurdistan Workers' Party. By and large, with the exception of the Iranians, there's a lot of positivity towards Trump administration. Even within the Palestinian authority, Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, congratulated President-Elect Trump. There is the belief that President Trump will put the requisite pressure on the Israelis to finally bring the war in the strip to an end. Already President-Elect Trump has told the Israeli prime minister, "I want you to wrap this up before Inauguration Day." We'll see.
LINDSAY:
Okay. I want to dive into that, but before we do, tell me a little bit about what we know of the reaction from Tehran.
COOK:
Well, we don't know all that much about what the Iranian thinking is. The Iranians have obviously been silent about American elections. We do know that the new Hezbollah leader, Naim Qassem, said, "American elections have no bearing on us," and to the extent that Hezbollah has essentially become an extension of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. I think that's pretty consistent with what the thinking is in Tehran. There was some speculation that the Iranians preferred a Harris administration to a Trump administration believing that the Democrats were much more interested in striking deals and de-escalating with the Iranians.
But I think that President Trump's record during the first term would suggest, if you bracket out the killing of Qasem Soleimani, the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps's Quds Force, President Trump obviously engaged in a policy of what's called maximum pressure, but he shied away from a direct military confrontation with the Iranians. That maximum pressure was really designed to bring the Iranians to the negotiating table, not to foment regime change in Iran. People may be surprised, and Tehran may be surprised that they may see that the president is interested in some deal. After all, he fashions himself as a master deal maker, and from his perspective, if he could clinch a deal with the Iranians that's better than the one that President Obama did, all the better.
LINDSAY:
One country you haven't mentioned is the most populous country in the Arab world, Egypt. What is the reaction in Cairo?
COOK:
Yeah, it's a commentary on the times that I didn't include Egypt in my first round here, because Egypt has really turned inward over the course of the last decade or so. But President Trump once quipped that President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt is his favorite dictator. Now, people took that seriously. If you watch the video of this, clearly the president was trying to be funny. In any event, President Trump did not hold President Sisi up to any standards on human rights. By the way, neither did President Biden after the first five months that he was in office. But in general, President Sisi and Egyptian leadership feel more comfortable with Trump.
The difference is, I think you go back to the 2016 election cycle when President Trump met President Sisi when he was candidate Trump. He issued a statement after meeting Sisi and he said, "The United States supports Egypt in its struggle against terrorism. They're fighting the same people we're fighting. End of story." That was a distinct contrast to when President Sisi met Hillary Clinton, President Trump's opponent at the time, who gave a long caveated but-and-this-that-the other thing type of statement afterwards. Again, I think Sisi like other leaders in the region like President Trump's directness and the fact that he puts human rights, democratization reform issue a much lower priority than perhaps either a President Clinton or a President Harris would have.
LINDSAY:
Does it say something, Steven, about where the locus of power is in the Arab world that you led with the Gulf states rather than with Egypt? Because I'm of an age where I remember the conversation began and ended in Cairo.
COOK:
Well, I am of that age as well, but I think it's clear, and this was actually happening before the Arab uprisings of 2010, 2011, 2012. That power was shifting from places like Egypt, from Jordan, from Iraq, from Syria to the Gulf where wealthy countries like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar...Maybe perhaps in the case of the Emiratis and the Qataris didn't have the size in terms of population, but certainly had resources and had capacities that their small sizes wouldn't necessarily suggest. Then since the Arab uprisings or the American invasion of Iraq has greatly weakened some of these old Arab capitals, American policymakers, policymakers from other part of the world see, in particular Saudi Arabia as the most important country in the region and the Emiratis and the Qataris as being influential and capable of doing things that some of these other countries are just unable to do.
LINDSAY:
You describe a situation in which everyone across the Middle East seems to be happy that Biden is going and Trump is coming in, which immediately leads me to ask whether they're still going to be happy in six months or twelve months. Sounds like there's a lot of room for potential disappointment, but I maybe want to begin with the issue of Israel and President-Elect Trump is said that he wants Prime Minister Netanyahu to settle things up between now and January 20th. Is that something that Prime Minister Netanyahu is going to be willing to do, especially now that he just fired his defense minister?
COOK:
Well, Jim, you really put your finger on it. First, when we say everyone, let's qualify, we're talking about governments and-
LINDSAY:
Fair point.
COOK:
In general, I mean, these are countries where the governments matter. More public opinion is maybe different, maybe not, but we're really talking about governments here, although the Israeli public by huge majorities, when asked, who would they prefer, Harris or Trump, pick Trump, I think that though what you're picking up on is there's this impression, there is this imagination about what President Trump might do. In Israel, President Trump obviously has this huge reputation. He moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He recognized Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights territory that is Syrian territory that Israel conquered in the 1967 War, and in general was quite pro-Israel throughout his first term.
However, the president is once again someone who's interested in making deals. He did table a peace proposal, a two-state solution. It was unacceptable to the Palestinians, but that doesn't mean that the president-elect isn't interested in what he has called the "deal of the century." When it comes to the war in the Gaza Strip, it's clear President Trump does not want to have to deal with this issue from day one. It is clear he doesn't want to expend any political energy wrangling a cease-fire. Now, the question will be, how does he go about this? He doesn't want to have this issue that was ever present for the Biden administration, the cease-fire issue. Will he basically encourage the Israelis to finish the job, how they see fit and release whatever holds-
LINDSAY:
What does that mean, Steven? Because as we've discussed, the Israelis have had great success in decimating the leadership of Hamas, they've decimated the leadership of Hezbollah, but their fundamental problem, the refusal to deal with Israel and accept its existence persists.
COOK:
Right, and that is, once again, the rub here, is that the president may say, rhetorically, "Finish the job," signal to the Israelis, "You're unleashed to finish the job." Release holds on weapons that the Biden administration placed, which was actually a very small number of weapons to get the job done. But there's two problems. One, Hamas has not agreed to lay down its arms or give up. In fact, after the killing of its leader, Yahya Sinwar, Hamas issued a statement and said, "This will make no difference. We'll continue the fight." In Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu's, sometime opponents, but also partners within his coalition government are demanding the total destruction of Hamas, which has not yet happened. There is a conflict between President-Elect Trump's timeline, Inauguration Day, and the Israeli timeline, which is we're not quite sure when.
Israelis have been saying for the better part of six or eight months, periodically, "We're winding down major military operations in the Gaza Strip," only to continue major military operations in the Gaza Strip. But nevertheless, there is a hope–and let me emphasize that word, hope–within the Israeli government that President Trump will be less concerned about issues like humanitarian aid, the plight of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and allow the Israelis to do what they can do and essentially shield them from international criticism.
LINDSAY:
What would President Trump do once he's in office, if in fact the Israelis don't stop the fight if this continues?
COOK:
Yeah. Again, it's hard to measure with President Trump whether when he says, "Have this done by Inauguration Day," whether he means it. I suspect, because The president's base is very, very pro-Israel, particularly the evangelical part of his base is pro-Israel. The Israelis will have a little more leeway to go further than Inauguration Day.
LINDSAY:
That sounds like a polite way of saying that Netanyahu won't do what Trump is asking of him.
COOK:
Except for the fact that Trump will surprise people. There was a difference between Netanyahu and Trump early on in Trump's first term, and Trump turned around and invited Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to the White House and really rolled out the red carpet for this guy and made a very big show of welcoming Abbas to the White House. We know from both Jared Kushner's memoir of his time in the White House and from the Israeli journalist Barak Ravid, that Trump and Netanyahu had a difficult relationship. Trump did not trust Netanyahu. Even though Netanyahu looks like he may have more leeway than he might otherwise have, Trump is someone who is somewhat unpredictable, and that's what Prime Minister Netanyahu has to worry about.
LINDSAY:
Help me understand, Steven, what is likely to happen with the two-state solution? As we've discussed before, it is a very popular solution among many people here in the United States. It seems to have a lot of support around the world, pretty much everywhere except with the two main participants in the conflict. President Trump, you said, rolled out a two-state solution or version of it when he was president first time around. Do you see him continuing to try to manufacture a two-state solution? Has he moved on to something else?
COOK:
He hasn't said much about it since he left office, and the settlers who I spent some time with in mid-September believed that a Trump presidency would allow them to annex in the West Bank about 30 percent of the territory beyond where Israeli settlements already exist. But again, Trump, believing himself to be a master negotiator, still may have the idea that he can get the deal of the century, which would prove him to doing something that no one else was able to do.
Say at a practical matter, however. On the ground, it seems hard to imagine that there be a two-state solution. Trump's two-state solution was essentially an institutionalization of the status quo in the West Bank. It was, Israeli settlements would be Israeli territory, and there would be this archipelago of Palestinian population centers that were quasi-sovereign and subject to Israeli security control. That's why the Palestinians rejected it. Some suggested, well, they shouldn't have rejected. It was a basis for negotiation, but it was so one-sided that you can understand why the Palestinians rejected it. But still, Trump is on record supporting a two-state solution after having one said, one state, two states, whatever it is, which also gives you a hint to his thinking that he's not committed to it, but he does want to bring this... If he can bring this conflict to an end during his-
LINDSAY:
He wants a deal. He doesn't have in mind a particular deal.
COOK:
Thank you. That's exactly right.
LINDSAY:
Okay. Help me understand this, Steven, in the context of the Abraham Accords. That was, I think we can fairly say, significant achievement of the Trump administration first time around. It led to the normalization of relations with several Arab countries and Israel, most notably with the United Arab Emirates. I had the opportunity a year after the accords were signed to be at a meeting which had officials from various Arab countries and from Israel getting along, breaking bread, and discussing business and the opportunities that existed. What do you see happening with the Abraham Accords? Do we see that potentially being deepened, expanded, or is it in trouble?
COOK:
Abraham Accords certainly are President Trump's signature Middle East achievement, and it is quite extraordinary to be in a place like Abu Dhabi or Dubai or Manama, and to be with Arabs and Israelis from these countries in the same table, yucking it up and almost like they're thick as thieves. What's been fascinating through this long year and a couple of months of war is that in some ways the Abraham Accords have deepened and have accelerated. It's true that the Bahrainis don't have an ambassador in Israel, the same thing with the Moroccans, the Jordanians who not a part of the Abraham Accords because they had a peace treaty with Israel going back to the mid-1990s, and of course Egypt from 1979, the Jordanians don't have an ambassador.
The Egyptians and the Emiratis continued to have ambassadors. Nobody's broken diplomatic relations. Trade between Israel and the UAE actually increased over the course of the war in the Gaza Strip. The dynamics of the Abraham Accord now are their own thing. They really don't need the United States to push them. What has been a policy of at the very tail end of the Trump administration was to include Saudi Arabia in that normalization, and then the Biden administration picked that up and worked quite hard over the course of the last couple of years to get the Saudis and the Israelis to normalize the relationships.
LINDSAY:
There was optimism in September of 2023 that the Biden administration might be able to get that effort over the goal lines.
COOK:
There was an expectation that before there was an election in the United States, there would be some normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. One of the ways in which the Biden administration sought to get it, was to wrap a Saudi-U.S. security deal in a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Of course, the war on the Gaza Strip upended that, and over the course of this terrible war, the Saudis have increased their price for normalization. A price-
LINDSAY:
That reflects what? Opinion in the Arab world? In Saudi Arabia, guardian of the two holy mosques?
COOK:
It is a combination of, one, the Saudis have always at a symbolic level supported Palestinian rights. They've done a lot less than they have said that they were willing to do, but the Saudi population is obviously been mobilized by the images coming out of the Gaza Strip, and even in a place where the crown prince and his dad, the king, are in total control, Saudi Arabia is a big country and they can't just totally ignore public opinion on this. Over the course of the conflict with the way the encouragement of the United States, the Saudis have increased their price for normalization. President Trump is likely to continue the dialogue about normalization, given the fact that the Abraham Accords were the signature achievements of his administration.
LINDSAY:
What about the security compact though between the United States and Saudi Arabia, as you mentioned, that is something that the Biden administration was trying to negotiate? From at least the 40,000-foot level, that seems like a bad fit for a Trump-born policy who has for a long time been really skeptical of strategic entanglements, and he's always worried that allies are going to take a free ride on America's security.
COOK:
That's exactly right. The irony is Saudis are very happy about Trump's election, but the chances of them getting a security pact with Trump are a lot less than they would with a President Harris. As you point out, President Trump for a long time has been quite wary of getting the United States wrapped around the axle of the security of other countries. In fact, as you point out in a book, you wrote, President Trump, going back to the 1980s, made the argument that the Saudis should pay for the security that the United States provides in the Persian Gulf.
LINDSAY:
So it was what? It was in 2019 that Iran struck Saudi Arabia, took out half of its oil production for forty-eight hours, and then President Trump essentially shrugged his shoulders.
COOK:
That's exactly right. It wasn't just that. I mean, that was the culmination of a long hot summer in which the Iranians seized oil tankers in the Gulf, mined the Gulf, shot down an American surveillance drone, and then attacked two major oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, and the president said, "They attacked Saudi Arabia, not the United States. I'm waiting for a call from Riyadh."
LINDSAY:
Well, that takes me back to the beginning of our conversation. You've told me in Riyadh they're happy to see Donald Trump coming back to the White House. Why would they be happy having him come back to the White House when they were quite disappointed and concerned when he did not react to those attacks?
COOK:
I think there's two things. One, I think that they were extraordinarily concerned that President Biden was willing to get back into a nuclear deal with the Iranians. I think they imagine that Trump really isn't going to get into a deal, and they are worried that President Biden would have gotten, or President Harris, would've gotten the United States back into a deal, which would've resulted in all kinds of sanctions relief on the Iranians. The Saudis and-
LINDSAY:
So they would feel more comfortable with an Iran that gets a nuclear weapon?
COOK:
You almost took the words right out of my mouth. I have heard officials from the Gulf say, "We'll be happy to buy the Iranians a nuclear bomb as long as they don't get sanctions relief," because they believe the sanctions relief is just turned around and used by the Iranians to destabilize the region through their proxies.
LINDSAY:
This is the axis of resistance.
COOK:
The axis of resistance. That's precisely the case. There is this concern that Biden was going to provide sanctions relief for the Iranians, and there was also the sense that the United States just looked weak in the face of Iranian provocations. Even if you say to Saudis and others, "Trump's record is no better," they imagine a tougher...They imagine what it was like under maximum pressure. They imagine the people who might be advising the president, people like the former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo or Senator Tom Cotton, both of who are very, very tough on Iran, or others who served within the bureaucracy, who may have significant positions in the Trump administration who are very tough on Iran. That's who they feel more comfortable with. There's another aspect to it though, and this is one that I think is overlooked, is that when the Saudis and others look at a Trump administration, they see that it's easier to do business. You can have a direct line to the president without-
LINDSAY:
You're not going to assistant secretaries of state.
COOK:
There's no policy process, there's no interagency process. You have the cell phone number of someone-
LINDSAY:
You bring out the burner phones and you make a call.
COOK:
You can either make a call or WhatsApp and get stuff done, and that's basically the way they do business amongst each other, and so this is a very comfortable thing for them.
LINDSAY:
Okay. Looking at this, I don't want to reduce everything in the Middle East to either Iran or to the role of Israel and its relations with Arab states. There's also the question of China's activities in the region, in particular, China's investments and activities in the Gulf. I'll note that while we spent a lot of time talking about China potentially having improved bilateral relations with Iran, it actually has substantially more investment in trade with both the UAE and with Saudi Arabia.
COOK:
That's exactly right.
LINDSAY:
But this has become an issue in U.S. relations, particularly with the Emiratis, concerned that the Emiratis are getting too close to Beijing. How do you think a Trump presidency is going to handle that issue?
COOK:
It's a good question, because these dynamics began actually under a Trump administration. It was in some ways a reaction to ten years of discussion in this town, Washington, about leaving the Middle East and the pivot to Asia. They said, "Wait a second, the United States is going to leave us to the mercy of the Iranians. We need to hedge with other powers," China being the obvious one.
LINDSAY:
It's also, I think in the United Arab Emirates, the desire to diversify away from oil build what we might call a modern economy, a lot of work in the UAE on AI.
COOK:
That's exactly right. The Emiratis for years have been saying that while they value their strategic relationship with the United States, they're a 360-degree player, and you can't ignore the Chinese and the Chinese are critical to their economic goals. The Biden administration has done a fair amount of work to peel these countries away from the Chinese. The Emiratis have divested from Chinese AI tech, which had allowed Microsoft to come in and do a multi-billion dollar investment in the Emirates on AI. The entire rationale for the security pact from the perspective of the Biden administration was to pull the Saudis away from the Chinese. This wasn't just a security pact. It was also a pact on technology including AI, nuclear technology, and a variety of other goodies for the Saudis that would really intertwine the United States and Saudi Arabia in these critical areas so that the Saudis wouldn't go looking to Beijing for these things.
The benefit for the Saudis who say, "Hey, this is all great. We're never going to give up our relationship with the Chinese. This is all great, because this helps us with regard to Iran." There was an overlap of interest. The United States wants to outmaneuver the Chinese in the region, and the Saudis want protection from the Iranians. That's the rationale for the security pact. There's been some work at this. The question is, how will President Trump approach these issues? As we just discussed, security pact doesn't make sense to "America First" and everything that President Trump has stood for to the extent that he stood for anything over decades, but he will, and his first administration harangued and harassed these folks about their use of Chinese technology.
If you think back, Huawei technology was a big issue during Trump's tenure. The problem that Trump's partners in the region had with this was, "Okay, do you have an alternative for us?" And we didn't. Now we actually do, and we can offer them some things. It is interesting that the Gulf countries are so enthusiastic about Trump, yet all of the problems between them and the United States exist. They will continue to exist. They don't just go away with Trump, and he doesn't have that different of an approach at a basic policy level than President Biden.
LINDSAY:
Let me ask you, Steven, about another issue that could be an irritant in relations between Washington and Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, and that is oil and gas production. Donald Trump campaigned on "drill, baby drill," but obviously if you increase production, and the United States right now is the world's largest producer of both oil and gas, that puts downward pressure on prices. That's a problem for the Emiratis. It's a problem for the Saudis. Lower oil prices mean less revenue coming into their coffers, and they both have really big plans for modernization. I mean, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia with this Neom city, I mean that's visionary perhaps, but it's going to require a lot of money to make that vision come true.
COOK:
$500 billion or more. That's a lot of oil. This was an issue during the Trump administration, and there's always been a tension in the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia in particular about oil prices being at a level that was sufficient for the Saudis to accomplish the things that they want to do, yet did not impinge upon-
LINDSAY:
So-called sweet spot or goldilocks spot.
COOK:
Right. Impinge upon a president's parochial interest in gas prices being low, so Americans can drive around and not feel the pinch in their wallet. Trump and the Saudis are going to have to figure out a way to work this out. Now, of course, look, it's a global marketplace. To the extent that the United States is producing huge amounts of oil and gas, much of the gas, and by the way, going to Europe is a point of friction between the two. But again, we go back to two things. One, Trump sees himself as a master negotiator over these kinds of things, who is also, by the way, not unwilling to go public with these kinds of things to take to social media and hammer this out until he gets what he wants. At the same time, the Saudis may be more willing to do a deal with Trump, because they feel more comfortable.
LINDSAY:
Or they may be willing to do a deal with the Chinese. I mean, they have agency as well.
COOK:
Right, that's absolutely the case. They may be willing to do a deal, and that's where most of their oil is going anyway. But of course, the United States has a core interest in stable oil prices. It would be ill-advised for all of these leaders to get into this.
LINDSAY:
The point is it's not just Donald Trump who has leverage in any negotiation.
COOK:
That's exactly right. We saw that in the Biden administration, that the Saudis had a lot of leverage over President Biden and took exception to him calling them beyond the pale and freezing out the crown prince. When he needed help on oil prices, because Americans were blaming him in the summer of 2021 for $6 a gallon of gas, he ended up having to go to Saudi Arabia-
LINDSAY:
Fist bump.
COOK:
...And fist bump, the crown prince, someone who he said that he was persona non grata who wasn't going to meet, et cetera, et cetera. Yes, this is going to be a game, but once again, the Saudis feel comfortable. In the past, Saudis have been willing to do things for their friends that may not necessarily be in their immediate economic interest.
LINDSAY:
Steven, much of our discussion so far has been predicated on the notion that when Donald Trump is sworn in on January 20, 2025, the world's going to look pretty much the way it does today. But hanging over all of this conversation is the vow out of Tehran that Iran is going to retaliate in a very substantial way against the Israeli retaliatory attack last month. What do you assess as the probability that we could see a substantial escalation in the conflict in the Middle East that would both bedevil the Biden administration and its waning days, but also mean that Donald Trump would come in having an even bigger conflict to deal with?
COOK:
Well, all things being equal, I certainly think that I would take the Iranians at their word. I spoke to some Israeli officials who were somewhat skeptical of it, given the damage that they had done to Iranian air defense systems. But I think we do ourselves no favors by not listening carefully to what these leaders say about what they are going to do, because at least in this conflict, they have followed through each and every time.
All things being equal and escalation, obviously not good for anyone, and particularly during this interregnum between presidents, during this transition period, one of the things that may stay in the Iranian hand is the fact that there is this, in their minds and the minds of America's partners in the region, is that you have an incoming president who is one, unpredictable, two, willing to use instruments of power in ways that the previous president may not have been, and that if they do attack the Israelis, knowing how important Israel is, one, to the Republican Party, two, to large parts of President Trump's base, the Iranians may choose to, let's say, respond in ways not by shooting 200 ballistic missiles, but maybe in other ways through their proxies that wouldn't necessarily escalate the conflict in ways that we haven't seen before, but something much more familiar.
That's entirely possible that just the looming idea of Trump and his unpredictability may stay the Iranian hands. Now, that's wishful thinking, that's conjecture. The Iranians have said, "We are going to respond, and we're going to respond in a devastating way." I think everybody should get ready for that, and that is going to complicate things for the Israelis and the United States, because it is a longstanding policy of the United States to help ensure Israeli security. Trump, as we've discussed, doesn't want to get deeply involved in these conflicts in the region, yet he may feel compelled to do things that he never imagined that he would do during his first administration.
LINDSAY:
Well, it could also deepen political recriminations here in the United States, because in fact, if it happens on Joe Biden's watch, he may make decisions that the Trump administration may disagree with either being too forceful, not forceful enough. You should have waited for us to come to office or what have you. I think there is also domestic political dimensions to that.
COOK:
As is the case when it comes to the Middle East and Israel, there's always domestic political considerations that are involved. It strikes me that in this situation, the United States doesn't have agency. If the Iranians respond, and it has been the policy and the president has vowed to help defend Israel, the United States is going to help defend Israel. The question is really, is there any additional force President Biden can deploy into the region that's acceptable to the coming administration? There's already a lot of American force there. We've sent B-52 bombers there. There are more Navy ships in the Mediterranean in the Red Sea, because we're in between cycles of aircraft carriers for coverage and things along those lines. But if the Iranians strike and the Israelis intend to strike back and need some help, I don't see how the Biden administration doesn't help, and just the Trump administration's going to inherit this.
LINDSAY:
Well, with any luck, we won't find out how-
COOK:
Inshallah.
LINDSAY:
...This particularly issue might resolve. On that note, I'll close up the second presidential transition episode of The President's Inbox. My guest has been Steven Cook, Eni Enrico Mattei, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Africa Studies here at the Council. Steven, thanks as always for joining me.
COOK:
It was a great pleasure, Jim, and thank you for not asking me about the New York Yankees.
LINDSAY:
The less said, the better.
COOK:
Agreed.
LINDSAY:
This presidential transition series is supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at Carnegie.org. Please subscribe to The President's Inbox on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and leave us a review. We love the feedback. The publications mentioned in this episode and a transcript of our conversation are available on the podcast page for The President's Inbox on CFR.org. As always, opinions expressed on The President's Inbox are solely those of the host or our guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.
Today's episode was produced by Ester Fang with Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. Molly McAnany was our recording engineer. This is Jim Lindsay. Thanks for listening.
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