With the exception of a short trip to the Vatican to attend Pope Francis’ funeral, President Donald Trump has stayed stateside during the first three months of his second term. That will change May 13, when the president begins a three-day visit to the Middle East to attend a series of meetings with Gulf Arab leaders and possibly drop in on a Gulf Cooperation Council summit.
With the trip a week away, we still don’t know what Trump’s agenda is or what he seeks to accomplish. One could make a reasonable guess that the administration will try to finalize some “big, beautiful” deals with the Gulf Arab states in the form of investments in certain U.S. sectors as well as the usual U.S. defense exports past presidents have been so fond of inking.
The latter is already underway. The State Department recently notified Congress of a $3.5 billion deal that would sell 1,000 air-to-air missiles to Saudi Arabia. The Trump administration is reportedly trying to wrap up a gigantic $100 billion arms package to the Saudis as well. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is — during his first term, Trump proposed a $110 billion arms deal to Riyadh, parts of which stalled after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was found responsible for the 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Other than that, however, it’s hard to envision Trump achieving anything major during his trip. Much of what is occurring in the Middle East is beyond Washington’s capacity to control, and the issues the United States has some ability to influence — such as the war in Gaza — have been written off as lost causes.
To be blunt, the Trump administration’s record on the Middle East is inadequate so far. The results simply aren’t there. And while some will argue that passing judgment after three months is unfair, it’s important to note that Trump himself has set the bar high.
On Gaza, it appears the United States has lost interest in what is happening. This wasn’t always the case. Even before Trump was inaugurated, he dispatched his trusted envoy, Steve Witkoff, to help President Joe Biden’s outgoing administration solidify a three-stage ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. Trump’s involvement proved to be instrumental. Wary of landing on Trump’s bad side right out of the gate, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to sign onto a ceasefire he had resisted for months. The war was paused for more than six weeks, Israel received nearly three dozen Israeli hostages and humanitarian organizations used the truce to expedite aid into Gaza.
Yet nothing lasts in the Middle East for long. Netanyahu, whose political coalition depends on ultra-nationalist ministers who threaten to bring down the government if Hamas isn’t completely destroyed as an organization, never intended to live up to the terms. The Israeli government refused to enter Phase 2, which mandated a negotiation to end the war permanently. Instead, Netanyahu resumed the war, accelerated the scope of it and is now preparing to flood Gaza with Israeli troops and keep them there indefinitely. Trump doesn’t appear to mind any of this, even though Netanyahu’s actions violate the very peace plan he helped push across the finish line.
Speaking of wars, the Trump administration has broadened one in Yemen against the Houthis. Since the war in Gaza erupted in October 2023, the Yemeni militia has fired drones and ballistic missiles into the Red Sea ostensibly to pressure Israel to stop the war against Hamas. The Biden administration spent a year bombing Houthi military targets in the hope this would deter the group from launching additional attacks. However, the rockets and drones kept coming.
Trump has escalated Biden’s air campaign, betting that more forceful military action against a greater list of targets will force the Houthis to rethink their strategy. More than 1,000 Houthi targets have been destroyed since the Trump administration’s air campaign began in mid-March, and the Pentagon has made a show on its social media feeds of U.S. fighter aircraft taking off for bombing runs.
The Houthis, though, haven’t been deterred. This past weekend, a Houthi ballistic missile evaded Israeli air defenses and slammed into Ben Gurion Airport, causing a temporary shutdown. Trump has essentially backed himself into an endless tit-for-tat with an anti-American militia whose domestic credentials improve every day the war goes on.
One promising thing on the horizon is the ongoing nuclear talks with Iran. The country is still reeling from Trump’s 2018 withdrawal of the United States from a nuclear deal that lifted onerous U.S. and European sanctions on the Iranian economy in exchange for strict, verifiable limitations on the Iranian nuclear program. Trump now has ordered new negotiations with the Iranians, to put Tehran’s nuclear work back into a box and to avoid a war whose costs would heavily outweigh the benefits. Three rounds of talks have taken place so far, with a fourth still to be scheduled. Depending on how flexible Trump is and whether Iran is confident enough in U.S. assurances, Trump can either walk away from the process with a tangible diplomatic win or leave empty-handed.
It’s still early in Trump’s term, so it wouldn’t be fair to categorize his tenure on foreign policy matters as an unmitigated disaster. But as he prepares for his trip to the Middle East, the president is running headfirst into the reality of international diplomacy.
It’s taxing work, and talking about success is hardly sufficient.
