U.S. 2020 elections: A potential for Mid-East breakthroughs

The November 2020 elections, combined with recent violence in many cities across the country, raises above the surface many inner-American acute issues that seems to divide the country and affect the relationship between the central administration and many states and large audiences and communities.

At the same time, the U.S. administration seems to push its foreign policy towards more assertive influence on some of its allies in the middle east, in a way that can lead to fast, surprising, and positive results in the region.

The best example for that manner is the August 2020 declaration of the normalization agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), an agreement that seems like came as a surprise to many players at the region and also in the international community.

The follow-up visit of U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, to Sudan, a country with strategic value-in terms of its location-near major naval routes and very close to some of the U.S. most important points of interest in the region (such as the Horn of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Persian Gulf), indicates that the U.S. administration is pushing quickly to thicken the “belt” of pro-American states in that region-without “putting American boots on the ground”.

The strategy of active involvement “on the ground”, taken by several American administrations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, came with very problematic and some may say even poor results. The attempts of the current administration to confront Iran (and its nuclear program) on the international and economic arenas also did not achieved the desired results. And the current administration’s “Deal of the Century” failed to bring back Israel and the Palestinians to the negotiation table.

On this background, the latest moves by the Trump administration seems like a way to bypass the old and familiar narratives and obstacles in that region, and move towards a direct, effective, and most important-fast engagement, to achieve concrete and outward results, the kind that you can “write home about”. This agenda seems like taken from the business world, a world that Trump and his senior adviser, Jared Kushner, are much familiar with. It is not surprising that Kushner himself is considered as the man behind this agenda.

The reason for that strategy may be related to the coming elections in the U.S., and the will of the current administration to distract the American public from the inner chaos towards “good things” that the administration is doing in the world. That strategy can meet local interests of Middle Eastern leaders (such as Israel PM Netanyahu and some leaders from the Persian Gulf). It seems that the Trump administration is “putting its weight” on the negotiation table and probably also agreeing to offer things that in the past were not even considered as realistic (such as the delivery of top notch advanced American weapon systems-like the F-35 fighter jet that was offered to the UAE within the negotiation process)- all in order to close deals in the most clear, certain and quick way as possible.

After considering all that, it is possible that in the coming couple of months we will meet more agreements between the U.S. and Middle Eastern players, and even between some Middle Eastern rivals-where the U.S. will serve as a sponsor. Several relevant leads can be additional agreements between Israel and some Persian Gulf states (such as Oman, Bahrain, and even Saudi Arabia).

In the end of the day, the combined interests between the Trump administration and some regional leaders these days, where all sides understands that the time element is crucial, may eventually bring surprising and some may say even positive outcome to the region.