Michael Doran on Donald Trump's Middle East Policy

May 2, 2025

Michael Doran, a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, dives into Donald Trump's transformative Middle East policy. He discusses Trump's departure from previous administrations, focusing on Iran and Israel's empowerment. Doran highlights how the Trump era viewed Biden's foreign policy as weak, leading to a maximum-pressure campaign on Iran. The conversation also addresses the shifting American perceptions of Israel, the impact of disillusionment with elite institutions, and the intricate dynamics of U.S. alliances in the region. It's a captivating exploration of the high-stakes chess game in Middle Eastern politics.

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INSIGHT

Dual View on Israel in US Policy

American presidents balance between viewing Israel as an asset and a liability based on national security and domestic politics.
Trump's administration reflects a mix of strong pro-Israel support and isolationist tendencies concerning Middle East engagement.

INSIGHT

Populism and Skepticism of Elites

The US reaction against the global war on terror shaped a populist skepticism of elite institutions.
Trump's foreign policy criticism taps into a broader distrust of national security elites and globalization effects on American interests.

INSIGHT

Shared Progressive and Trump Views

Trump and progressive critiques of US Middle East policy share similarities in desire to disengage and negotiate with Iran.
Both see Israel as a complicating factor in reducing US military involvement in the region.

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President Trump and his team came into the White House determined to reverse the course of American foreign policy. Most every president does. It’s what President Obama wished to do vis-à-vis President Bush, President Trump vis-à-vis President Obama, and President Biden vis-à-vis President Trump. Where Biden was for, Trump would be against; where Biden was left, Trump would be right; where Biden was blue; Trump would be red. Every question of foreign policy with any relevance whatsoever to the cut and thrust of domestic American politics would henceforth be set in the opposite direction.

In the Middle East, President Trump thought that his predecessor was too acquiescent to Iran, too squeamish about empowering the Israelis to protect themselves, and too untroubled by Houthi attacks. For President Trump and many of his supporters, the quintessential act of the Biden administration was the withdrawal from Afghanistan in the fall of 2021—a symbol of American weakness, incompetence, fecklessness, and delusion.

With the start of his second term as president, Donald Trump set about restoring the maximum-pressure campaign on Iran. He confronted—with aggressive military force—the Houthis. He restored the American supply of materiel to Israel. And yet, these decisions do not tell the whole story of the Trump administration’s conduct of American foreign policy during its first hundred days. The foreign-policy record, the disorder, the personnel, and some possible future steps of the administration seem confused.

To bring forth some clarity from this confusion, and to shed light on the murky picture of the Trump administration’s approach to the Middle East, Michael Doran joins this week’s podcast. Doran is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, contributor to Mosaic, Tablet, the Wall Street Journal, and the Free Press, and the co-host, with Gadi Taub, of a new podcast called Israel Update.

This conversation was recorded live for an audience of members of the Tikvah Society. If you’d like to learn more about supporting our work, and joining the Tikvah Society, please visit Tikvah.org/Society.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.