Are events in the Middle East a red-carpet welcome for another Trump White House?

Next month will see the return of Donald Trump to the White House, despite everything the Democrats could throw against him: The Capitol Building assault on 6 January 2021; alleged links to Russia; and other misdemeanours, real and imagined.

With Joe Biden at the helm, the US has had to deal with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Israeli genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. Knowing full well that no US president could refuse to send arms to the occupation state, the Republicans accused Biden of supporting the genocide (although they never called it that) and sending weapons to the Benjamin Netanyahu regime in Tel Aviv. Trump would have done the same thing, of course. And despite being just four years older than Trump, Biden was portrayed as a senile old man incapable of governing properly.

Trump has said that he can end the Ukrainian and Israeli wars.

He is the common denominator connecting Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Israel’s Netanyahu; both feel comfortable with his presence in office.

US elections are essentially Democrats vs Republicans, certainly not a socialist vs capitalist contest, no matter what the Republicans might say. Socialism has been dealt a number of serious blows since the fall of the Soviet Union, the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the bloody coups against the Arab Spring revolutions. Nevertheless, both socialist and capitalist systems are linked strongly to the Middle East, so it is no wonder that the election of another US president is an important event and sees regional regimes adjust their positions depending on the result.

Capitalism has occupied countries without the need for military or physical colonisation. It basically controls the world. Even social media, which has done so much to create awareness of all kinds of issues around the world — notably the Israeli genocide in Gaza — is prey to global capitalism. Meta now owns Facebook as well as WhatsApp and Instagram, and created Thread as an alternative to Twitter until billionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter and changed its name to X. Opinion can now be dominated and disseminated (or not) easily by the standards imposed by these sites and the income that they get from advertisers.

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Events around the world have all the appearance now of a metaphorical red carpet being rolled out ready to welcome Trump back to the game of nations. Biden may have allowed Ukraine to use long-range US weapons in Russia, but the Republicans backed Israel’s invasion of Gaza and southern Lebanon and the assassination of the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah.

Netanyahu is certainly looking forward to another Trump White House.

Although the president-elect has said clearly that the latest events in Syria are not America’s war, he knows that the fall of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad over the weekend is another blow for Iran and its influence in the Arab world. Hezbollah has been taken down a notch or two, and is in no position to have sprung to Assad’s aid, and Iran is fed up of losing its own military commanders in Syria, so no help for Assad appeared.

Just days before the re-emergence of the Syrian opposition factions who have swept across the country to take Damascus, Trump’s “favourite dictator” Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi in Egypt released a number of Muslim Brotherhood officials and members. Al-Sisi has also expressed his desire to review the legal positions of those imprisoned and designated as “terrorists”. Is reconciliation on the cards?

It is tempting to say that all of this is happening now because Trump wants to restore some balance in the Sunni Arab world and end Iran’s expansionist interference in the affairs of other regional states. Too far-fetched? Let’s wait and see…

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.