Ever since Nov. 5, the eyes of the world’s political pundits have been fixed on the Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, where President-elect Donald Trump has been hammering out his new administration. Focusing first on his security and foreign policy team, Trump has already managed to fill most of the central roles that will define his second term’s foreign policy. According to experts and Trump himself, the resounding message of the new team is the reconstitution of the old Reagan doctrine of “Peace through Strength.”
Peace through strength
The new team is run through with pro-Israel advocates, Christian and Jewish Zionists and Iran hawks, signaling a sea change for Israel in its grueling war against Iran and its proxies.
“While President Trump said he will be a president who will end wars, and despite talk of ‘America First’ isolationism, his nominations have created a team of like-minded national security personnel who are well aligned with Israel on the Iran threat,” said Dan Diker, president of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA).
“If we look at the recent appointments the president has made, none of them are isolationists and almost all of them have publicly condemned the Iranian terror regime in the strongest possible terms,” he told JNS.
Robert Silverman, a former top U.S. diplomat in Riyadh and a lecturer on Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at Shalem College, agreed with the assessment. Trump “appointed internationalists who are engaged in the world” to his foreign policy team, he told JNS.
Rounding out the top of the appointments list is Peter Hegseth, who was tapped for Secretary of Defense. Hegseth sits on the tail end of a 20-year military career during which he deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, and was decorated twice with the Bronze Star. He is also a notorious Iran hawk who has pushed multiple administrations to directly attack the ayatollahs’ regime.
“Sometimes we have moments, and I happen to believe we can’t kick the can down the road any longer in trying to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb,” Hegseth said during a recent appearance on Fox & Friends. “What better time than now to say ‘We’re starting the clock, you’ve got a week, you’ve got X amount of time before we start taking out your energy production facilities. We take out key infrastructure, we take out your missile sites, we take out nuclear developments, we take out port capabilities,’” he added.
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who is soon to lead the State Department, is no less an avid Israel supporter and Iran hawk. Rubio has displayed an Israeli flag alongside an American one outside his office in D.C. since Oct. 7. He has harshly criticized the regime in Tehran and has been a strong supporter of disrupting the oil trade between Iran and China.
With regard to Israel, Trump has announced that Michael Huckabee will be his ambassador to Israel. The former Arkansas governor is a prominent evangelical Zionist who has been a staunch supporter of Israel and a strong voice against Tehran. “The fact that Trump singled out the ambassador of Israel as the only ambassadorial nomination that he’s made, along with his other cabinet picks, already shows how much of a value he places on the United States’ relationship with Israel,” Silverman told JNS.
Trump has also named Jewish real estate tycoon and pro-Israel donor Steven Witcoff as his envoy to the Middle East.
These appointments have put to rest concerns that the second Trump administration would reflect the growing isolationism seen in parts of the MAGA movement. The incoming administration has made clear that while staying away from the policies of the neoconservative Bush doctrine, there will be no shift to 1930s-style Republican isolationism.
Maximum pressure vs regime change
A factor likely influencing the new cabinet’s aggressive posture is the recent revelation that the Iranian regime has been actively plotting to assassinate Trump. The investigation into the matter led to the U.S. Justice Department filing charges against three alleged conspirators.
When discussing the matter in a recent podcast, Trump said that such threats would stop if President Joe Biden were to threaten Iran. “Biden should say: If anybody shoots a former president who’s now the leading candidate, we will bomb that country into oblivion, and it would stop,” said Trump.
“People tend to take that stuff personally,” said Mick Mulroy, a top Pentagon official for the Mideast during Trump’s first term. “If [Trump] is going to be hawkish on any particular country, designated major adversaries, it’s Iran,” he added.
The central element of Trump’s Iran policy is likely to be the reinstatement of the economic “maximum pressure campaign.” During his first administration, Iran’s GDP shrank by 48%. This impressive result was the product of a concerted effort by Trump’s foreign policy team to strangle Iran’s economy in an attempt to reduce Teheran’s ability to enrich uranium and support terror proxies throughout the Middle East. On the campaign trail, Trump pointed to Iran’s weak economic condition as one of his signal contributions to Middle Eastern stability.
In one of the first policy statements from the Trump team after the election, State Department transition leader Brian Hook said, “President Trump understands that the chief driver of instability in today’s Middle East is the Iranian regime.” The president would seek to “isolate Iran diplomatically and weaken them economically so they can’t fund all of the violence,” he added.
Many experts further believe that under the new administration, the anti-Iranian campaign will be expanded beyond mere economic pressure.
“I think in the newest maximum-pressure campaign you will see a combination of economic diplomatic and military pressure,” said Silverman.
However, the incoming government may not see eye to eye with Jerusalem on some of Israel’s more ambitious goals when it comes to the mullahs’ regime. Israel has openly stated its goal as being regime change in Tehran. Hook made clear that Trump does not share this goal. Trump also said during the campaign that he was not interested in “boots on the ground in Iran.”
Despite this, many on Trump’s team seem open to allowing Israel to pursue its national security interests with little to no restraint from Washington.
“This is an existential threat to them [Israel], let them do what they need to do,” Hegseth said of Israel’s autonomy in addressing the Iranian nuclear threat.
“Israel has to pursue its interests carefully. Obviously, the Americans will be reluctant to start wars,” said Efraim Inbar, director of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS). “An airstrike is not a war, but we have to gauge very carefully what the limits of America’s commitment to a non-nuclear Iran are,” he told JNS.
According to Diker, Israel “must be mindful of President Trump’s aspiration to end wars and not to begin wars. He does not want to inherit a raging Middle East war on Jan. 20.”
Despite these statements, however, a recent bombshell Israel Hayom report citing “high-level Israeli sources” claimed that Trump’s team is formulating a plan to target the Iranian regime. The sources “emphasized that Israeli-American strategic cooperation would focus specifically on challenging Iran’s current leadership structure,” according to the report.
A meek Iran
As the reality of Trump’s hawkish Iran policy emerges, Tehran has adopted a meek outward posture. Talk of direct strikes against Israel from Iranian soil has significantly subsided since Nov. 5.
“Whether we like it or not, we will have to deal with the United States in the regional and international arenas, so it is better to manage this relation ourselves,” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said after the election. He also called on Iran to “handle its enemies with forbearance.” Tehran also said on Thursday that it is willing to hold renewed talks on its nuclear program but not “under pressure and intimidation.”
However, many experts believe this posture is disingenuous.
“The Iranian regime is a regime of purposeful deception. Their apparent moderation is a deception, but it is also a strategy to change the international balance of pressure on Israel,” Diker told JNS. “Any attempt to moderate by Iran is a distraction to obscure their race to the nuclear finish line,” he added.
Silverman further explained that Iran’s diplomatic overtures are a symptom of their security reality.
“The reason that they’ll likely act meek is because of what’s already happened. Israel’s got them [stripped of] air defense and they have no effective air force because of sanctions,” Silverman explained. “They are rightfully scared,” he added.
Despite attempts by Iran to appease the incoming administration, many experts agree that there are too many points of friction between D.C. and Tehran for a successful rapprochement. Between the Iranian-backed Houthis blocking trade in the Red Sea and Iraqi militias pestering American bases in Iraq and Syria, there seem to be clear competing national interests.
“In parallel with any negotiation attempts Iran will continue trying to build up their proxies, this is something that they will not give up,” said Inbar. Diker agreed, saying, “The reality on the ground of pro-Iranian forces engaging U.S. troops in Syria and Iraq, and the Houthis blocking the Red Sea, will likely keep the United States engaged in addition to the macro reality of Israel’s war against Iran and its proxies.”
The transition period
In the run-up to Trump’s inauguration, Israel must balance the competing visions of the Biden and Trump administrations.
“The national security reality is what must define Israel’s policy, so we cannot afford to sit quietly for the next two months,” Diker told JNS. “We are in a reality-based defense and diplomacy [scenario] as opposed to aspiration-based defense and diplomacy [one].
“Israel as we speak is facing acute military threats from the north, the south and the east … Waiting for President Trump on the Iranian issue would be a mistake. Israel must do what it needs to do to defend itself and also to win with the current administration,” he said.
According to Silverman, Israel is likely to utilize the transition period to begin coordinating with the incoming Trump administration.
“Since complex military operations like Iran take advantage to prepare and plan, I expect that there will be some coordination between Israel and the incoming Trump team already during this transition period,” he said. He added that in his view the Biden White House is unlikely to be overly hostile or obstructive to such efforts. “Biden has a long-term close relationship with Israel and I don’t think he wants to jeopardize that in his closing days,” he said.
