Exclusive: Donald Trump once condemned Saudi sponsorship of terrorism but – after his lavish reception in Riyadh and Saudi promises of rich arms deals – he has fallen under the kingdom’s spell, as Daniel Lazare explains.
President Trump’s simplistic siding with Saudi Arabia and Israel – and his callous reaction to a terror attack on Iran – are fueling new tensions in the Middle East, including the Qatar crisis, as ex-British diplomat Alastair Crooke explains.
President Trump has fallen into a Saudi-Israeli trap that won’t solve the Mideast regional conflicts and won’t lead to a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, explains ex-British diplomat Alastair Crooke.
President Trump fancies himself a “principled realist,” but the reality is that there are very few principles and very little reality attached to his foreign policy, says ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
Exclusive: In his Mideast trip to Saudi Arabia and Israel, President Trump sought some political safe harbor by tacking toward neocon orthodoxy and jettisoning his campaign promises of a more rational strategy, writes Daniel Lazare.
President Trump’s emerging foreign policy is a jumble of mixed messages and bad optics, raising questions about how well he can manage allies, let alone adversaries, writes ex-British diplomat Alastair Crooke.
President Trump boasts about his America First foreign policy committed to “jobs, jobs, jobs,” except when he parrots the Saudi-Israeli hatred of Iran, a hostility that hurts U.S. interests and costs jobs, says ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
Sales of more U.S. weapons to Saudi Arabia may portend more chaos in the Middle East but President Trump justifies the move with his rhetoric about “jobs, jobs, jobs,” as Trita Parsi explained at Middle East Eye.
Like his predecessors, President Trump made nice with the rich royals of Saudi Arabia, despite damning evidence that they have supported Islamic terrorists, including the 9/11 attackers, notes 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser.
Exclusive: By achieving an odd-couple alliance with Israel, Saudi Arabia has cleared away U.S. political resistance to the massive arms build-up that President Trump just embraced, reports Jonathan Marshall.