Trump ramps up Israel support as Saudi Prince condemns war

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s choice of three ardently pro-Israel lawmakers for top foreign-policy jobs underscores that his focus will be on heightening support for Israel and boxing in Iran once he takes office.

Even after he won over many Arab Americans who criticized the Biden administration over its support for Israel in the Gaza war, the selections will be deeply reassuring to Israeli leaders after their sometimes fraught relationship with President Joe Biden.

Trump announced Sunday that he had picked Representative Elise Stefanik of New York as United Nations ambassador. On Monday, he named Representative Mike Waltz of Florida as his national security advisor, a person familiar with the matter said. And he is expected to choose Senator Marco Rubio of Florida as his secretary of State.

“The U.S. is ready for a return to President Trump’s MAXIMUM PRESSURE campaign against Iran,” Stefanik, who addressed the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, in May and called for harsher sanctions on Iran, wrote on X on Saturday, a day before Trump announced he had chosen her. “For too long, our enemies have been emboldened by the weakness of the Biden-Harris Administration.”

Rubio has been equally hawkish. In October, he issued a statement saying he supported Israeli’s “right to respond disproportionately to stop this threat” from Iran.

Those stances and everything Trump has promised so far suggest he will fire up the playbook he used for the region the last time he was president, except with even greater force. Although he’s expected to call for an end to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza and its campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, he’s unlikely to criticize how Israeli forces conduct their operations against the Iran-backed militants.

He’s already spoken to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu three times in recent days by phone, and told him last month to “do what you have to do” when it comes to Iran and its militant proxy groups.

And he’s almost certainly going to try and expand the Abraham Accords normalizing ties between Israel and several Arab countries, which the first Trump administration celebrated as a signature foreign policy achievement. Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have themselves tried to dangle the prospect of normalization of ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia as an incentive for Netanyahu to commit to both a cease-fire and Palestinian statehood.

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman maintains close ties to Trump and shares his deep mistrust toward Iran, though has gone out of his way to maintain his relationship with Tehran and on Monday referred to Israel’s war against Hamas as a “genocide” against Palestinians.

Freer Hand

Already, there are indications that Trump will give Israel a freer hand with Iran. At a campaign rally in North Carolina in October, after Iran attacked Israel, Trump said Israel should “hit the nuclear first and worry about the rest later” — signaling he was open to an attack on Iran’s nuclear program, which President Joe Biden urged against.

One possibility would be for Israel to do that during Biden’s lame-duck period before Trump’s inauguration in January.

The new administration is “probably going to try to thread the needle — ‘Let’s end the war, let’s build on the Abraham Accords and let’s dial up some of the plays that worked on Iran in the past administration,’” said Michael DiMino, a fellow at Defense Priorities who worked as a CIA analyst during the first Trump administration.

On the campaign trail, Trump depicted himself as a change agent on international affairs as the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine dragged on. He argued the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel — which killed 1,200 people and sparked the Gaza war — would never have happened on his watch because Biden abandoned his harder-edged approach, which he said deterred Iran and its proxies.

Promising he could put a stop to the region’s warfare, Trump cast the Biden-Harris administration as “demented warmongers” and said his election would mean “peace in the world again.”

Biden administration officials reject accusations that they’ve been soft on Iran, and have sanctioned numerous individuals and entities in the country.

“Trump’s narrative is, ‘I am change on foreign policy. What we’re doing is really not working. Look at the results. The results are terrible. I’m going to mix it up and do something else,’” said Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

In the end, Trump managed to win over some Jewish Americans through his ardent support for Israel and Netanyahu, while also peeling away disaffected Arab and Muslim Americans in Michigan and elsewhere by promising change.

Those voters may be in for a surprise, however. This week, Israel’s hardline finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said his country should take sovereignty over the West Bank next year. He said he believes Trump will “support the State of Israel in this move.”

While the Biden team supported Israel with weapons throughout the war, Biden and Blinken voiced strong disapproval of the civilian casualties as the death toll in Gaza — currently more than 43,000, according to the Hamas-run health ministry — climbed ever higher. They repeatedly urged Israel to pursue a cease-fire and to keep open the possibility of an eventual Palestinian state. Hamas is considered a terrorist organization by the US and European Union.

Earlier: Saudi Crown Prince Reached Out to Trump in Late Night Phone Call

The prospect of establishing ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia has been complicated by anger among many Arabs and Muslims at Israel’s actions in Gaza, leaving Riyadh no choice but to harden its stance. The kingdom has said normalization is contingent on irreversible steps toward Palestinian statehood.

At the same time, Saudi Arabia has looked to avoid being dragged into the conflict between Israel and Iran and its regional proxies, especially the Houthis in neighboring Yemen. The need to take these considerations into account was evident in the speech Prince Mohammed delivered at the opening of an Arab and Islamic summit held in Riyadh on Monday to discuss the wars in Gaza and Lebanon.

“The kingdom renews its condemnation and categorical rejection of the genocide being committed by Israel against the brotherly Palestinian people,” he said. The world must “compel Israel to respect the sovereignty of the sisterly Islamic Republic of Iran and not attack its territories,” he added.

Trump has repeatedly praised MBS, as the crown prince is known, and told a Saudi news channel last month that he was committed to “great” relations with the kingdom.

“You’re not gonna have micromanaging of the war under Trump, like you had under Biden,” said Michael Makovsky, who leads the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. “You won’t have the same focus — I would almost say obsession — that developed over time with the Palestinian issue.”

—With assistance from Sam Dagher.