WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Trump in trying to form a partnership with Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to counter Iran is violating his vow to avoid Middle East entanglements, analysts told Sputnik.
Trump believes he can use three levers — arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Egypt and the promise of selling weapons to Israel, economic assistance to Egypt, and symbolic actions to bring the leaders of the three nations to far broader agreements, Walters said.
"Trump believes he can move their informal alliance against terror toward a broader peace agreement and even more concerted effort against Iran and terrorist organizations," he said.
Trump envisaged using set-piece symbolic gestures such as holding a White House meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and flying directly from Saudi Arabia to Jerusalem to prepare the way for such agreements, Waters said.
Trump was also confident he could pressure Saudi Arabia because of its growing economic weakness in the global oil markets, Waters observed.
"Trump's hole card is that few people know Saudi Arabia as well as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and nobody knows better than he just how dangerous the Saudis' position is," he said.
Trump also delivered a speech in Saudi Arabia that made a seemingly unsophisticated universalist appeal to the Saudis and the Arab world by stressing common dreams and hopes as human beings, Waters noted.
"Eight years of ‘nuanced’ statements from the faculty lounge that was the Obama administration foreign policy team left us in worse condition with the Arab world than had Bush's five years of fighting in Iraq, so perhaps a different PR strategy is in order," he suggested.
Historian and international affairs commentator Matthew Dal Santo told Sputnik Trump’s policy reversals and ambitious goals were generating confusion across the Middle East.
"With Trump signing colossal arms deals in Riyadh, it seems we're witnessing another spectacular and confusing U-turn," he said.
Trump was elected on a promise of extracting the United States from the region with honor but he now seemed to be signing Washington up to an even more intense commitment to the policies he previously execrated, Dal Santo observed.
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