Trump's Picks Are Grim News for the West Bank and Iran
"Selective annexation" is a serious possibility in 2025 for the West Bank; on Iran, "Maximum Pressure 2.0" could slide into full-blown war.
President-elect Donald Trump has been rolling out his nominees for senior positions with remarkable speed. The outlines of his top foreign policy team are already clear, and to some extent also clear are the outlines of his cabinet as a whole. Overall, as far as I can discern, there seems to be a four-fold logic at work in the picks: (1) rewarding loyalists; (2) picking people with a reputation for toughness if not harshness; (3) signaling that draconian policies vis-a-vis immigrants were not just campaign rhetoric;* and (4) signaling that the incoming administration will take a strongly pro-Israel, pro-settler line. It is this fourth aspect that concerns us here.
Some of the top picks so far announced include:
Representative Michael Waltz as National Security Advisor;
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida as Secretary of State;
Fox News Host Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense;
Former Representative John Ratcliffe as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency;
Former Representative Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence;
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem as Secretary of Homeland Security;
Representative Matt Gaetz as Attorney General;
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee as Ambassador to Israel;
Real estate mogul Steven Witkoff as Special Envoy to the Middle East;
Each link above is to coverage of each announcement. The list could shift somewhat by January and beyond, of course - many of these positions require Senate confirmation - but this gives us a clear snapshot of Trump’s current foreign policy leanings.
What struck me most, amid all the coverage of the picks, was a resurfaced 2017 clip of Huckabee in Israel. Huckabee’s remarks are significant not just because of what he says - “there is no such thing as a West Bank; it’s Judea and Samaria; there’s no such thing as a settlement - they’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities” - but also because the terms he used, and particularly the phrase “Judea and Samaria,” precisely mirror the settlers’ own preferred vocabulary.**
Here is Bezalel Smotrich, who is Israel’s Finance Minister, Governor of the West Bank, and a major figure in the settler movement:
"After years in which, unfortunately, the current administration chose to interfere in Israeli democracy and personally refused to cooperate with me as Israel's finance minister, Trump's victory also brings an important opportunity," Smotrich said, adding that "2025 is the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria. The new Nazis need to pay a price through land that will be permanently taken from them, both in Gaza and in Judea and Samaria."
The situation in the West Bank is bad, and was bad even before the October 7 attack. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, warned in a recent report that genocide is emerging in the West Bank - and not just in Gaza. (See my discussion of the report here.)
The outgoing administration of President Joe Biden has, in my view, abetted and participated in both the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza and the rising, deeply asymmetric violence in the West Bank. But all signals now indicate that things will get worse for the Palestinians under Trump. Put differently, a Kamala Harris administration would likely have seen Washington continue to extend unquestioning support to Israel on Gaza and Lebanon and to some extent on the West Bank, but refrain from fully embracing the settlers and the annexation of the West Bank. Trump appears ready to lean into and facilitate a “selective annexation.”
France24 had an informative segment, with Professor Lorenzo Kamel, for readers who would like more detail.
The other actor in the Middle East who should be worried is, obviously, Iran. There are many hawks in the emerging Trump cabinet, including voices for whom even “maximum pressure” may be too tame. Hegseth, Rubio, and Ratcliffe, for example, are all considered Iran hawks.
The European Council on Foreign Relations published a thoughtful analysis of the interlocking dynamics between Trump, Israel, and Iran. Here is an excerpt:
[Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu may ultimately see the current period as an opportunity to lock the incoming US administration into direct military action against Iran even if Trump is keen to avoid this outcome. Given the Biden administration’s inertia over the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, Netanyahu may bet that the US could be compelled to support an expanding military campaign against Iran given the political pressure that Washington will face domestically to stay closely aligned with Israel – especially if this can be justified as self-defence against Iranian attacks. Trump’s reticence to be drawn into a regional war could be overwhelmed by the deep pro-Israeli and anti-Iranian positions of his inner circle which is already doubling down in calling for renewed maximum pressure against Tehran. Trump may also be persuaded that supporting Israel in a fight against Iran will allow him to cement a position of strength from which to negotiate an eventual deal with Tehran, an outcome he still claims to seek.
As so often, then, the X factor is Trump himself, and one never knows whether sheer capriciousness, personal feuds, or some kind of underlying personal preference for deal-making over war-making could induce Trump to pull back from the brink of all-out war with Iran.
Another possible factor is the rapprochement between Iran and the Gulf countries. To the extent that Gulf rulers have Trump’s ear, they may convince him to overrule the hawks in his own cabinet.
For their part, the Iranian government doesn’t appear to be completely closing the door on negotiations - but they do sound like they’re anticipating a period of even greater tensions.
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*It’s beyond the scope of this newsletter, but Democrats have also shifted drastically to the right on immigration; Trump outflanks them but they are chasing after him. I recommend Daniel Denvir’s recent piece on these dynamics.
**As Jeet Heer points out, Bill Clinton also says “Judea and Samaria.” The differences between Democrats and Republicans on these issues are sometimes less stark than they first appear - although I do think, as I said above, that there will be a shift with Trump.