U.S. foreign policy expert speaks on relations with the Middle East

Indyk said from the first year he took on the ambassadorship in Israel, President Clinton made efforts to end conflict and even decided to host leaders of Palestine and Israel in the United States. 

“If you told me nine months before, ‘Yasser Arafat is going to be in the White House,’ that would just be laughable,” he said. 

However, he said the Trump administration’s foreign policy significantly differs from previous administrations and under these circumstances it will be hard for the United States to establish positive relations with Arab countries. 

The administration’s decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem has deeply hurt the peace-negotiation process of Israel-Palestine conflict, he continued.

“Trump is driving Palestinians away from the table. They stopped talking to us,” he said. Conflict cannot be resolved if the president’s administration neglects the Palestinian side, Indyk continued.

He said the under the current U.S. administration, the relationship between the United States and Israel has developed in an intense way, and has been built very strongly, so it’s becoming increasingly more difficult for the United States to use any leverage it has on Israel.

Steinberg went on to bring up the idea that Trump is strengthening ties between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. Indyk responded that Saudi Arabia is a “big friend” of the country; however, this is only because of the oil trade, otherwise the countries would not be allies. 

“Saudi Arabia was never particularly a strong pillow on which we could rest our policy,” Indyk added. 

Indyk said U.S.-Iran relations were already bad prior to the current administration, and that they’ve become still worse under President Trump. Indyk added that while previous deals didn’t address problems related to the Arab Spring revolution and conflict between members of Sunni and Shia Muslim denominations, Trump has re-imposed sanctions on Iran without even solving existing problems.

“Trump re-imposed sanctions, while he supposed to build new deal and address these problems,” he said. “Then we would be in much better position that we are in now.”

Indyk added that Trump influenced countries which purchase oil from Iran and made them stop doing so. Thus, currently, the Iranian government expects that Trump will serve only one term and hopes to make a deal with a new administration. He said the main question remains — how will that relationship evolve if Trump gets re-elected?

Indyk wrapped up the lecture by discussing ongoing revolutions in Sudan and Algeria, describing recent protests as the “second Arab Spring.” He explained that these differ from the previous Arab Spring in a positive way, since leaders and people seem they have learned from the past. 

“Now, the peaceful revolutions taking place,” he said. “People on the streets put peaceful demonstration and military respecting people for the time-being.”

The expert suggested that the United States shouldn’t get deeply involved in the internal affairs of foreign countries, as it may inflate expectations from the civilians of those countries, while the United States may lose its communication with the leaders. 

“We lost our ability to talk to the leaders on the other side,” he said. “We set goals for ourselves that we had no intentions of fulfilling. I think we’re much better off in the situation where we do not talk the lead, we let the people decide.”