Should Israel be alarmed by Donald Trump’s success in the Middle East?

Donald Trump’s Middle East visit – essentially, a whistle-stop tour of the Gulf – was never about Israel.

But for Israelis, it has become all about Israel, and not just because the US president has glaringly avoided including Jerusalem on the itinerary of his first official international tour of his second term.

Long before Trump shook hands in Saudi Arabia with Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former jihadist and “young, attractive guy” who is now the Islamist leader of Syria, and announced that the US would be lifting the sanctions imposed by the Obama administration, the four-day, three-state trip had upended the dynamics of the Middle East, redefined priorities, and left Israel sulking.

In the space of a few days, Trump has not only called three times for the war in Gaza to end, he has also extended an olive branch to Israel’s mortal enemy, Iran – stressing how interested he is to pursue a nuclear deal with Tehran – and secured the release of Edan Alexander, the 21-year-old American-Israeli taken hostage on October (who was caged and tortured by Hamas), via direct negotiations with his terrorist captors.

Not bad for 48 hours’ work. But notable also is how he had discussions in Riyadh with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish leader and Netanyahu’s implacable nemesis.

While Trump is busy dismantling the world – the Pax Americana, the post-1945 world order – he is simultaneously showing an appetite for inserting himself and offering to solve crises and conflicts around the world: Ukraine-Russia, India-Pakistan, the Gaza war and now, strikingly, engaging Iran. He has even got involved in the Rwanda-Democratic Republic of Congo conflict.

Unlike the last 80 years of the United States perceiving itself and shaping policy as the global arbiter and agenda-setter, Trump is fashioning himself as a fixer, not an imperial military and diplomatic power intent on interventions and being dragged into long wars that rarely benefit the US.

“America has no permanent enemies,” he declared in Riyadh on Tuesday, paraphrasing Lord Palmerston who, in 1848, as the UK’s foreign secretary, told the House of Commons how “we [Britain] have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual.”

Days after his humiliating climbdown on the exorbitant tariffs imposed on China, reducing them from 145 per cent to 30 per cent in a 90-day “pause”, came the no-less spectacular statement that the US is to lift sanctions on Syria.

The path more conciliatory through the Middle East has also found Trump making conciliatory noises toward Iran, saying that the United States wanted it to be “a wonderful, safe, great country”, if only its leaders would forswear their longtime pursuit of nuclear weaponry.

Two weeks earlier, he had also announced the suspension of military operations against the Yemeni Houthis, calling them “brave”. Just imagine the wild tsunami of tantrums and frothing at the mouth had Barack Obama or Joe Biden used the term for a group designated by the White House as foreign terrorists.

It is now beyond reasonable doubt that Donald Trump is, by his nature and deeds, both transactional and unpredictable. Indeed, his visit to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar had been widely dismissed as a “business trip”. Certainly, he has secured a $142 billion arms deal – which is actually the fulfilment of a pledge made by the Saudis during his previous visit in 2017 – with a commitment to invest a further $450 billion, possibly more, of Saudi money in the US.

But herein lies a truism at the heart of Trump’s brand of mercantile diplomacy. He goes to where he can get something. Reciprocity is key. And, ever since Netanyahu ruined Trump’s Gaza plan by breaking the ceasefire with airstrikes on Hamas targets, the Israeli administration has nothing tangible of value to offer the White House.

To Trump, Netanyahu has become an irritant. That disillusionment has only marginalised its position in regards to American policy.

The conventional wisdom used to be that, despite the calamity of October 7, Israel’s geopolitical situation was improving considerably: Hamas had been lethally degraded, Hezbollah further weakened by the fall of Assad’s Syria, and Iran compromised by Israel’s precise attacks on its air defences. With the US attacking Yemen’s Houthis, Israel looked to be in prime strategic shape.

Four months into Trump’s presidency, Washington is fed up with the futility of Netanyahu’s war in Gaza, has suspended its attacks on the Houthis, opened diplomatic channels with Tehran, and has come to see Turkey and Saudi Arabia as dependable allies.

Trump’s visit to the Gulf wasn’t about reshaping the Middle East, or about Israel. But it has quickly become exactly that.

It is also clear that Israelis should no longer be looking to Trump for answers, but rather to their own prime minister, who singlehandedly, and with an abundance of arrogance and hubris, has driven the country into this strategic cul-de-sac.

Alon Pinkas is a former Israeli consul-general in the US and was political adviser to two former prime ministers, Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak