Donald Trump’s second-term Middle East policy presents a striking paradox. Few American administrations have accumulated so many apparent tactical successes in the region in a relatively short period of time. Yet, fewer have illustrated so clearly the difficulty of converting these “successes” into durable political outcomes.
In Gaza, Trump helped bring a devastating 2-year war to a halt, creating an ambitious framework for ending the Israeli occupation, rebuilding Gaza and ending the agony of two million Palestinians. In Syria, the Trump administration made the consequential decision to support rebuilding post-Assad Syria rather than perpetuating its isolation. In Lebanon, Washington helped secure a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, bringing Israelis and Lebanese into direct peace talks. And by early 2026, Iran and its regional network had suffered, perhaps, their greatest series of setbacks in decades.
Yet, in almost every case, success created conditions that Washington either failed to consolidate or transform into political gains, threatening to further destabilize the region. Gaza remains devastated and politically unsettled. Syria has been given an extraordinary opportunity for recovery, but Israel continues to undermine the consolidation of the new state. Lebanon has entered direct negotiations with Israel without escaping the possibility of renewed war. Most consequentially, Washington went to war against an already weakened Iran and, in doing so, may have rescued the very regime it hoped to defeat.
Gaza: Peace Process without Peace
In Gaza, Trump’s pressure yielded in forcing Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to halt the war. Subsequently, he constructed a twenty-point framework intended to move from ceasefire to demilitarization, Israeli withdrawal, Palestinian civilian administration and reconstruction. The Board of Peace was established to oversee the process, and the July 2026 roadmap represented further progress, including an agreement on the principle of Hamas’s disarmament and a phased Israeli withdrawal[1].
Yet, Gaza demonstrates the difference between terminating military operations and resolving the political conditions that produced them. More than two million Palestinians remain in a devastated territory, reconstruction has barely begun, and instead of implementing a gradual withdrawal, Israel has seized more Palestinian land.
Furthermore, the Board of Peace had been forced to lower its ambitions amid disagreements over Hamas’s disarmament and Israel’s withdrawal. Israeli ministers were openly advocating permanent Israeli control and renewed settlement in Gaza[2]. Nikolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace high representative, warned in August, 27, 2026 that continuing Israeli military operations were obstructing civilian governance and demilitarization and could eventually produce a return to full-scale war[3].
Trump, therefore, possesses something resembling a peace architecture in Gaza, but seems incapable of not implementing it. Clearly, ending the war in Gaza cannot substitute indefinitely for answering the Palestinian political question. Trump’s own twenty-point plan recognizes this by referring ultimately to a credible pathway toward Palestinian self-determination and statehood. The problem is that Netanyahu continues to reject precisely this political outcome. Trump has demonstrated that he possesses considerable leverage over the Israeli prime minister. Yet, he is undermining the very plan he envisaged by his reluctance to use that leverage consistently after obtaining the ceasefire.
Syria: Winning Too Much
Syria represents the most strategically imaginative element of Trump’s Middle East policy. After Bashar al-Assad’s fall, Washington faced a familiar choice: continue to treat Syria primarily through the prism of terrorism, sanctions and isolations, or accept that the reconstruction of a functioning Syrian state was itself an American strategic interest. Trump chose the second course. His administration terminated the most crippling Syria’s sanctions in June 2025[4]. Congress subsequently repealed the Caesar Act, and on August 24, 2026, the State Department formally removed Syria from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list after nearly 47 years[5]. The impact on Syria has been remarkable. A country emerging from fourteen years of devastating conflict has been given an opportunity to reconnect with the world, attract investment and rebuild functioning state institutions.
More important is the strategic logic behind the policy. Washington has increasingly favored the restoration of state authority over the proliferation of armed non-state actors that helped fragment the Levant following the US invasion of Iraq. In a region where militias, proxies and competing external patrons have repeatedly hollowed out states, supporting a unified Syria is not merely a good policy for Syria; it is potentially the foundation of a different regional order.
Yet, here, too, American strategy contains a contradiction. While Washington supports rebuilding Syrian sovereignty and economic revival, Israel continues to challenge this very policy. Israeli military operations have extended beyond immediate border-security concerns to strikes designed to further weaken Syria, undermine its unity, territorial integrity, and restrict its military relationships, including its developing defense ties with another US ally-Türkiye. That was the objective of an Israeli strike on Abu al-Duhur airbase on August 18, 2026, which could have ignited a major crisis with Türkiye[6].
The contradiction here is obvious. The Trump administration cannot support the reconstruction of a sovereign Syrian state and at the same time tolerate policies that prevent that state from acquiring the attributes of sovereignty. If Trump believes, as his Syria policy suggests, that strong states rather than competing militias provide the best foundation for regional stability, he must then pressure Israel to accept the same principle. Otherwise, one of his administration’s most promising achievements would be undermined by one of its closest allies.
Lebanon: Bringing the State Back but not Enough
A similar problem exists in Lebanon. The Trump administration succeeded in stopping the war in Lebanon and in launching direct, high-level Lebanese-Israeli peace talks. Washington, subsequently, brokered arrangements aimed at consolidating the ceasefire, expanding Lebanese Armed Forces control in the south and creating conditions for a broader peace and security agreement[7].
This, too, fits the state-centered logic adopted in Syria. The objective should be a Lebanon in which the Lebanese government controls Lebanese territory and possesses a monopoly over the legitimate use of military force. But such an outcome cannot be achieved by weakening the Lebanese state while demanding that it weaken Hezbollah. This is exactly what Israel is pursuing by continuing to insist on retaining positions and freedom of action in southern Lebanon[8].
That creates a fundamental political problem for Washington. If the objective is to empower the Lebanese state while simultaneously weakening Hezbollah, the Lebanese government must be enabled to demonstrate that state authority can produce something Hezbollah’s weapons cannot, including sovereignty, territorial recovery and protection from Israeli attack. If Beirut tries to disarm Hezbollah while Israel continues occupying Lebanese territory and conducting military operations at will, Washington risks destroying the political argument on which disarmament depends. Trump, therefore, needs to pressure Israel to offer concessions not as a favor to Lebanon but as an instrument for strengthening the Lebanese state against Hezbollah. Here again, the administration has brought the parties closer to a solution without yet compelling them to cross the threshold.
Iran: The Unnecessary War
Iran is different. Here Trump did not merely fail to consolidate success but destroyed a strategic position that had taken more than two years to create. By early 2026, Iran’s position was at its lowest ebb in more than two decades. October 7, 2023, Hamas’s attack on Israel eventually triggered a chain of events catastrophic for Tehran’s regional strategy. Hamas was severely degraded in Gaza. Hezbollah lost much of its senior political and military leadership and suffered enormous damage to its capabilities. Bashar al-Assad fell in December 2024, depriving Iran of its principal Arab state ally and severing the geographic corridor that had connected Tehran to Lebanon. Iran’s regional network entered 2026 substantially weaker than it had been before October 7.
The United States and Israel had also struck Iran’s nuclear and military infrastructure in June 2025. The Trump administration maintained that the American strikes had rendered key enrichment facilities inoperable and set the program back substantially[9]. Then came Iran’s domestic crisis. Nationwide protests beginning in late 2025 placed additional pressure on an already weakened government. Reuters reported in January 2026 that the regime was under severe stress, even though there were still no signs of the elite security fragmentation normally required for regime collapse[10].
That should have been the moment to consolidate containment. Instead, Trump accepted the Israeli view that Iranian weakness created an opportunity not merely to contain the Islamic Republic but potentially to break it; and, as a result, the United States launched its full-scale attack in February 2026. Six months later, the consequences make the decision increasingly difficult to defend. The war accomplished precisely what successful containment had avoided, transforming an unpopular and weakened Iranian regime into a state fighting a foreign enemy for national survival.
The conflict killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, but it did not destroy the regime of the Islamic Republic. His succession by his son, Mojtaba, has instead coincided with a strengthening of harder-line security institutions. The recent appointment of former IRGC intelligence chief Hossein Taeb to command the Basij is one indication of the regime’s movement toward greater securitization and domestic coercion[11].
More consequentially, Iran discovered, or rediscovered, its most powerful instrument of asymmetric leverage, the Strait of Hormuz. Six months into the war, reopening Hormuz has become one of Washington’s principal objectives. The disruption has placed pressure on energy and fertilizer markets and given Tehran leverage that its weakened proxy network could no longer provide[12].
This is an extraordinary reversal. Before the war, Washington faced an Iran whose nuclear infrastructure had been heavily damaged, its Syrian ally had collapsed, its Lebanese proxy had been devastated, its regional network was weakened, and its economy was struggling. Six months on, Washington confronts an Iran whose leadership is more hard-line, whose internal security apparatus has been strengthened and possesses powerful leverage over one of the world’s most important energy arteries, and which can once again impose substantial costs on the global economy.
Warnings that precisely such outcomes could follow an American attack were reportedly given before the war. U.S. officials had cautioned about regime hardening, energy disruption and the difficulty of converting military operations into a viable postwar political settlement[13]. Trump initially succeeded in containing and weakening Iran, but subsequently failed to capitalize on those gains by launching an unnecessary war that ultimately backfired.
The Failure of Success
Dealing with these different Middle Eastern conflicts has produced something like a broader pattern. Trump has been unusually willing to discard inherited policies, resulting in genuine opportunities in the Middle East. He was prepared to pressure Netanyahu over Gaza. He abandoned an obsolete sanctions architecture in Syria. He brought Lebanese and Israeli representatives into direct negotiations. And his pre-2026 war policies led to an extraordinary weakening of Iran and its regional network. But successful statecraft requires knowing not only how to create leverage but when to cash it in. Trump’s problem has repeatedly emerged at precisely this point; turning power into stable political outcomes.
Military power can destroy a nuclear facility. It cannot determine what political system emerges afterward. Pressure can compel a ceasefire in Gaza. It cannot by itself reconcile Palestinian self-determination with the continuation of Israeli occupation. Sanctions can be removed from Syria overnight, but rebuilding a sovereign Syrian state requires restraining Israel that prefers it weak. Hezbollah can be pressured to surrender its weapons, but only a credible Lebanese state can ultimately replace the functions through which the organization justified retaining them.
This may, therefore, be the defining paradox of Trump’s Middle East policy. He has often been most successful immediately before making his last move. His administration helped create conditions for a different regional order – stronger states, weaker militias, a contained Iran, and negotiated rather than military management of conflicts. But instead of consolidating that architecture, Washington has repeatedly allowed maximalist ambitions, particularly those of Netanyahu’s government, to push policy beyond what its original successes required. The failure of Trump’s Middle East policy, therefore, is not simply a story of failure. It is the more consequential story of the failure of success; winning enough to create a favorable strategic position and then failing to recognize that the wisest next move was to stop winning and start building.
Notes
[1] Gaza Roadmap: A Roadmap for Completing the Implementation of President Trump’s Comprehensive Peace Plan in Gaza — July 30, 2026, at: https://boardofpeace.org/gaza-roadmap
[2] Karen De Yoiung, Trump’s Board of Peace lower ambitions as Peace Plan Lags, the Washington Post, 27, July, 2026, at: Trump’s Board of Peace lowers ambitions as peace plan lags – The Washington Post
[3] Edith M. Lederer, Official leading Trump’s Gaza ceasefire effort criticizes Israel for its attacks, AP, August 27, 2026, at: Official leading Trump’s Gaza ceasefire effort criticizes Israel | AP News
[4] Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Provides for the Revocation of Syria Sanctions, The White House, June 30, 2025, at: https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/06/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-provides-for-the-revocation-of-syria-sanctions/
[5] US removes Syria from list of state sponsors of terrorism, BBC, August 25, 2026, at: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c33knmyl0y5o
[6] Barak Ravid, Scoop: Syria and Israel move to defuse tensions after airbase bombing, Axios, August, 23, 2026, at: High-levels officials from Syria and Israel meet to discuss bombing of airbase.
[7] Costas Pitas, Israel and Lebanon agree to implementation of ceasefire, Reuters, June 4, 2026, at: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-lebanon-say-they-agree-ceasefire-2026-06-03/
[8] Laila Bassam, Pesha Magid and Steve Holland, Israel, Hezbollah agree to ceasefire in Lebanon, U.S> official says, Reuters, June 19, 2026, at: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-steps-up-lebanon-attacks-with-strikes-that-kill-15-2026-06-19/
[9] Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated — and Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News, the White House, June 25, 2025, at: Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated — and Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News – The White House
[10] Iran’s security elite holds firm despite deadly nationwide protests, Reuters, January 14, 2026, at: https://www.reuters.com/video/watch/idRW654214012026RP1/
[11] Najmeh Bozorgmehr, The hardliner running Iran’s powerful domestic militia, The Financial Times, August 27, 2026, at: https://www.ft.com/content/48371986-4bc6-4396-8f81-63b2983d2f3a?syn-25a6b1a6=1
[12] Michelle L. Price, After six months of Iran war, US goals have shifted. The Strait of Hormuz is now a top concern, AP, August 27, 2026, at: How Trump’s goals for the Iran war have shifted over six months | AP News
[13] Alexander Ward, Lara Seligman and Alex Leary, The Warnings That Came Before a War Now Reaching the Six-Month Mark, The Wall Street Journal, August 24, 2026, at: https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/iran-war-warnings-9d7f289a?msockid=296b2406a95b6ee11cdf336da81a6f5e
