Donald Trump’s high-stakes Middle East gambit—a whirlwind mix of air-strikes, cease-fire diplomacy, and billion-dollar tech deals—has left the region teetering between fresh opportunity and renewed peril, according to a mid-year assessment released in Washington this week. Six months into his second term, the president’s push for quick wins has bruised adversaries, reassured Gulf partners, and sidelined traditional U.S. aid tools. Still, it has yet to deliver the “durable and sustainable security environment” the White House promised last spring.
The 44-page scorecard, “US Policy in the Middle East: Second Quarter 2025 Report Card—A Mid-Year Assessment of the Trump Administration’s Regional Foreign Policy,” was written by Brian Katulis for the Middle East Institute, an independent Washington think tank that issues quarterly reviews of U.S. strategy. Katulis grades the administration across five pillars—deterrence of Iran, Israel-Palestine peacemaking, regional stability, counter-terrorism, and partner relations—and draws on peer-review feedback from a roster of national-security specialists.
Between early May and mid-July, the president flew to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, where he surprised regional observers by lifting long-standing sanctions on Damascus and posing for a photo-op with Syria’s rebel-turned-president, Ahmed al-Ja'ari. The trip produced headline announcements on artificial-intelligence cooperation and mineral-rich investment funds that Gulf officials hailed as a “new era of geo-economic alignment.” Yet the report warns that the same “America First” tariffs now complicating trade talks with Europe could push Arab capitals to hedge toward China and India if costs rise too steeply.
Military fireworks soon followed the diplomacy. On June 13, Israel launched surprise strikes against Iranian nuclear and military sites; Washington joined nine days later, dispatching U.S. bombers in a one-day raid that dealt “extensive damage” to centrifuge halls and missile depots. Tehran’s program, the think-tank says, is “strategically weakened but tactically lethal—down, but not out.” With five rounds of back-channel talks now frozen, Katulis gives the Iran file an “Incomplete,” urging the administration to craft a post-strike diplomatic pathway before Iranian proxies regroup.
The harshest mark—an “F”—falls on the Israeli-Palestinian portfolio. A March cease-fire collapsed after Israel expanded ground operations in Gaza, and successive missions by special envoy Steve Witkoff have failed to broker a new truce or hostage deal. Gaza, the paper notes, is “reaching near-famine levels,” while talk of seizing 75 percent of the enclave has chilled broader Arab-Israeli normalization efforts. Without a political horizon that points back to a two-state solution, the author argues, Saudi Arabia and others are unlikely to formalize relations with Jerusalem despite overt U.S. pressure.
Elsewhere, the White House scored middling marks. A surprise policy reversal on Syria—complete with sanctions relief and rhetorical backing for inclusive governance—earns a “B” on the Syria sub-file and is singled out as the administration’s best opening to prove its soft-power mettle. Lebanon, where U.S. envoy Tom Barrack shuttles between Beirut and Jerusalem to salvage a fraying November 2024 armistice, scrapes a “C.” Yemen’s Red Sea drama rates a “D” after a spring air campaign failed to deter Houthi missile attacks on shipping lanes. Iraq is simply listed as “Incomplete,” its future tied to a possible U.S. troop drawdown still under review.
Counter-terrorism, once the crown jewel of bipartisan Middle East policy, draws another “D.” The administration’s reliance on precision strikes without a parallel stabilization plan “hinders broader efforts to counter extremist networks,” the report says, pointing to the open-ended Gaza war as a propaganda gift for jihadist recruiters. Katulis also flags the dismantling of USAID and the Voice of America—victims of the new Department of Government Efficiency—as a blow to the information and development tools that have historically undergirded counter-terror work.
Budget politics in Washington shadow every overseas initiative. The July spending bill allocates billions toward enhanced immigration enforcement while reducing funds for the State Department, scientific research, and the social safety net. The result, the analyst warns, is a U.S. diplomatic corps too thin to follow up on flashy summit communiqués. Personnel churn extends to the National Security Council, where a new Middle East director took over in spring only to preside over a subsequent “purge and reassignment” of key staff—a revolving door that partners confess leaves them guessing who speaks for Washington on any given week.
Still, the report acknowledges pockets of success. Gulf leaders welcomed the president’s commitment to “burden-sharing” and to opening markets for American energy and AI firms. NATO allies, pressed to raise defence spending to 5 percent of GDP by 2035, publicly thanked the administration for “restoring clarity” on alliance expectations—though the paper doubts whether debt-ridden European capitals can meet that bar. Farther afield, a White House-hosted Rwanda-Congo peace deal and an India-Pakistan cease-fire are touted as examples of transaction-first diplomacy paying off, even if New Delhi downplays U.S. credit.
What happens next hinges on three unresolved “variables,” Katulis writes: Iran’s response to the June strikes, the Gaza humanitarian spiral, and the Houthi challenge in Yemen. Each could upend the administration’s effort to market the Middle East as a platform for big-ticket economic integration. The coming quarter will also test whether lifted Syria sanctions translate into genuine reconstruction or simply open another arena for great-power competition, as Russian and Chinese contractors eye contracts in Aleppo and Raqqa.
For Congress, the scorecard offers ammunition to both supporters and critics of the president’s approach. Hawks may cite the crippling of Iran’s centrifuges as proof that complex power works; doves will underline the lack of a follow-on diplomatic plan and the glaring vacuum on Palestinian rights. As campaign season heats up, lawmakers from both parties are already demanding hearings on the ethics of Qatar’s gifting a luxury jetliner to the U.S. delegation during May’s tour—an episode, the report notes, that could “overshadow the potential for broadened economic ties” if left unaddressed.
Katulis closes with a blunt warning. Strategic communications and media blitzes “are not an adequate substitute for concrete results that improve security conditions,” he writes. Transactional diplomacy can yield short-term successes yet “may not lend itself to building long-term relationships of trust and confidence,” leaving friends to hedge and foes to probe for weaknesses. In a region where unfinished wars and shifting alliances can reverse fortunes overnight, the real grade for Trump’s second-term Middle East policy may not arrive until well after the final election ballots are counted back home.
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