The future of the region should be decided by the countries there, not by external actors. Strategic autonomy, an idea frequently raised by some Arab countries in recent years, shows they’re waking up to reality. There should be no illusions about the future.
Palestinians flee their homes after the Israeli army issued forced displacement orders for neighbourhoods in Beit Hanoon in the northern Gaza Strip on March 19, 2025. Nearly two months after United States President Donald Trump took office, the ceasefire that had halted Israel’s war in Gaza has shattered, and the region is once again at war. (Photo: Abd Elhkeem Khaled/Reuters)
Recent decades have seen Middle East countries try various means to engage with the United States over core and crucially different interests. But few of these efforts have borne fruit. Expectations for the U.S. have proved elusive. The lessons have been bitter, and countries in the region will be forced to choose the course of strategic autonomy — but with regional reconciliation — for their own future.
Across the region, numerous illusions involving the United States can be seen. The following three are typical:
First is the illusion of some Palestinians that U.S. support will help them achieve nationhood. In the struggle for their rights, Palestinians have separated into two groups with two different approaches. While Hamas had stood for the means of resistance, some other Palestinians have believed they could achieve their nation-state goal via compliance (compliance meaning cooperation). They think that by complying with the U.S., Palestinians will finally win America’s support for sovereignty, the same as other UN members. For that, they are ready to give up a significant part of sovereignty — such as military capability — that is essential in defining a modern nation-state.
However, despite compliance efforts, Palestinians have found that their territory — about 12,000 square kilometers designated by the UN General Assembly Resolution 181 in 1947 — had been reduced to less than 2,000 sq km over the last seven decades. Shamelessly, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu even proposed recently the removal of the Palestinian people to neighboring Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The U.S., in particular, has blocked various UN Security Council resolutions calling for A two-state solution. Israel’s Knesset passed a resolution to deny a two-state solution.
It is expected that the delay of Palestinian nationhood will be judged through the lens of America’s biased position, which suggests that any expectation of U.S. support has been illusory.
The second big illusion Gulf countries’ expectation of U.S. security protection. It was true that the United States had served as a security umbrella for Gulf Cooperation Council countries in the case of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in the early 1990s. Since then, GCC countries have regarded the U.S. as a reliable security umbrella.
However, recent history indicates otherwise. For example, through the years of Trump’s first presidency, between 2017 and 2021, GCC countries expected that the U.S. would help to shelter them from security threats from the Houthis of Yemen. But the Trump administration was indifferent to their requests, particularly in the case of the bombing of Saudi oil facilities in 2019. This is ironic, since Saudi Arabia had promised to invest $500 billion in the U.S. at the beginning of Trump’s first term, as was acknowledged recently by Trump himself. Gulf countries had also stuck with the U.S. dollar to clear oil transactions, in exchange for U.S. protection, and the use of dollars was long regarded as a precondition for protection.
Shortly after Trump’s second inauguration in January, Saudi Arabia floated another $600 billion investment in U.S., possibly with a similar mentality — expecting U.S. security protection. But this may prove to be another illusion. Trump used to say that U.S. involvement in the Middle East was too costly and rewarded with few gains, which was not in line with his “America first” policy.
How times have changed: The early 1990s was a special case — a convergence of the GCC’s aspiration for security protection and the U.S. mentality geared toward hegemony and its own ideas of regional order. Today’s United States is certainly more selfish and inward looking. It is unrealistic of the GCC to expect Trump to come to their aid during Trump 2.0.
The third big illusion is Iran’s expectation of rapprochement with the U.S. History includes several Iranian attempts to engage with the U.S., but none of them have succeeded until now. In the mid-1990s, Iran’s President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani tried to reach rapprochement with the U.S. by conceding Iran’s oil interests. He was rewarded, ironically, with U.S. sanctions on its oil investments. In early 2001, Iran’s President Muhammad Khatami tried to reach the U.S. by supporting the U.S. war in Afghanistan. In return, ironically, he was labeled as one of the three evils in early 2002. Hassan Rouhani tried to connect with a nuclear deal, but Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018 to exert so-called maximum pressure on the country.
These examples from Iran suggest that the rapprochement expected by some Iranians will never be available so long as there are no fundamental changes in U.S. domestic politics. Some political factions continue to expect that the U.S. will change its approach toward Iran, but it seems that such a change remains out of sight, judging by the super hostile domestic political atmosphere in the U.S. against Iran.
The illusions outlined above are no all-inclusive for the Middle East. There are other scenarios. But the fundamental reason for them all is that the U.S. is firmly attached to “America first” and “Israel first” in the region. The “America first” slogan was introduced explicitly by Donald Trump, but has been implicitly enshrined by various U.S. presidents.
The approach was usually defined as protecting America’s strategic or economic interests in the region. For the presidential terms of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, this was for strategic interests; for Trump’s terms, it was and will be more for economic interests. Actually, protecting Israel is regarded as a U.S. priority in American domestic politics.
The recent Palestinian-Israeli conflict showed just how far the U.S. could go in its biased policy against Palestinians, as well as illuminating the concerns of neighboring Middle East countries. It is natural that their illusions for the U.S. are being broken.
The future of the Middle East should be decided by the countries in the region. It is not realistic to rely on external actors. Strategic autonomy, an idea frequently raised by some Arab countries in recent years, shows they’re waking up to reality. There should be no illusions about the future. In addition, strategic autonomy should be accompanied by regional reconciliation, including relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
