Misjudgment and Reversed Equation

A striking confirmation of the turning point reached by the Trump Administration in foreign policy — this, in essence and succinctly, is how several observers and analysts reacted to the United States’ National Security Strategy, released a few days ago by the White House. This major document, about thirty pages long and preceded by a foreword from President Donald Trump, sets out in detailed form the orientations and objectives Washington has defined regarding current developments in the world’s sensitive regions and the vital issues playing out on the international stage.

The ideas presented by the administration’s team in the federal capital are not entirely surprising. They had already been the subject of active debate in various political and diplomatic circles, but it is likely the first time they have been assembled so comprehensively and methodically — theme by theme, region by region — in a single official document emanating from the highest levels of power.

The strategy outlined in this text broadly aligns with the vision defended by J.D. Vance well before the November 2024 U.S. presidential election. Vance, who would later become Trump’s running mate, had stressed in several public appearances — notably during the summer of 2024 — that the United States should no longer systematically place itself on the front lines of every struggle waged against the adversaries of the Western world. He urged, for example, that Europe take responsibility for its own defense, supported of course by the U.S., but without placing the entire burden on American military infrastructure.

But it was especially Vance’s vision of the Middle East that drew attention and continues to be of great interest to Lebanon and the Levant. Trump’s running mate emphasized at the time that Israel and the Sunni states of the region should, like Europe, assume their own responsibilities in matters of defense and coordinate their efforts more specifically to counter Iran’s expansionism. This orientation — defended by Vance back then and reflected again in the White House’s newly released document — marks a fundamental break with the policy pursued by previous U.S. administrations (with the exception of Trump’s first term).

One should recall that in the early 1980s, after the outbreak of the Iran–Iraq war (1980–1988), the United States and Israel had practically rushed to the aid of Khomeini’s Islamic Republic, providing it with anti-tank missiles, military equipment, and spare parts to help it confront Saddam Hussein’s army. This crucial support — later revealed publicly in the Irangate scandal — fit into a broader context than the Iran–Iraq conflict (namely the funding of Nicaragua’s Contras), but its strategic objective was clearly to bolster the pragmatic wing of the Shia regime in Tehran in order to weaken the Sunni pole in the Middle East. Yet this calculation gravely misread the ideological mindset of the Revolutionary Guards, who, from Khomeini’s rise to power onward, had aggressively pushed their expansionist project to export the Islamic Revolution across the region.

This miscalculation of the early 1980s ultimately meant that not only was the pragmatic wing of the Iranian regime not strengthened vis-à-vis the Sunni bloc, but the radical Khomeinist current, on the contrary, steadily grew in power, extending its influence into every economic, social, and institutional sector of Iran, bypassing the central state and sowing chronic instability in several Levantine countries.

These hegemonic ambitions were accompanied by an accelerated development of Iran’s nuclear program, such that what had been perceived forty years ago as a pragmatic counterweight to Sunni power became, four decades later, a serious existential threat — one that should have been recognized for what it was had the ideological foundations of the Revolutionary Guards’ project been fully understood. The strategic — and likely fatal — error of the regime’s radical wing was its failure to recognize its own limits in a region as complex as the Middle East and its pursuit of excessive ambitions, both in its nuclear program and in its artificial entrenchment in the Levant.

It is therefore hardly surprising that the National Security Strategy presented today by the Trump Administration reverses the equation of the 1980s by advocating cooperation between Israel and the Sunni states to confront the danger posed by a Shia power still struggling to accept that the region has undergone a profound geopolitical transformation — one paving the way for the emergence of a new Middle East built on lasting peace and broad-based economic cooperation.