President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman exchange documents during a signing ceremony at the Royal Palace, Tuesday, May 13.
Alex Brandon/AP
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Alex Brandon/AP
President Trump’s visit to the Arab Gulf states – the first major trip of his second presidency – is ruffling domestic and international politics.
So far, the president has been offered a luxury $400 million plane from Qatar to serve as Air Force One, a plan criticized by both Republican and Democrat lawmakers. He has announced how the kingdom of Saudi Arabia plans to invest some $600 billion in the U.S., including arms deals, tech investments and AI data centers.
On Wednesday, Trump met with Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, calling him a “tough guy” who has a “real shot” at stabilizing Syria. Sharaa’s government has said for months that it wants to normalize relations with its long-time adversary Israel.
Trump also announced he would lift sanctions on Syria. The rolling back of those sanctions caused some confusion for Israel, which has attacked Syria hundreds of times since the fall of its former dictator, Bashar al-Assad.
Thomas Friedman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The New York Times who has long written about the Middle East, told Morning Edition he sees “creative possibilities” from Trump’s approach to the Middle East so far, particularly when it comes to Syria.
Friedman said Sharaa has made some “incredibly positive moves towards Israel, and is under pressure from a very pluralistic front within Syria, Christians, Muslims and others to make a pluralistic Syria.”
“Why don’t we at least give him a chance? Give him a reputation to live up to. So I think the president made a very good move there and I support it and I hope the Israelis pick up on it,” Friedman continued.
In his conversation with NPR’s Steve Inskeep, Friedman also discussed the president’s goals for Gaza and the wider region as well as Israel’s response to Trump’s approaches.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights
Steve Inskeep: What do you think the president’s trip that we just heard about shows about his approach to the Middle East?
Thomas Friedman: Well, Steve, from 30,000 feet, I think what the president is trying to do is, number one, diffuse as many of the regional conflicts there as possible and even open the possibility of ties between old adversaries like Syria and Israel and Israel and Saudi Arabia. That’s number one. He wants to do that so he can then create some kind of regional security structure that would stabilize the region and keep China out. [It would] be a pro American regional structure. He wants to do that so then he can get American troops out of the region, reduce our expenditures there. And he wants to do it all in a way that will make huge profits for American weapons manufacturers and sell them the weapons, you know, to stabilize the region. If I were to describe his strategy, I think it’s that four-part concept.
Inskeep: And what do you make of the president’s closeness with Middle Eastern autocrats, his decision to accept a free airplane, if in fact that goes through, and everything else?
Friedman: Yeah. That’s a really bad idea. I mean, besides being a violation of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause. If we’re going to be effective in that region, we need to be a neutral arbiter and not be doing personal business alongside the geopolitical interests of the United States of America. Bad idea. Hope it doesn’t happen.
Inskeep: But with that said, what you described could be seen in a very positive light trying to rethink some of these old conflicts, trying to move past some of these old conflicts, thinking about the region in a fresh way, speaking in a friendly way about the new rulers of Syria, talking about some kind of agreement with Iran, talking directly with Iran. Do you see some creative possibilities here?
Friedman: Yeah, I see some real creative possibilities. I particularly like what the president has done vis a vis Syria. This moment reminds me of the moment after the Soviet Union fell and there were some of us who believed that we should forgo NATO expansion for a while while we see if our dream of a democratic Russia is possible. I would be advising the Israelis the same thing. Ahmed al-Sharaa, the president of Syria, definitely has a Islamist background, but he’s also really made some incredibly positive moves towards Israel, and is under pressure from a very pluralistic front within Syria of Christians, Muslims and others to make a pluralistic Syria. Why don’t we at least give him a chance? Give him a reputation to live up to. So I think the president made a very good move there and I support it and I hope the Israelis pick up on it.
Inskeep: Why do you think Israel has not been more forthcoming in reaching out to the Syrian hand that seems to have been extended to them?
Friedman: They have reason to obviously mistrust Sharaa. And there’s been tension, particularly in Syria. There are groups that are opposed to Syrian Druze. There are Druze communities in northern Israel that are very much part of the Israeli government. There’s been tension around that. And this is a very hard-line government that has taken a kind of hostile view of everybody in the region. So I hope they can see through that and see that there’s an incredible opportunity here.
Syria is such a keystone. I say about countries in the Middle East, when they’re decapitated, one of two things happen: Some countries implode and other countries explode. Syria’s a country that explodes because it’s made of basically all the different, you know, peoples and religions of the region. It explodes instability. But if it is stabilized, it will radiate and explode much more stability. It will actually affect Iraq. It’ll affect Lebanon. It’s the keystone of everything.
Inskeep: The president told a reporter he has concepts for Gaza, but there’s been not much focus otherwise on this war. That was the overwhelming topic of conversation in the United States and in the Middle East a year ago. Do you feel you see any way forward for the Israeli war against Hamas?
Friedman: I think the only way forward is that we get an end to the fighting, that Israel gets all its hostages back. There’s a prisoner exchange of Palestinians for Hamas. Hamas leaders leave Gaza and you get a different leadership there, but with a permanent ceasefire. That’s the only hope. That is what the president is working for. That is what Prime Minister of Israel, Bibi Netanyahu, is working against because the far-right lunatics in his government threatened to pull him down if he doesn’t continue the war.
The big challenge, and the thing that worries me most going forward when the president talks about doing deals with Iran and Gaza and whatnot, is implementation. It’s great to have these headline stories, but who’s actually going to structure these deals and who’s going to actually do the detailed work? I don’t see an administration that’s really good at this kind of detailed follow up right now. That’s what concerns me the most. But I appreciate the headline efforts.
Inskeep: But you don’t think that the administration actually has a serious concept for Gaza, to use the president’s word?
Friedman: I think they have a concept, but to pull it off, you know, you’ve got to be just really tough. You’ve got to be tough with everybody. This is a hard region. If you’re not ready to, you know, break a few knuckles to get this done and do it in a sustained diplomatic way, not going to happen.
The radio version of this story was edited by Reena Advani and produced by Nia Dumas. The digital was edited by Treye Green.
