Reconfiguring Regional Order in the Middle East through the Return of Trump and the Decline of American Multilateralism

The article begins by presenting the Middle East as one of the most strategically important and unstable regions in the contemporary global order. The region is significant not only because of its energy resources and religious symbolism, but also because of its role in shaping global security hierarchies. American foreign policy has long influenced the region as both a stabilizing and disruptive force.

The return of Donald Trump to the presidency in 2024 is treated as a major turning point for U.S. engagement with the Middle East. The article argues that Trump’s return revives anxieties about the direction and durability of American involvement, especially as competing powers seek to reshape the regional order.

During Trump’s first term, several major policies signaled a departure from liberal internationalism. These included withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and negotiation of the Abraham Accords. The article explains that these policies prioritized unilateral interest, state sovereignty, and transactional diplomacy over collective security and multilateral governance.

The article identifies the long-term effects of Trump’s first-term policies. The withdrawal from the JCPOA intensified nuclear tensions with Iran, while the Abraham Accords reshaped Arab–Israeli relations but further marginalized Palestine. These developments continue to influence Middle Eastern diplomacy and regional conflict dynamics.

The central problem addressed in the article is that academic responses to Trump’s Middle East policy have often been fragmented. Many studies focus on individual crises or bilateral relations without offering a systematic explanation of the strategic logic behind Trump’s approach. The article challenges the view that Trump’s foreign policy is merely a personality-driven exception.

The article argues that Trump’s approach reflects a deeper transformation in U.S. hegemony. Instead of relying on liberal legitimation and multilateral leadership, American power under Trump increasingly operates through transactional dominance, asymmetrical coercion, and selective alliances. This reconfiguration changes both the practice and perception of U.S. leadership.

The research gap concerns the lack of comprehensive foresight on how Trump’s second term may transform the Middle East’s geopolitical architecture. The article also identifies a lack of integrated analysis connecting nuclear diplomacy, alliance politics, Palestine, energy, technology, and normative legitimacy within a single framework of hegemonic transition.

The article aims to critically examine how Trump’s post-2024 foreign policy recalibrates American hegemony in the Middle East. It connects unilateralism, regional fragmentation, multipolar contestation, and normative decline to explain how the Middle East is becoming a site of strategic ambiguity, sovereignty experiments, and regional reordering.

The article uses a critical realist and post-hegemonic analytical approach to examine how Trump’s return to power reshapes U.S. foreign policy and regional order in the Middle East. The study analyzes the decline of multilateral norms, the resurgence of unilateralism, and the transformation of hegemonic structures through key issues such as nuclear diplomacy, Israeli–Iranian rivalry, Palestine, energy politics, and technological dependency.

The research applies structural mapping and scenario analysis to identify changing patterns of power, alliance behavior, institutional erosion, and regional recalibration. It examines empirical evidence from alliance behavior, economic infrastructure, discursive legitimation, and great power competition involving the United States, China, and Russia. This method allows the article to interpret not only current developments, but also possible future trajectories of regional order under conditions of weakened American multilateralism.

The article finds that Donald Trump’s re-election in 2024 represents a decisive moment in the reconfiguration of American hegemony in the Middle East. His foreign policy revives doctrines that are antagonistic to multilateralism and collective governance. Instead of presenting the United States as a provider of global public goods, Trump’s approach emphasizes sovereignty, transactional interests, and strategic utility.

A major result is the replacement of multilateral frameworks with bilateral and asymmetrical partnerships. The U.S. withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018 is interpreted not only as a policy reversal, but also as a rejection of institutional consensus. Trump’s return is expected to deepen this approach through renewed sanctions, pressure on Iran, and reduced reliance on negotiated settlements.

The article argues that Trump’s policies have weakened U.S. credibility as a mediator in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the relocation of the U.S. embassy marked a major break from previous diplomatic practice. These actions marginalized Palestinian claims and strengthened Israeli territorial and political ambitions.

The Abraham Accords are discussed as a key example of transactional diplomacy. Although presented as peace agreements, the accords were built through inducements such as economic aid, arms deals, and security guarantees. The article argues that they fragmented the Arab position on Palestine and created new regional hierarchies based on proximity to U.S. power.

The article also finds that Trump’s rhetoric delegitimized multilateral institutions such as the United Nations and European Union. This rhetorical attack on institutions encouraged regional actors to adopt unilateral strategies and selective engagement. In this sense, U.S. unilateralism created both material consequences and ideological contagion.

Economic coercion is another important feature of reconfigured American hegemony. U.S. sanctions, especially secondary sanctions related to Iran, weaponized the global financial system. These measures pressured allies and adversaries alike, forcing states to choose between alignment with Washington or exclusion from financial networks.

The Israel–Iran rivalry is identified as one of the most dangerous regional polarities intensified by Trump’s policies. The maximum pressure campaign against Iran encouraged Tehran to resume high-grade uranium enrichment and expand missile development. At the same time, Israel received strong U.S. support for more assertive action against Iranian influence.

The article explains that the Israel–Iran confrontation now occurs across multiple arenas, including Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, the Persian Gulf, and cyberspace. Proxy warfare, covert operations, cyberattacks, and ideological narratives have created a condition of semi-permanent confrontation. This makes regional escalation more likely and crisis management more difficult.

The Abraham Accords also contributed to the marginalization of Palestine. By separating Arab normalization with Israel from Palestinian statehood, the accords weakened the long-standing Arab Peace Initiative framework. Palestine became less central to regional diplomacy, while Israel gained stronger security and economic ties with Gulf states.

The article finds that U.S. retrenchment has encouraged regional actors to diversify their alliances. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Qatar, and Egypt increasingly pursue autonomous strategies and multidirectional alignments. These states maintain ties with Washington while also developing relations with China, Russia, Iran, or regional partners.

China and Russia have used American uncertainty to expand their influence in the Middle East. China has strengthened economic presence through infrastructure, energy, and Belt and Road projects, while Russia has deepened military and diplomatic involvement in Syria, Iran, Egypt, and Libya. These moves do not fully replace American power, but they complicate U.S. dominance.

The article concludes that the Middle East is moving toward a fragmented and modular regional order. American hegemony has not disappeared, but it is no longer stable or universally accepted. The region is increasingly shaped by strategic ambiguity, overlapping alliances, normative contestation, and pluralistic experiments in sovereignty and resistance.

The shifting trajectory of American foreign policy in the Middle East, particularly under Donald Trump’s renewed leadership, presents both a moment of reckoning and an opportunity for conceptual reorientation. The regional order, long sustained by the asymmetrical guarantees of U.S. hegemony, now operates under conditions of strategic ambiguity, institutional fragmentation, and normative pluralism. These changes should not be interpreted solely as a decline of American power, but rather as a transformation in its modalities of exercise. Power is increasingly projected not through stability and consensus, but through volatility and strategic fragmentation. Recognizing this shift requires scholars and policymakers alike to rethink the very frameworks used to evaluate regional dynamics.

One of the most pressing imperatives is the reactivation of multilateral institutions and inclusive diplomatic platforms that reflect the multipolar realities of the region. This includes not only state-based mechanisms but also transnational civil society, epistemic communities, and technical coalitions capable of addressing issues such as energy transition, digital security, and conflict mediation. While American policy may currently trend toward unilateralism and short-termism, there remains space for counterbalancing initiatives that prioritize regional ownership and normative reconstruction. These alternatives must be rooted in principles of equity, reciprocity, and historical accountability if they are to gain traction in a post-hegemonic environment.

Future research on Middle Eastern order must move beyond crisis-response models and engage with the longue durée of structural transformation. This entails foregrounding the entanglement of material infrastructure, ideological production, and political temporality in the constitution of regional space. Comparative analysis with other contested zones, such as the Indo-Pacific or Sahel, could also yield valuable insights into how regional orders evolve under pressure from competing global logics. In doing so, scholarship can shift from reactive commentary to strategic foresight, mapping not only what is, but what might become.

Ultimately, the question is no longer whether the regional order can be restored to a previous equilibrium, but how a new one might be envisioned under radically different conditions. This will require a political imagination grounded not in dominance or nostalgia, but in critical engagement with the plurality of actors, interests, and values that now inhabit the Middle East. For academics, diplomats, and decision-makers, this is not merely an analytical task but a normative responsibility.

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