U.S. President Donald Trump’s first diplomatic trip of his second term is to the Middle East, with stops in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE. Jean-Loup Samaan, a research fellow at the National University of Singapore, told TaiwanPlus News that Trump prioritized trade talks over addressing tensions in Gaza and Yemen during the visit.
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00:00Donald Trump has said the U.S. will lift sanctions on Syria just before he met the new Syrian
00:05President Ahmed al-Shara.
00:07What's your reaction to President Trump's meeting with Shara?
00:10I mean, first, I must say I was a bit surprised because there wasn't any specific signal in
00:17the past month that either Washington in general or this administration was interested in lifting
00:25the sanctions.
00:26But again, I think it tells us about how Trump likes to take everyone by surprise and doesn't
00:35feel he has to follow a specific pattern that is dictated by the foreign policy establishment.
00:44I think there was a lot of persuasion from the Gulf side, in particular Saudi Arabia and
00:50Qatar, that made it clear for months that if they want, if any reconstruction of Syria
00:57will require Gulf funding, Gulf investments.
01:01Trump is now pushing for Iran to end its nuclear program.
01:05He pulled out of President Obama's Iran nuclear deal in his first term.
01:09What's Trump aiming for here?
01:11Things have changed, I'd say, both in the Gulf and in Washington.
01:16The Gulf, we saw over the last years, even before Trump came back to the White House, restore
01:22ties with Iran.
01:24So there has been more diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia, the UAE on one side and
01:29Iran on the other side.
01:31Now we see that Trump, especially with his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, has been very active pushing
01:40for a new deal.
01:42What's the significance of Trump's visit to the Middle East?
01:45The White House, before the trip started, emphasized a lot of things about arms sales, about trade
01:52deals, and this was the key element of the visits in Riyadh, in Doha.
02:00But in addition to that, we saw that there was also a diplomatic element with the decision
02:07of the Trump administration to lift sanctions against the Syrian regime and for Trump to meet
02:13with the President, Ahmed Al-Shara.
02:17I would say that we also can see that some topics have not been covered, and that is also telling.
02:25There wasn't much said about Gaza.
02:28There wasn't much said about the Houthis and Yemen.
02:32So we can see here clearly the priorities of Trump, who wanted to emphasize the trade aspects
02:40of its conditions.
02:55There were almost identical places that were proposed to the United States.