This week, Donald Trump called for Hamas to be “confronted and destroyed,” a goal that a range of analysts consider counterproductive if not impossible. But Israel was already poised to fight for control of Gaza City, suggesting the president is following, not leading. A new biography of Ronald Reagan indicates many similarities between the two leaders, especially their inabilities to develop workable Middle East policies. However, our review of Max Boot’s volume contends, if Trump hopes to achieve anything like Reagan’s deals with the Soviet Union, he will have to muster the courage to defy Benjamin Netanyahu.
Middle East Policy has just published its Summer 2025 journal, featuring 10 original articles investigating Iran’s existential struggle, Syria’s regime change and Hezbollah’s money trail, the Israeli government’s domestic and regional backlash, and the strategies of middle powers. Six pieces and one book review are free to read, even without a subscription.
Boot’s deeply researched and thoughtful analysis of Reagan, reviewed by journal editor A.R. Joyce (free to read for the next month), has made headlines for the author’s assertion that the 40th president should not be seen as having won the Cold War. This he mostly credits to the perceptive and heroic Mikhail Gorbachev. Instead, Reagan should be remembered more as a great facilitator. He capitalized on the dire economic conditions of the Soviet Union and the ascendancy to Kremlin leadership of a cadre of reformers like Gorbachev.
Boot’s extended analyses of events in the Middle East during Reagan’s tenure prove enlightening, sometimes baffling, poignant, and tragic. For instance, the president was “instinctively supportive of Israel,” but he drew something of a line when he saw images of devastation during its siege of Beirut in 1982. Fearing that this would remind Americans of the disastrous Vietnam War, Reagan demanded that Prime Minister Menachem Begin pull back. The Israeli leader was furious; Reagan held firm.
This episode could have led to a balancing of US policy toward Israel, but Reagan was caught between Cold War hawks who believed Syria was a Soviet client and those, like Vice President George H.W. Bush, who believed that Tel Aviv’s generous security aid should be cut off if it acted contrary to international norms.
Unfortunately, Reagan’s indecisiveness and ill-informed policy making led to deeper and more direct US military engagement in the region, as Washington first established the conditions that led to a slaughter of Palestinians in camps surrounded by Israeli troops, then moved Marines into Beirut after the assassination of Bashir Gemayel, newly elected as Lebanese president. Reagan’s defense secretary argued against serving as “the Beirut police department,” while the State Department and National Security Council backed the mission. A year later, in October 1983, simultaneous truck bombings killed US and French forces, including 241 Marines.
Reagan was soon sucked into the Iran-contra scandal as he struggled to find a solution to kidnappings of Westerners and enabled Israel to arm Tehran against Iraq. But he emerged without being impeached. And he blundered into ending the Iran-Iraq war with the American downing of a commercial airliner over the Persian Gulf in the summer of 1988. This could have inflamed tensions but instead convinced Iran’s supreme leader to end the conflict.
This kind of flailing and indecisiveness, ameliorated by lucky skill, has marked Trump’s approach to the Gaza war. Ahead of his second term, his envoy strongarmed the Israelis into a ceasefire; soon, however, the president was declaring a desire to create the Riviera of the Middle East and to cleanse the enclave of its Palestinian residents. He recently told reporters, directly contradicting Netanyahu, that Gazans are facing real starvation; he has since advocated the destruction of Hamas, which promises fighting into 2026 and beyond.
Boot makes his own explicit comparison between Trump and Reagan, finding “startling similarities” that will annoy many devotees of the 40th president:
Reagan, after all, was a populist who reviled the government he led—even if he did not call it the “deep state”—and denigrated expertise, even though he frequently consulted experts. He was proud of his dealmaking skills (learned as a union negotiator, not as a real estate mogul), and he promised to “make America great again.” He displayed an often-shocking ignorance of public policy even if he knew far more, and read far more, than Trump. He often repeated false statements, even if he uttered fewer falsehoods than Trump….And he catered to white bigotry to win office, even if he did so far more subtly than Trump.
As for Middle East policy, there are also many similarities. Reagan was theoretically supportive of a Palestinian state, but he wondered why it “has to be located in Israel.” He was also clearly flexible about relations with Gulf states, and this led to the corruption of Iran-contra—though Boot says he was not personally corrupt. On this last part, of course, Trump is far different from Reagan.
It is possible that Trump’s kind of flexibility, informed by his own self-interest, can lead away from militarism and toward just outcomes—despite himself. For the sake of the region, we can only hope that Trump has a knack similar to Reagan’s. He began his term keeping Israel guessing about his intentions, not backing its preferences with the kind of blindness that President Joe Biden did. Instead, he focused on hoovering up billions of dollars for national and personal gain, as his envoy sought a nuclear deal with Tehran. More recently, of course, he has bombed Iran without achieving the simple-minded goals he set out, and he appears to be enabling a forever war in Palestine.
Can the 47th president, like the 40th, defy the regional quicksand in a way Biden and George W. Bush could not? And will it help him win that Nobel Peace Prize he has been begging for?
Middle East Policy, Summer 2025
THE LONG ARC OF THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC
Iran’s Annus Horribilis in 2024: Beaten, but Not Defeated
Thomas Juneau—open access!
Conjuring an Enemy: US Discourse and Policy on Iran, 1979–88
Annie Tracy Samuel—free to read!
ISRAELI POLITICS, AT HOME AND ABROAD
Military Reservists and the Resistance to Netanyahu’s Legal Overhaul
Guy Ziv
The Impact of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Beliefs on Israel’s War against the Axis of Resistance
Emir Hadžikadunić, Marko Ćuže—free to read!
The Gaza War and the Future of the Abraham Accords
Mahmood Monshipouri, Manochehr Dorraj, John Fields
WAR AND REBUILDING IN THE LEVANT
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham: Voices of Syria’s New Leaders
Rasim Koç
Lessons from the Syria-Hezbollah Criminal Syndicate, 1985–2005
Iftah Burman, Yehuda Blanga—open access!
THE RESOLVE OF SMALL STATES
Middle Powers and Limited Balancing: Syria and the Post‐October 7 Wars
Chen Kertcher, Gadi Hitman—open access!
Antinomies of Alignment Redux: The United Arab Emirates and the United States
Fred H. Lawson, Matteo Legrenzi—open access!
The Making of a Ruler: Haitham bin Tariq on the Omani Throne
Joseph Albert Kéchichian
BOOK REVIEWS
Omar Ashour, How ISIS Fights: Military Tactics in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Egypt
Reviewed by Manoug Antaby
Birol Başkan, The Politics of Islam: The Muslim Brothers and the State in the Arab Gulf
Reviewed by Gökhan Çınkara
Mohammad Dawood Sofi, The Tunisian Revolution and Democratic Transition: The Role of al-Nahdah
Reviewed by Mohammad Irfan Shah
Hilmi Ozan Özavcı, Dangerous Gifts: Imperialism, Security, and Civil Wars in the Levant, 1798–1864
Reviewed by Hasim Tekines
Max Boot, Reagan: His Life and Legend
Reviewed by A.R. Joyce—free to read!