Some Thoughts on Trump Foreign Policy in the Middle East
Tom Barrack & Continuity
-Dylan Gunn, July 2, 2025
Back in May, during his grand tour of the Middle East, Donald Trump announced that he had procured a massive, $1 trillion in direct investment for the United States from the Gulf nations. This came during the first foreign trip of his presidency– a visit, in the words of the AP, that was “grounded in pragmatism and self-interest rather than values,” an apt assessment when speaking both personally and with regard to America’s broader foreign policy. (While it is easy to let these things slip away, we should all cherish the memory of the scandal surrounding the giant private jumbo jet that the Qatari government offered to bequeath Trump during this trip.) Beyond the flagrant self-interest exhibited by the U.S. President, the itinerary and tenor of the trip also exposed an American foreign policy that has long-since abandoned most of the ideological rationales for its actions abroad.
But back to the touted $1 trillion investment– the trip centered around economic ties and doing business with the magnates of the Gulf states, but also security and geopolitical positioning. Trump’s venal, almost goblin-like attraction to gold objects has a strange consonance with the broader foreign policy positioning that the U.S. has adopted not only in this administration but to varying degrees since the second Bush. Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates serve as the perfect allies for a “pragmatic” American approach, and likewise business interests from these countries find willing partners for their own goals– financial and political– in American businessmen and diplomats, most especially under a regime like Trump’s.
In the spirit of exploring this dynamic, I thought we would look a bit at a relatively unremarked figure of the Trump administration: Thomas J. Barrack, Ambassador to Turkey and U.S. Special Envoy to Syria.
Tom Barrack is a private equity manager and real estate magnate, with ties to prominent figures in the Gulf. He has very close, personal ties to Donald Trump. He describes it as rather intimate, springing from shared personal experiences like the birth of their children and their divorces– phases of their life through which they went together. He is reportedly one of the few people who feels little trepidation when saying ‘no’ to Trump, or disagreeing with him, seemingly because of their genuine personal friendship.
He has longstanding ties to the Republican party. After graduating from the University of Southern Carolina Law School, he was hired by Richard Nixon’s personal lawyer, Herbert Kalmbach. He was also once neighbors with Ronald Reagan, and allowed the Secret Service to board horses on his California ranch. Indeed, he worked in the Reagan administration under Interior Secretary James Watt, an appointment that was scrutinized by Congress when it became evident that he loaned $70,000 to the purchaser of Reagan counselor Edwin Meese’s home– a loan which he forgave.
The ambassador has a rather unique background among American businessmen– one which makes him particularly suitable for a role in Trump’s State Department. Barrack’s grandfather emigrated to the United States from Zahleh, Lebanon (which was in Syria at the time). He grew up speaking Arabic, which served him well even before his career in government. The skill led to one of his first major assignments out of college. Working on a gas deal in Saudi Arabia for Kalmbach’s law firm in 1972, he became close with members of the royal family through the great game of squash. Incidentally, it was this business connection that sparked his friendship with Paul Manafort, who also had business ties to the Saudis. Over years of working in the Gulf he has forged relationships with major figures in the business world and government of Qatar and the UAE, which he leveraged in service of Trump’s first campaign for the presidency. He was careful, of course, to serve as the primary link between the 2016 Trump campaign and Gulf state players, even doing his best to scuttle other connections made through rival financiers. Prior to Trump’s election in November of 2016, Barrack had arranged for Manafort to meet the Emirati Ambassador Otaiba.
Incidentally, Barrack has a slew of strange connections and commendations. In 2010, Barrack was awarded France’s Chevalier de la Legión d’honneur by French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who was later found guilty of bribing a judge. Good material indeed for a diplomat, though quite a number of people in his circle have a history of being indicted or investigated for various financial, diplomatic, or other crimes– not least of which is Donald Trump himself, of course. But more of that later.
Barrack was one of Trump’s major backers in his first presidential campaign, and an early one. He also arranged for him to work with Paul Manafort, who chaired Trump’s 2016 campaign and later became the subject of the Mueller investigation. Barrack, beside their longstanding business association, also loaned Paul Manafort $1.5 million to refinance a home in the Hamptons, and helped Kushner restructure his debt after he purchased a massive office building on Fifth Avenue at the height of the market pre-2008. I mention this by way of illustrating some of the financial ties that bind Barrack and Trump, as well as the personal ones. Of course, it may not even be important to distinguish between the two. According to Barrack and his partner Will Rogers, Barrack practically saved Trump financially in 1994, seeking out financial backers for the struggling real estate magnate among his Saudi connections. While Trump was eventually bailed out by investors in Hong Kong, Barrack’s intervention may have been crucial to persuading Chase Bank not to foreclose on Trump’s debts before he could line up financing. That is not all, though. As the New York Times put it, Mr. Barrack “got the better” of Trump in their first business encounters: Trump famously overpaid for several New York City properties– for instance, accepting the first bid of $410 million dollars for the Plaza Hotel without negotiating– in deals with the Bass family brokered by Tom Barrack.
Barrack claims to have been shocked by the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the Trump campaign. During the first Trump administration, he is said to have declined multiple official positions, preferring to operate as an informal advisor and a sort of ambassador to the entertainment, financial, and business communities. He floated the idea in the first administration to serve as a special envoy for Middle Eastern economic development, but the White House declined to create such a position. He continued to operate, unofficially, on behalf of the Trump administration. Barrack’s connections to Gulf business interests were put to good use in managing the diplomatic fallout from Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’. The Gulf states in particular needed to be convinced by Trump intermediaries such as Barrack that the whole thing was innocuous.
In 2021, Barrack was arrested on charges of lobbying for a foreign agent, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to the FBI. U.S. Department of Justice official Mark Lesko said at the time that "the defendants [Barrack, one of his aides, and Rashid Sultan al-Malik of the United Arab Emirates] repeatedly capitalized on Barrack’s friendships and access to a candidate [Trump] who was eventually elected president, high-ranking campaign and government officials, and the American media to advance the policy goals of a foreign government without disclosing their true allegiances.”
This indictment centered largely around Trump’s first term, during which prosecutors alleged Barrack insinuated to al-Malik that his appointment to a position in the Trump administration would be mutually beneficial to himself and to the United Arab Emirates. Prosecutors pointed to the $374 million that the UAE’s sovereign wealth fund had invested with Colony Capital, the investment firm of which Barrack was the founder and Executive Chairman. He also was alleged to have shared copies of a speech on energy that was to be delivered by Trump in order to ensure the language was satisfactory to the Gulf nation, and to have taken Emirati direction in the language of an op-ed that he authored in Fortune Magazine. According to the indictment, al-Malik wrote to Barrack’s aide: “Big boss loved it.”
This op-ed featured a grand sweep through the 20th century Middle East, ascribing most of the “chaos” in the region to the legacies of post-Ottoman Western colonialism. (Later on, after becoming Special Envoy to Syria, Barrack would also refer to the damage wrought on the region by the Sykes-Picot line). U.S. policy, he said, primarily focused on “oil interests, the protection of Israel and resistance to Soviet aggression.” But American strategy, argued Barrack, now needed to be dramatically rethought. An important step in the right direction was, unsurprisingly, embracing and supporting the “brilliant, young leaders… [who are] crafting forward-looking policies to effectively forge a new Middle East” in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and… the United Arab Emirates! These “bold visionaries”, Barrack argued, were the keys to unlocking a new, dynamic, stable Middle East.
Barrack envisioned an axis of the Gulf states, Israel, Palestine, and the United States against the opposing axis of Russia, ISIS, Iran, and “the aggressive aspiration of Turkey.” I only include this because it is two rather odd assortments, and surprising given that he is now the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey.
A fascinating section of the op-ed deals with the situation in Syria, which I will include here in full:
Like it or not, the military option most unpopular with America’s voters and politicians may be its best. Bashar Assad may well be our only hope in fighting the various terrorist factions that are attempting to form an ISIS state. If America agrees that putting boots on the ground would be impractical and ineffective, then a self-governed “Syria State” must be the entity that reaches settlements with the various factions that are causing the mass migration of thousands of Syrians to Europe, the USA and elsewhere. The only solution is one that works with Russia and not against them. Our vacuum forced that hand, because we are no longer the lonesome superpower shaping Middle East foreign policy.
Barrack’s conclusion is that the U.S. must unambiguously support, essentially, whoever is in charge in the Arab states, and formulate an economic package akin to the Marshall Plan that will raise the standard of living across the entire Arab world– as he so aptly puts it, in “the teeming, oil rich desert lands where it did wrong for decades.”
Barrack, of course, was found not guilty of the charges. His attorneys effectively argued that there was no explicit agreement between Barrack and his UAE correspondents, which is necessary for a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
In May of 2025, Barrack was appointed as U.S. Special Envoy to Syria, after Trump announced that U.S. sanctions would be lifted. Many speculate that Barrack, along with figures like Muhammad bin Salman, encouraged Trump to pursue a policy towards Syria that has been, it seems, supportive. “There is widespread consensus that due to his exceptionally close relations with Trump, Barrack has more clout than any of his predecessors,” wrote Amberin Zaman for Al-Monitor. “There is little doubt that Barrack played a key role in persuading Trump to ease sanctions on Syria.” The appointment of Barrack is also often interpreted as a sign that Trump is engaged on this subject, and wants to see progress on it. Coordinating with Barrack, it seems that the Gulf states will be allowed to take the lead in reshaping Syria in the aftermath of its civil war.
Simply by holding both positions– Ambassador to Turkey and Special Envoy to Syria– Barrack has cut a timeworn bureaucratic knot in U.S. Middle East foreign policy, namely that Syria and Turkey are handled under different wings of the State Department. This especially affects the diplomatic approach to the Kurds. Having two bureaus of the state department hewing to different positions on the status of entities like the SDF has led to slow, unsure dealings with the U.S.regional ally. Barrack has made trips to Erbil in Iraq to meet with the preeminent regional leaders of the Kurds in that country and in Syria, and has been an instrumental go-between in talks between the SDF and the interim Syrian government.
Barrack’s Middle East tour– meeting with foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Qatar, as well as Syria’s President Sharaa and Benjamin Netanyahu– has demonstrated a growing regional consensus under U.S. leadership to rebuild Syria under the new government. Saudi Arabia and Qatar, it was reported last month, paid off Syria’s external debts and are looking to play major roles in financing its reconstruction, which could cost as much as $250 billion.
This is partly emblematic of the Trumpist approach to American foreign policy as a whole. The Trump administration is far more willing than most to frankly acknowledge the legacy of American intervention across the globe, and indeed more honest about the power dynamics that they perceive to be at play in the global order. This has been responsible, in no small part, for the bombastic and straightforwardly combative trade policy of the second Trump administration. The policy prescriptions that Barrack’s understanding of Middle Eastern history begets are surprisingly amoral: support whoever is in charge (when it’s Assad, support Assad; when it’s Sharaa, support Sharaa), do not scrutinize their methods or policies, and make deals with them according to America’s security and financial interest. Read: the financial interests of American businessmen.
The appointment of someone like Barrack, and the policies that he is pursuing, demonstrates a more profound continuity than most within or without the administration would care to admit. Barrack is the perfect avatar of the dominant thrust of American foreign policy in the Middle East: conciliatory towards– almost solicitous of– the Gulf states and relentlessly hostile towards Iran. Turkey sits as an awkward third presence in the region, with some goals that work in tandem with this axis and some that run contrary. Like the Trump administration as a whole, his unsavory associations with corruption and crass self-interest are more visible than previous administrations, but otherwise he is certainly rowing in the same direction as his Democratic predecessors in the Biden administration. This is a trend that we will be exploring in future posts.