By
Albert Nachmani

“The majority of Lebanese sided with Donald Trump as they believed
that Obama’s Middle East strategy was not fruitful,” Elias Kattar, a
Lebanese political analyst for albaladonline.com, told The Media Line.
“People here felt that Hillary Clinton would have been a copy of Obama
and they would like to see a new strategy implemented in the Middle
East.”

On the other hand, there were those in Lebanon who are
worried about Trump’s statements regarding refugees and Muslims. He said
that on Facebook there is fierce criticism of Trump’s speeches and that
those Lebanese who are concerned about human rights issues would have
preferred to see Clinton as president. “Most Lebanese who live in
the US also voted Trump,” Kattar said. “I saw an American TV program
which interviewed Lebanese and they could not find even a single
Lebanese who wanted to vote for Clinton.”

Regarding US-Russian
relations, Kattar believes that US- Russian cooperation would be
positive, as the war in Syria has been going on for more than 5 years
and we have seen that no one country can resolve the situation there
alone.

But in the end Kattar doesn’t believe that there will be major changes
in policy as “small details may change but on the whole American policy
tends to remain constant regardless of who is president.” The
picture shifts again when it comes to Turkey. President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, who has had 37,000 people arrested and 110,000 people sacked in
a purge following an attempted coup in July, had a close relationship
with President Obama. Trump’s election calls this relationship into
question.

The Economist

EXCEEDING all expectations,” was how Donald Trump described his
luxury golf club in Dubai. If only his Middle East plans were as smooth
as his putting greens. Far from marking a break with President Obama’s
inclination to isolationism, Gulf rulers fear that President Trump could
increase the distance. Instead of greater intervention, protection and
the permanent troop presence in Iraq they hoped Mrs Clinton would
deliver, they now fear Mr Trump will shy from long-standing Arab allies
and abandon the region to others’ devices. “The honeymoon is over when
it comes to relations with the US,” says a palace insider in Riyadh. 

Maintaining a foothold, Mr Trump will probably let the Pentagon
finish the job against Islamic State in Mosul if it has not fallen by
January 20th. He might, he says, create safe zones in Syria, to prevent
refugees from heading west. But unlike Mrs Clinton (though like Mr
Obama) he opposes supplying more arms to Syria’s Sunni rebels or
enforcing a no-fly zone to protect them. And he scorns intervention for
ideological causes, such as regime-change, democracy and foreign
nation-building, preferring to concentrate on America’s national
self-interest instead. “I don’t think that was a very helpful thing,” he
said of America’s overthrow of Saddam Hussein while on the campaign
trail. “Iraq is a disaster right now.”

That is doubtless a relief for the region’s warring tyrants, like
Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and strongmen, such as Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi in
Egypt. In September Mr Trump promised Egypt’s president a “loyal
friendship”, and unlike Mrs Clinton, did not bother him with talk of
human rights. Both men not only endorse torture and the detention of
dissidents, but also share a penchant for spreading conspiracy theories.
Mr Sisi was one of the speediest world leaders to congratulate Mr
Trump.

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