Released earlier this month, the 2025 US National Security Strategy (NSS) signals a clear departure from the explicit focus on major power competition that defined both the first Trump and Biden administrations.
Instead, it adopts a more conciliatory posture toward China and Russia, implicitly accepting spheres of influence over sustained strategic rivalry.
While the document preserves continuity on core issues such as Taiwan and NATO, its broader worldview reflects a retreat from the expansive global engagement that has long underpinned US foreign policy, privileging the Western Hemisphere, border security, trade, and domestic economic capacity.
In many respects, the strategy formalises policies already pursued during Trump’s second term, functioning less as a forward-looking roadmap than as a codification of enduring instincts – most notably scepticism toward foreign aid and heightened pressure on allies to assume greater defence responsibilities.
At the same time, the 2025 NSS advances a narrower conception of national interest, privileging immediate threats to US security and prosperity while sidelining values-based commitments, alliances, and global public goods, including democracy promotion, climate cooperation, and non-proliferation.
With regard to the NSS’s implications for the Middle East, analysts have drawn attention to the fact that Israel is mentioned only six times in the document.
Some interpret this as evidence of a broader recalibration of Washington’s priorities, as the United States seeks to extricate itself from the “forever wars” long associated with the region and, in the process, consign the Middle East to a less central place in its day-to-day foreign policy calculus.
If the NSS proves to be a reliable guide to US engagement in the years ahead, Israel will remain an important partner for Washington. However, as the United States continues to reduce its regional footprint, Israel may be compelled to assume a greater share of responsibility for addressing perceived threats, exercising increased strategic autonomy from the United States.
Inconsistencies and contradictions
At first glance, the 2025 NSS appears to chart what may seem like a steady course for the US in the Middle East. A closer look, however, reveals a number of inconsistencies.
“There is an inherent contradiction in claiming, as the NSS does, the priority ‘to prevent any adversarial power from dominating the Middle East’ and to announce military disengagement from the region to focus more on business and trade opportunities there,” Marco Carnelos, the former Italian ambassador to Iraq, told The New Arab. He suggested that the NSS may be overly optimistic given ongoing crises in the Middle East.
Although the document emphasises a continued strategic pivot away from the Middle East – reflecting continuity in US foreign policy dating back to the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” – the NSS nevertheless contains language that, “in practice risks maintaining – or even increasing – America’s overextension,” Dr Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, explained in a TNA interview.
By identifying “conflict” as the most “most troubled dynamic” in the Middle East and labelling Iran the “region’s chief destabilising force,” the Quincy Institute’s executive director criticised the NSS for framing Tehran as the main source of instability, arguing this oversimplifies regional dynamics and may encourage US military involvement.
By perpetuating decades-old language casting Iran as the “central threat,” Dr Parsi added that the “strategy justifies forward deployments, extended deterrence commitments, and a readiness to use force that directly contradicts the stated goal of drawdown”.
The 2025 NSS also states that Iran has been “greatly weakened by Israeli actions since 7 October 2023, and President Trump’s June 2025 Operation Midnight Hammer, which significantly degraded Iran’s nuclear program”.
Addressing this claim, Patrick Theros, the former US ambassador to Qatar, told TNA that the document implies an inconsistency between the “largely accurate” assessment of Iran’s weakening and the Islamic Republic’s continued portrayal as a significant threat to the Gulf Arab monarchies.
“The NSS does not hang together very well,” commented Theros, who said the document is “disjointed” and falls short of being “coordinated and well curated”. When referencing the “vitriol regarding Europe”, the former American diplomat explained his suspicion that the NSS has more to do with US domestic politics and the “ideology of the MAGA right” than anything else.
The depiction of Iran as severely weakened struck some experts as naïve, evoking comparisons to then-National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s Foreign Affairs article, published on 2 October 2023, in which he asserted that “although the Middle East remains beset with perennial challenges, the region is quieter than it has been for decades”.
Referring to the 2025 NSS’s language on Iran, Dr Neil Quilliam, an associate fellow in the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House, told TNA that he found it “naïve” and “broad brush,” arguing that it reflects a “profound misunderstanding of Iran”. The 2025 NSS underestimates the depth of Iran-related challenges, giving a misleading impression of stability, as Dr Quilliam sees it.
Gordon Gray, the former US ambassador to Tunisia, observed that the 2025 NSS’s suggestion that the Middle East is calmer than the headlines imply “bears an eerie resemblance” to Sullivan’s article, which was published just five days before the Hamas-led incursion into southern Israel in October 2023.
“The authors of the NSS may want to delay their victory lap until the end of the Trump administration. As Proverbs 16:18 warns, pride goeth before a fall,” Gray explained to TNA.
The Gulf states and transactional diplomacy
The 2025 NSS underscores the importance of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states to the Trump administration’s foreign policy agenda.
Emphasising the value of Gulf support for US artificial intelligence initiatives, the document highlights Trump’s May 2025 tour of the region, which included visits to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, and credits the president with the “successful revitalisation” of Washington’s alliances in the Gulf.
Furthermore, the 2025 NSS specifically lauds the GCC states for their role in “combating radicalism” and urges Washington to support the continuation of this trend, which, as the document asserts, will “require dropping America’s misguided experiment with hectoring these nations – especially the Gulf monarchies – into abandoning their traditions and historic forms of government”.
The 2025 NSS emphasises that reform in the Middle East is most sustainable and effective when it emerges organically from within societies, rather than being imposed from outside.
The document further stresses that successful engagement with the region depends on acknowledging and respecting its political systems and leadership structures, while simultaneously identifying and pursuing areas of mutual interest and cooperation.
At the same time, the 2025 NSS affirms that the United States will continue to safeguard enduring strategic priorities, including ensuring that the Gulf’s energy resources remain out of hostile hands, maintaining the free flow of commerce through critical waterways such as the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea, and preventing the region from serving as a safe haven or launching ground for terrorist activity threatening American interests or the homeland.
By balancing respect for local sovereignty with a clear defence of core US interests, the strategy aims to cultivate stable, productive relationships across the Middle East while minimising the risks of unnecessary confrontation or interference.
“Washington is signalling that the only relationship it is really interested in pursuing in the region is the one with Gulf Arab monarchies – business, investments, and reconstruction opportunities with their monies,” said Carnelos in a TNA interview.
“The US is also signalling that it will now accept regional leaders and governments ‘as they are’ moving towards more transactional and pragmatic partnerships based on mutual economic interests, not values,” added the former Italian diplomat.
Nonetheless, across both his first and second terms, Trump has demonstrated a consistent focus on business deals and investments, adopting a transactional approach to Washington’s relationships with the Gulf states.
In this context, the NSS’s emphasis on refraining from attempts to alter the political systems of Middle Eastern states – i.e., imposing democracy – resonates with regional leaders, who often view Western efforts to promote human rights as intrusive meddling that infringes on their national sovereignty.
“Gulf Arab leaders undoubtedly appreciated the NSS’s rejection of the promotion of US values, but the NSS did not tell them anything that they did not already know. The Trump administration had already rejected policies and programs designed to advance human rights,” noted Gray.
“The latest NSS memorialises the transactional relationships with the Gulf Arab states. We’re already fully engaged [in] trying to get money out of the region,” explained Theros, who said that GCC members likely appreciate the 2025 NSS’s focus on security over “shared values”.
Caution, commerce, and the limits of US engagement
In sum, the 2025 NSS emphasises transactional partnerships and a recalibration of US priorities toward the Western Hemisphere and domestic interests, with the Middle East relegated to a lower priority in Washington’s foreign policy.
The document signals an acceptance of regional states, chiefly GCC members, and their leaders as they are, privileging economic cooperation, investment opportunities, and stability over ideological objectives.
This approach aligns with longstanding patterns in Trump-era foreign policy, reflecting both continuity and the formalisation of policies already pursued during the administration, particularly in relation to the Gulf.
At the same time, the NSS underscores some of Washington’s enduring strategic imperatives, including the protection of Gulf energy supplies, the security of key maritime routes such as the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea, and the prevention of the region from serving as a haven for terrorist activity targeting the United States.
Israel remains an important partner, though a reduced US footprint would imply a growing responsibility for regional actors to manage threats independently.
While the strategy frames Iran as a destabilising force, this overly simplistic depiction risks obscuring the complex drivers of conflict and could potentially “justify” military commitments that contradict the broader goal of reducing US overextension.
Overall, the 2025 NSS presents a Middle East strategy grounded in caution, transactional diplomacy, and a narrower definition of the US national interest.
By privileging practical cooperation and respect for sovereignty while maintaining core security priorities, the Trump administration seeks to engage the region without overcommitting militarily or ideologically.
Yet the document’s inconsistencies and selective framing underscore the enduring challenge of reconciling domestic political imperatives with the complex and constantly evolving regional dynamics.
Ultimately, if the 2025 NSS does guide future policy, a decreased American presence in the Middle East could open space for regional actors to take greater responsibility for security and diplomacy.
Although some analysts warn of instability under such a scenario, there are signs that reduced reliance on the US security umbrella can encourage pragmatic engagement among regional powers.
As Dr Parsi observed, “I think it is a misnomer to believe that American withdrawal will lead to the region plunging into chaos. On the contrary, since 2017, we have seen a clear pattern that the weakening of the US security umbrella has fuelled regional diplomacy rather than chaos”.
In this sense, the strategy’s emphasis on restraint, transactional partnerships, and respect for sovereignty could foster greater stability and cooperation across the Middle East, even as Washington recalibrates its role.
https://www.newarab.com/analysis/how-trumps-national-security-strategy-impacts-middle-east