After New Orleans, will Donald Trump abandon the Middle East to its own devices?

Whatever the truth of the New Year atrocity in New Orleans, it will serve as a reminder of how foreign conflicts, and specifically Middle East conflicts, can play out at home, to fatal effect. And the effect, intended or not, will be as a destructive rebuke to the largely failed Middle East policy of the outgoing president Joe Biden, and a warning to the incoming administration of Donald Trump. The question, then, is how, if New Orleans is seen as a possible harbinger of revived Middle Eastern terrorism, Trump decides to respond – and what plans he may have for US policy in the region, at a time when it is in more flux than it has been since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. The next president has, therefore, to contend with US engagement on three fronts: its support for the war in Ukraine against Russia; his own personal preoccupation with China and the high level of US Congressional concern about Beijing’s intentions towards Taiwan; and now the constantly changing power relations in the Middle East, with a possible revival of jihadi terrorism, including on US soil. In the Middle East, a similar approach could entail early meetings with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and the Saudi Crown Prince.