For as long as any of us can recall, the Middle East has been a bonfire of dispute and conflict. Solving such intractable disagreement has looked impossible - it’s why much of President Trump’s young, male MAGA base doesn’t support the assault on Iran: “Why bother?” they shrug, “It’s not our problem. It’s not America First.”
For decades, Western leaders have approached the region with a mixture of caution, moral posturing, and - too often – inertia, resulting in stalemate dressed up as diplomacy; process mistaken for progress.
But hesitation and equivocation have never solved problems in the Middle East, and they never will.
Enter Donald J Trump.
Love him or loathe him, President Trump doesn’t do polite paralysis. He does chaos, disruption, tackles the elephant in the room and tears up the diplomatic playbook. It might look like recklessness - it is anything but – and let’s be frank: nothing else has worked.
Iran has been allowed to ramp up its anti-Western rhetoric alongside nuclear and military capability and the funding of Islamist terrorism across the world. Trump looked at his to-do list and asked, ‘If not now, when?’
We’ve already seen a preview of potential success. The Abraham Accords weren’t supposed to happen - until they did. Long-standing assumptions about what was “impossible” in Middle Eastern diplomacy were quietly bulldozed.
Countries that hadn’t formally recognised each other in decades suddenly found common ground, driven less by ideology and more by shared strategic interests. Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ has been mocked by small-minded naysayers who lack ambition.
They miss the fact that modern Middle Eastern politics is shifting. A leading light on this region is journalist, Maajid Nawaz, a regular guest on The Late Show Live, who has consistently argued (with a rare depth of understanding) that the deeper battle in the Middle East is not just geopolitical but ideological - between forces of reform and forces of reaction.
The struggle isn’t just between countries - it’s also about competing visions within societies: those pushing for modern, peaceful cooperation versus those clinging to extremist or confrontational ideologies.
From that perspective, countries establishing formal diplomatic and economic ties isn’t merely diplomacy; it’s part of a broader shift away from entrenched extremism and toward pragmatic coexistence.
Because if you view the region through that lens, Trump’s blunt, interest-driven diplomacy starts to look less crude and more aligned with an ambitious reality.
Gulf states, Israel, and others aren’t just hedging against threats - they’re quietly converging around a shared desire for order, economic growth and resistance to destabilising ideologies. Chief among those threats? Iran. And nothing brings any enemies together like a shared, external adversary.
While previous administrations circled the issue, Trump has confronted it head-on from the moment he began quietening the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Whether you agree with his methods or not, that clarity reshaped the regional conversation.
A “grand bargain” in the Middle East won’t come from idealism. It will come from leverage, pressure, deals and a future in which money can be made by and for every country in that region. The art of such a deal is precisely where Trump thrives.
This is why I think Donald Trump will succeed in securing peace in the Middle East - Bev Turner | Getty Images
Critics say he’s too blunt, too transactional, too unpredictable. But in a region where ambiguity is often exploited and weakness quickly detected, those very traits can become assets.
As one pundit told me on Late Show Live, “The problem is that Iran has been treated like an equal and it is not.” An extreme, religious theocracy which murders its own citizens for dissent should not be given a fair seat at the table.
If anything, the unpredictability generated by Trump creates space for leaders to make bold moves under the cover of shifting expectations.
And as commentators like Nawaz have highlighted, there is a growing appetite - especially among younger populations - for something different: a life with less conflict, more opportunity and peace, like the ones Middle Eastern teenagers watch online.
Arabic governments are beginning, however cautiously, to respond to that shift.
Trump’s approach - less lecture, more deal-making; less theory, more outcome - fits that moment: peace can stop being a utopian ambition and start to become a strategic necessity.
If the Iranian regime is replaced by a more co-operative, less theocratic government, the benefits would be concrete for us all: oil prices could stabilise or fall significantly, thereby easing the cost of living globally. Crucially for the UK, international migration pressures could ease as fewer people flee conflict zones. It is no exaggeration to say that if Trump secures peace across the Middle East, the Dover Dinghies could simply stop arriving. Which 20-year-old Syrian / Iraqi / Afghan male would choose to leave family and live on the over-priced, rainy streets of London if jobs, freedom and opportunity arrived on their own sunny streets?
Critics lined up to mock Trump’s vision for a “Gaza Riviera”, presumably wishing towns of death and devastation for the residents instead?
But investment and tourism in the region should be allowed to surge; regional economies should finally enjoy long-term growth. Stability begets prosperity, and prosperity reinforces peace.
Will it be perfect? Of course not. The Middle East doesn’t do perfect.
But could it be history-in-the-making? Absolutely.
Breakthroughs in that region rarely come from careful consensus. They come from moments when someone is willing to tear up the script and write a new one - fast, decisively and without waiting for universal approval.
And whatever else you say about Donald Trump, tearing up the script is exactly what he does best.