Why American Middle East Policy Needs Human Rights to Succeed

While the president’s Middle East tour might not have been a snub to Israel, that doesn’t place it beyond criticism. One disturbing point was his speech in Riyadh on Tuesday, in which he seemed to argue that the U.S. should cease paying attention to human rights or to the forms of government of the various states in the region. Not only, writes Elliott Abrams, did the speech present a false picture of the past several decades of American Middle East policy, but it also failed to understand the realities of the region. Take, for instance, President Trump’s claim that the “great transformation” in the Persian Gulf and “gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi” owe nothing to American busybodies: