President Jimmy Carter’s naivete toward Iranian Islamists enabled the 1979 Islamic Revolution and decades of enmity between Iran and the Islamic Republic that cost thousands of American lives. Carter surrounded himself with progressives in the human rights community—most famously, Princeton Professor Richard Falk, who attested to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s commitment to liberal values. The United Nations later rewarded Falk with a plum post.
While President Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the U.S. “Security for Oil” relationship with Saudi Arabia, it was both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush who turned a blind eye toward Saudi Arabia’s growing support for Islamist radicals and the Kingdom’s cultivation, if not protection, of men like Al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden. Such willingness to put lipstick on the Saudi pig did not age well.
It was both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush who turned a blind eye toward Saudi Arabia’s growing support for Islamist radicals.
President Donald Trump now repeats the mistake on multiple fronts. During his first term, Trump cultivated the Taliban, seeing them as trusted partners. To be fair, Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, now pictured sealing multimillion-dollar deals with the Taliban, fed him poor advice. President Joe Biden and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan may have bungled the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, but it was Trump whose team signed an agreement throwing U.S. allies and Afghan women to the Taliban wolves, knowing that in 1996, the Taliban also feigned negotiations for a coalition government, marching into Kabul instead to kill their opponents.
Saudi Arabia has become the focal point for a new Islamist axis. While Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has implemented domestic reforms, he repeats the mistakes of Syrian Presidents Hafez and Bashar al-Assad and successive Pakistani regimes that cracked down on jihadism at home, but appeased religious conservatives by supporting it abroad, forgetting they cannot contain the wildfire they spread; there is always blowback.
Indeed, this has already occurred. Beyond ego, the chief driver of Saudi-United Arab Emirati competition is Riyadh’s tolerance, if not promotion, of the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya, Sudan, and Yemen. Here, Abu Dhabi is right and Riyadh is wrong. The Saudi desire to promote its own Muslim Brotherhood proxies in Yemen motivated Saudi authorities to bomb and then disrupt the rule of Southern Transitional Council head Aidarus al‑Zubaydi and his Southern Forces. Had Bin Salman not promoted Yemen’s Houthi- and Al Qaeda-supporting Islah proxies, the Houthis likely would not have been able to seize Mokha, an opposition-held city astride the Bab el-Mandeb.
Bin Salman’s decisions have empowered the Houthis beyond their wildest dreams. Nor was Riyadh’s behavior an exception. Bin Salman may talk about Saudi Vision 2030 and the relative empowerment of women, but Saudi Arabia’s Delta International could not have signed a $200 million deal with the Taliban just days before the 9/11 anniversary absent his approval. Bin Salman’s Mecca Defense Pact was the definitive rejection of the 80-year U.S.-Saudi defense relationship. True, Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden gratuitously insulted Saudi Arabia, but Riyadh’s actions suggest its goal is rupture and not recalibration.
The same is true with Turkey. On November 22, 1994, then-mayor Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared, “Thank God, I am a servant of Shari’a,” on HBB television’s Ceviz Kabuğu program. When the Turkish Army entered Idlib, Turkey-backed militias chanted, “The Army of Muhammad has arrived.” Against such a backdrop, his more recent statements that “Hamas is not a terror organization,” and his rhetorical broadside to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhu—“How are you different from Hitler? Is there anything Netanyahu has done that is less than Hitler? No”—should not surprise. Yet, both Trump and Ambassador Tom Barrack, who embraces the apparent Khalilzad approach of blurring business and diplomacy, whitewash Erdoğan. The failure to defend red lines, Western civilization, or to crackdown on terror support from Libya and Gaza to Somalia and Pakistan, effectively greenlights the most ideologically aggressive member of the new “Axis of Ikhwan.”
In both Libya and Sudan, meanwhile, Trump Special Envoy Massad Boulos mediates, but appears to privilege the Muslim Brotherhood side over rival leaders.
The pattern holds true as Trump’s personal ties to Qatar’s emir lead Trump to turn a blind eye both as Qatar seeks to buy influence and capture U.S. institutions for ideological spread, and as the gas-rich state finances radical movements across the globe. Turkish arms and Qatari money drive the new Muslim Brotherhood.
In both Libya and Sudan, meanwhile, Trump Special Envoy Massad Boulos mediates, but appears to privilege the Muslim Brotherhood side over rival leaders. Boulos likely does not allow ideology to guide him; he wants a deal for its own sake and hopes to balance business and regional state diplomacy, but the result is the same: a lifeline, if not empowerment, to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Trump is not the first person to ignore ideology for the sake of personal or commercial ties. But as Americans mark the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, his ambivalence toward the new Axis of Ikhwan risks long-term consequences as disastrous as Carter’s willingness to indulge Khomeini.
