Trump's Gulf tour reshapes MidEast diplomatic map

Nothing captured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s isolation more starkly this week than the image of US President Donald Trump shaking hands with Syria’s Islamist leader Ahmed al Sharaa - a man Israel has branded “an al Qaeda terrorist in a suit.”

- REUTERS

“He's got the potential. He's a real leader,” Trump told reporters after talks with Sharaa Wednesday in Riyadh - a meeting brokered by his Saudi hosts, with whom the US president agreed a slew of arms, business and technology deals.

Trump's whirlwind four-day tour of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates this week was more than just a diplomatic spectacle marked by lucrative investments.

It sealed the emergence of a new Sunni-led Middle East order one that eclipses Iran's shattered ‘axis of resistance’, and leaves Israel sidelined, according to three regional and two Western sources.

Amid growing irritation in Washington with Israel's failure to reach a ceasefire in Gaza, Trump's tour was a snub to Netanyahu, a close US ally who was the first foreign leader to visit Washington after the president returned to office in January, the sources said.