U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s speech to the Lowy Institute in Australia featured many points he has made before. Prominent among these was a focus on allies and partners, a hallmark of the Biden Administration. Sullivan took pains to assure his audience that he is committed to America’s friends.
Sullivan artfully dodged answering a question on French ire over the announcement of AUKUS, the new alliance between the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, by saying he is looking to the future. France was deeply upset that its previous submarine contract with Australia was summarily abandoned over a new deal to build long-range nuclear submarines. It won’t be so easy for Washington to bring the relationship with Paris back to the good old days.
But it was the question of AUKUS that deserved the deepest probing from the event moderator. Sullivan primarily portrayed AUKUS as a technology-sharing initiative that demonstrated how the United States enables the scientific progress of its closest friends. Sure AUKUS is about technology, as it includes (other than sharing methods for fabricating highly sensitive nuclear-propelled submarines) collaboration in areas such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
More to the point however, AUKUS isn't some high-minded scientific endeavor like curing cancer. It is an explicitly military alliance about arming Australia with offensive, blue-water capability that goes way beyond national and coastal defense (which the French diesel-electric submarines were primarily designed to do). AUKUS-built submarines will be much more expensive than the diesel-electric ones they replaced. Though their deployment may be up to two decades away, the submarines will have chief utility as an additional sword arm for projecting power in the open oceans.
AUKUS may be less about ensuring allies can defend themselves and more about their conversion to frontline states, perhaps in a future coalition of the willing aimed at China. No wonder key Southeast Asian states, who do not want to be run over in a self-interested contest of the great powers, are deeply concerned. They may not belong to the select Anglosphere club, but are America’s friends no less.
If Sullivan had a rationale on AUKUS as a region-wide offensively-oriented pact, and the potential transformation of Australia’s role in U.S.-led plans on China, this was an opportunity to get at it. But in failing to probe the U.S. National Security Advisor further on the nature and intent of this pact, the event moderator missed his chance. The American and the Australian people, as also the people of Southeast Asia, need to know more about the geopolitical logic behind AUKUS, and the risks this entails to their lives and their interests. Mr. Sullivan has yet some explaining to do.
Sarang Shidore is Director of the Global South Program at the Quincy Institute, and member of the adjunct faculty at George Washington University. He has published in Foreign Affairs and The New York times, among others. Sarang was previously a senior research scholar at the University of Texas at Austin and senior global analyst at the geopolitical risk firm Stratfor Inc.
NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoană, Jake Sullivan, US National Security Advisor and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in October. (NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization/Flickr)
Top photo credit: A street monitor in Tokyo's Akihabara area shows on April 3, 2025, news that U.S. President Donald Trump announced reciprocal tariffs on all countries overnight, including one of 24 percent on Japanese imports. (Kyodo-Reuters Connect)
At 4 p.m. on Wednesday — “Liberation Day” — President Trump announced the details of his “reciprocal tariff” strategy. He began with a speech that described persistent trade deficits over the last few decades as a sign that other countries were taking advantage of America through tariffs, non-tariff barriers, and currency manipulation.
In an echo of the themes that powered his victory in 2016, he blamed these practices for the deindustrialization of the American heartland and the loss of manufacturing capacity in sectors critical for national security and technological advancement.
The president then unveiled a scheme of tariffs remarkable for its complexity and for its impact on the international trading architecture. The levies on each country were said to be based on a quantified estimate of the tariff equivalent of all its “objectionable practices” — tariffs, non-tariff barriers, value-added taxes (sales taxes levied by national governments on both domestic and foreign production), alleged currency manipulation etc.
However, there were suggestions, (confirmed here) that the tariffs were based on a simpler metric — the size of a country’s bilateral trade surplus with the U.S. as a percentage of exports, thus treating purportedly “missing imports” as a measure of all barriers to trade. Among other things the implication from the methodology is that in an ideal world, a country should have absolutely balanced trade not just across all its trading partners, but even with each single trading partner, perhaps an unrealistic expectation.
Finally, there is also a floor of a 10% tariff on all countries covering those that run bilateral trade deficits with the U.S. The range of tariffs runs from the minimum of 10% for many countries (that are not enumerated in the linked annex) to 49% in the case of Cambodia, 48% for Myanmar, 46% for Vietnam, 45% for Laos, 44% for Sri Lanka, and 37% for Bangladesh. Among larger trading partners, the tariffs are set at 34% for China, 24% for Japan, and 20% for the EU. This set of tariffs is also additive to those already levied, particularly significant in the case of China, whose exports will now face a minimum tariff of at least 54%.
For the global trading system, the introduction of bilateral tariffs across all products at the country level undoes a principle that has governed trade for decades. This is the idea of Most Favored Nation (MFN) status, i.e., that subject to certain limited exceptions (such as within a free trade area), a country should levy the same tariff on the same product across all its trading partners. The effect is to dynamite a cornerstone of global trade law, a system that grants formal juridical equality to countries rather than reflecting sheer size and market power.
The reciprocal tariff measures increase the distance between the U.S. and the World Trade Organization (WTO), and they come a little more than a week after America suspended its payment of dues to the entity. As the U.S. increasingly withdraws from the system, it remains to be seen whether other countries can revitalize the WTO as a dispute-resolution mechanism, perhaps by using its opt-in binding arbitration system, the MPIA, of which Brazil, Canada, China, the EU, Japan, and Mexico (among others) are members. The tariffs will likely weaken U.S. diplomatic efforts to present “Chinese overproduction” as the biggest threat to the system.
Within the U.S., the tariffs are likely to push up inflation significantly, particularly in the near term, both from price increases and from shortages resulting from the scrambling of supply chains. And even though the tariffs have been announced, it remains unclear whether they will remain where they are or function as a bargaining chip, exacerbating consumer and business uncertainty, thus feeding into subdued investment prospects.
The moves are also likely to have significant, yet differentiated, impact across the countries of the Global South. As noted above, some of the highest tariff rates are among lower income developing countries in South and Southeast Asia like Cambodia or Sri Lanka. However, tariffs on African countries like the DRC at 11%, Cameroon at 12% or Chad at 13% are significantly lower.
The high tariffs in Southeast Asia capture how countries in that region have serially pursued a successful development strategy based on inbound investment that has integrated them in global manufacturing supply chains. This is a development pathway that has had the benefits of simultaneously raising incomes and the technological complexity of the export mix in countries like Malaysia.
It has also conferred balance of payments resilience, a theme explored here, and one of critical importance in the region that suffered a deep financial crisis in 1997-98.
Conversely, many African countries get the benefit of lower tariffs but that is in many instances a reflection of their dependence on commodity exports, a factor that also accounts for the limited number of South American countries hit with high tariffs. In effect the U.S. tariffs could cut off a successful development path unless other more industrialized economies are willing to absorb imports and leave “room” for poorer exporters in more rudimentary industries.
If not, poorer countries with less technologically developed production structures could find themselves stuck in a low-income trap subject to periodic financial crises, an outcome with both humanitarian and security implications. The tariffs are also not a good omen for the African Growth and Opportunity Act, a U.S. measure that provides duty free access for an expanded range of products to poor African countries that is up for renewal later this year.
There may be a handful of (relative) winners here, like Brazil — which has been hit with only the minimum 10% tariffs and whose giant agricultural sector might benefit if countries retaliate against American farm exports.
The tariffs have also hit America’s wealthier trading partners, who face several quandaries. One is whether to retaliate and how, particularly since the White House has threatened that retaliation will lead to higher tariffs. Another is whether (and how) to treat the interconnection of security and economic linkages. This might be easier for Europe, since the U.S. has signaled repeatedly that it wishes to see the continent do more for its own security, even as the EU is being hit with slightly lower tariffs (20%) than key U.S. allies in East Asia (24-32%).
Europe’s largest economy, Germany, is increasing defense expenditures, which could act (in aggregate) as a macroeconomic offset to the impact of tariffs, thus making the security and economic response mutually consistent. Political and diplomatic calculations in East Asia could be more complex given that they are more dependent on exports to the U.S. and have high levels of interconnectedness with China, even as the U.S. pivots towards regarding the region ever more as its primary strategic theater.
Canada and Mexico have not been hit by reciprocal tariffs, however, with the latter being particularly interesting, as it has replaced China as the largest trading partner in recent years. The U.S. ran a bilateral deficit of $172 billion with Mexico last year. Trump excoriated the NAFTA agreement yesterday and he has not exempted either country from his tariff wrath. Since his inauguration, he has targeted both Canada and Mexico on the issues of migration and narcotics, and has subjected them to steel and aluminum and automobile tariffs.
Yet, their exemption from this round suggests at least some recognition of the extent to which automotive supply chains are integrated in North America, even if he seems inclined towards disintegrating them over the medium-term.
In his actions on automotive tariffs announced on March 26, Trump exempted auto parts for now, but also imposed tariffs on all non-U.S. content embedded in imports within USMCA. This is formally at odds with the agreement, where such content should be exempt if 40-45% of the automobile is made by workers making 16 dollars an hour.
The goal appears to be to force a return of large portions (if not all) of automotive supply chains back to the U.S. It remains to be seen how these aims will be viewed in Canada and Mexico given that the USMCA faces a review to be completed by July 1, 2026.
Even so, the slightly different treatment of USMCA partners may suggest a desire to finesse the choice between aiming for reshoring entirely within the U.S. or permitting some “nearshoring” where American manufacturers have been deeply engaged for long. On this, as on many other issues, uncertainty seems to be the dominant outcome of yesterday’s announcement.
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Top image credit: Sudan's army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan gestures to soldiers inside the presidential palace after the Sudanese army said it had taken control of the building, in the capital Khartoum, Sudan March 26, 2025. Sudan Transitional Sovereignty Council/Handout via REUTERS
In the final days of Ramadan, before Mecca's Grand Mosque, Sudan's de facto president and army chief, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan knelt in prayer beside Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. Al-Burhan had arrived in the kingdom just two days after his troops dealt a significant blow to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), recapturing the capital Khartoum after two years of civil war. Missing from the frame was the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Gulf power that has backed al-Burhan’s rivals in Sudan’s civil war with arms, mercenaries, and political cover.
The scene captured the essence of a deepening rift between Saudi Arabia and the UAE — once allies in reshaping the Arab world, now architects of competing visions for Sudan and the region.
For two years, Sudan has been enveloped in chaos. The conflict that erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed forces (SAF) and the RSF, led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo "Hemedti," has inflicted immense suffering: an estimated 150,000 killed, allegations of mass atrocities staining both sides but particularly the RSF in Darfur, 12 million displaced, and over half the population facing acute food insecurity.
Khartoum, once a symbol of confluence, bears deep scars — widespread destruction, looted homes, and streets haunted by the unburied dead. It was against this backdrop of devastation and military gains that al-Burhan made his trip across the Red Sea.
Early in the conflict, Saudi Arabia played a prominent role by facilitating the evacuation of thousands of foreigners via Port Sudan, an effort that garnered significant goodwill. Building on this, and alongside the United States, the kingdom stepped into the role of mediator hosting the Jeddah ceasefire talks in May 2023.
This mediation aligned with Riyadh’s broader strategic pivot toward de-escalation, evident in its rapprochement with Iran and its transformation from aggressor to peacemaker in Yemen. Instability across the Red Sea poses a direct threat to the kingdom’s ambitious Vision 2030 economic overhaul — particularly its crown-jewel projects like NEOM and the Red Sea tourism megaprojects along its western coastline, as well as the Yanbu Terminal expansion, which aims to diversify oil export routes away from the Strait of Hormuz. Such turmoil also risks undermining Saudi Arabia’s critical food security investments in Sudan, where vast agricultural ventures had become a linchpin of bilateral ties.
However, the Jeddah process withered and the commitments signed on paper dissolved under the reality of continued fighting. A subsequent U.S.-led effort in Geneva, pivoting to humanitarian access after the Jeddah talks collapsed, faltered when the SAF boycotted the talks entirely. By 2025, the return of President Donald Trump’s “America First” doctrine gutted what remained of American diplomatic capital. USAID’s funding slashes — which shuttered 77% of Sudan’s emergency food kitchens — not only deepened famine but stripped Washington of a key lever it could use to compel concessions. With the U.S. retreating inward, the vacuum proved irresistible to Saudi Arabia.
The tipping point arrived in February 2025. As the RSF and its allies formalized their charter for a parallel administration in Nairobi, Saudi Arabia, alongside Qatar and Kuwait, issued a firm public rejection. The Saudi Foreign Ministry unequivocally stated its opposition to "any illegitimate steps taken outside Sudan’s official institutions that threaten its unity.”
Al-Burhan’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia and its timing solidified this alignment. The agreement announced by both nations during the visit to establish a “coordination council to strengthen relations” signaled long-term engagement, moving beyond the neutral arbiter role. Crucially, this meeting directly followed a high-level Saudi delegation's visit to Port Sudan days earlier, focused squarely on reconstruction.
While Riyadh actively cultivates the role of regional stabilizer, Abu Dhabi faces mounting scrutiny regarding its alleged role in fueling the RSF’s war effort.
In March 2025, Sudan filed a case at the International Court of Justice, accusing the UAE of violating the Genocide Convention through its alleged military, financial, and political support for the RSF, thereby facilitating atrocities, particularly the ethnic cleansing of the Masalit in West Darfur. While the UAE’s foreign minister dismissed the case as "feeble media maneuvers," the charges echo findings from a U.N. Panel of Experts report, which deemed evidence of UAE arms supplies (including drones and air defenses) to the RSF as "credible."
This alleged support has triggered significant political fallout in Washington. U.S. lawmakers Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) publicly confirmed in January, citing administration briefings, that the UAE was indeed arming the RSF, directly contradicting prior assurances it gave the Biden administration. Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, also placed holds on arms sales to the UAE over its role in Sudan.
The UAE's actions in Sudan appear consistent with a wider regional modus operandi. Abu Dhabi’s playbook involves empowering non-state actors, often with secessionist leanings, to secure access to resources and strategic geography. We see this pattern in Libya with its backing of Khalifa Haftar, and in Yemen through its enduring support for the Southern Transitional Council (STC), whose push for independence directly counters Saudi efforts to maintain Yemeni unity under the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC).
Somalia offers another vivid example, where the UAE circumvented Mogadishu to directly arm and fund regional entities like Puntland (reportedly using its Bosaso base for RSF resupply), Somaliland, and Jubaland, thereby fragmenting the country while securing coastal footholds. The announcement of the RSF's parallel government in Nairobi last month seemed a direct application of these tactics. The UAE finalized a $1.5 billion loan to Kenya the same week, prompting speculation that its influence played a role in Nairobi hosting the event.
The widening gulf over Sudan, therefore, is not an isolated disagreement but symptomatic of a deeper strategic divergence between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. Where they once coordinated closely, particularly in countering the perceived threat of the Muslim Brotherhood and attempting to reshape the GCC during the Qatar blockade, their paths now diverge sharply.
Economically, they compete fiercely, with Saudi Arabia challenging Dubai's business hub status through policies requiring regional HQs in Riyadh and launching rival mega-projects. Within OPEC+, tensions have simmered between the two over production quotas, reflecting differing priorities and misaligned projections on the proximity of the decarbonized future. Even maritime borders near the Yasat Islands has become a point of contention, with Riyadh lodging complaints at the U.N. against Abu Dhabi's unilateral demarcation of the potentially oil-rich area.
This rivalry now spills into the public domain via social media. Recent online clashes saw well-known and widely followed Saudi commentators brand Emirati counterparts as "outcasts," describing them as being "hated by Arabs and Muslims." In tightly controlled media environments, such sharp exchanges often reflect official displeasure.
Ultimately, Sudan is paying the price for this fractured Gulf relationship. Saudi Arabia, driven by its Vision 2030 imperatives and a desire to reassert regional leadership through stability and state institutions, has placed its bet on the SAF. The UAE, focused on resource access and countering perceived ideological threats, continues its alleged support for the RSF despite the mounting condemnation.
As long as the rivalry persists, Sudan will remain tragically caught in the crossfire, its future held hostage by a geopolitical struggle reshaping the contours of power across the region.
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Top image credit: Steve Witkoff, the special envoy to the Middle East, makes an appearance moments before President Donald J. Trump holds a joint news conference at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on February 4, 2025. This is Trump’s first joint news conference with a foreign leader in his second term. (Photo by Joshua Sukoff/MNS/Sipa USA) VIA REUTERS
While Donald Trump has repeatedly bragged that he can end international conflicts in days, he is clearly frustrated that global leaders are not bending to his will. Only last week, he said that he is “angry” that Moscow has not offered a Ukraine deal and that he might impose secondary “tariffs” on Russian oil sales. He also warned that if Iran doesn’t “make a deal, there will be bombing.”
This lashing out is not part of some grand “madman” strategy. Rather, it is a product of Trump’s apparent need to project power. The trick is to know how to reward that projection: Putin’s commissioning of a portrait of Trump — which his personal Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, claims the Russian leader asked him to deliver to the president — paints a vivid example of the nature and perhaps limits of such strategic flattery.
Iran’s Supreme Leader would never stoop to such antics. Still, it is possible that Ayatollah Khamenei understands that his negotiators might use Trump’s abiding need to display his global acumen to get American concessions on a nuclear deal. Because Trump’s volatility can open doors or blow them up just as quickly, international leaders — and his own advisers — are constantly struggling to manage (or exploit) an approach to the world that lacks any coherent strategy or even tactics.
Thus, it is hardly surprising that while Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian insisted after Trump’s latest threat that “th[e] path for indirect negotiations remains open,” an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leader warned that American troops deployed “at least ten bases -around Iran” are “sitting inside a glass room.” Grappling with his impulse-driven foreign policy, Trump’s rivals find it difficult to get any sense of his bottom line.
Hope and confusion in Tehran
U.S.-Iran relations are a case in point. It is worth recalling that in November Elon Musk met with Iran’s U.N. ambassador, Saied Iravani. Commenting on the surprise encounter, a conservative Iranian website declared that, “It appears that Trump has genuinely decided to adopt a different approach…perhaps, as (Foreign Minister) Abbas Araghchi put it, moving from 'maximum pressure' to 'maximum rationality.’” This observation echoed Araghchi’s previous statement that “maximum rationality” would “probably get a different result” and seemed calculated to test Trump.
Trump’s decision in mid-January to remove security details for former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook — both men key architects of Trump’s first-term “maximum pressure” policy against Iran — encouraged Tehran’s cautious optimism. When Hook was summarily dismissed from a top position on Trump’s transition team after complaining about the Biden administration’s “appeasement” of Iran, the hardline Tehran Times quoted Trump’s announcement on Truth Social (“Brian Hook from the Wilson Center for Scholars... YOU'RE FIRED!") while the Islamic Republic News Agency speculated that Trump’s actions “could be sending signals to Iran that he may be willing to engage with Tehran diplomatically,” even if it is “unclear whether the moves signal a shift in tactics, strategy, or attitude.”
Trump’s mysterious letter to Khamenei
The drama revolving around the letter that Trump sent Khamenei on March 5 shows that striking this balance won’t be easy. While not revealing the letter’s contents, Trump alluded to it during his March 6 Oval Office remarks.
“I’d rather negotiate a peace deal…but we can make a deal…just as good as if you won militarily,” he said. Two days later on Fox News, he acknowledged that “I’ve written them a letter saying I hope you’re going to negotiate because if we have to go in militarily, it’s going to be a terrible thing.” His assertion that the U.S. seeks a deal that would be “just as good as if you won militarily” suggests that Trump is telling Khamenei that, by dint of either talks or brute force, the administration will compel Iran to totally dismantle its vast enrichment facilities.
This is a demand that no Iranian leader, including Khamenei, can possibly accept. As he and Araghchi made clear, they will not accept U.S. ultimatums. As Khamenei put it, the “negotiations” that “some bully governments” seek “are not aimed at solving issues, but to…impose their own expectations.” If his depiction of the letter’s take-it-or-leave-it tone is accurate, the U.S., Israel and Iran may well be on a path to military confrontation.
A Trump-Netanyahu partnership without limits?
While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would welcome a U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran, it is striking that only six weeks ago the Israeli press was full of reports speculating that, as one Haaretz writer put it, Netanyahu might “go head to head with Trump on striking Iran.” But everything changed with Trump’s February 4 remark that two million displaced Palestinians must leave Gaza. While world leaders strained to make sense of this statement, Netanyahu praised Trump’s “revolutionary, creative approach,” arguing that it created “many possibilities,” one of which, it now appears, was Israel’s renewed assault in Gaza. It is also very likely that Netanyahu construed Trump’s words as telegraphing U.S. support for an eventual attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
But such an attack will not be easy given the domestic upheaval that Israel’s renewed assault on Gaza has sparked. Wading into the political waters, President Isaac Herzog declared that “thousands of citizens…are…crying out to prevent the widening of rifts and divisions….It is unthinkable to ignore these voices and not seek consensus.”
Coming amid the controversy over Netanyahu’s March 20 firing of the head of Israel’s Shin Bet security service, Herzog’s statement points to a constitutional crisis that could send Israel into a kind of civil war. Undeterred, Netanyahu’s Likud Party asserted that “Herzog has joined the ‘deep state.’” Clearly, Netanyahu and his allies believe that he has much to gain by emulating Trump’s paranoia and thus intimating that he and the U.S. president are on the same page politically and strategically.
Netanyahu cannot trust his mercurial twin
Still, Netanyahu must tread carefully because the divisions tearing Israel apart will grow as it expands the war in Gaza and ramps up military actions in Lebanon and Syria. If these actions lead to the killing of the Israeli hostages and/or spark a military confrontation on three fronts, the specter of regional mayhem reflect poorly on Trump. The last thing he can tolerate is looking like a “loser.”
In fact, Witkoff seemed to use his March 21 interview with Tucker Carlson to help his boss out. The resumption of war in Gaza, he argued, runs counter to Israeli public opinion. Moreover, he stated that Hamas is not ideological, that it must have a political role in a post-Gaza deal, and that real compromises with Hamas and Iran are vital to the stability that, according to Witkoff, is Trump’s number one goal when it comes to global affairs. And he seemed to walk back Trump’s own words when he argued that his letter to Khamenei was not an ultimatum, that he wants a nuclear deal that includes “verification,” and that the military option is not “a very good alternative.”
Spinners beware!
Witkoff’s interview provoked a storm in the Israeli press, and rightly so: a trusted envoy, he is struggling to transform Trump’s utterings into something resembling a coherent policy. Yet if the Middle East blows up, or seems to be moving that way, Trump might launch another verbal blast that will have leaders, policy analysts and pundits in Tehran, Jerusalem and Washington scurrying to fathom what it means. But if Witkoff and can temper his boss’s outbursts without embarrassing or antagonizing him, he could help Trump pull back from the brink. Such an effort will partly hinge on whether Trump can muster the emotional energy to articulate and sustain support for a real compromise. Perhaps pushing back against such a possibility, national security adviser Mike Waltz recently declared that nothing less than “full dismantlement” of Iran’s nuclear program is acceptable, thus perhaps putting him at odds with Witkoff.
The battle to spin Trump’s verbal bouts continues not only in Washington, but also in Tehran. Days before Trump threatened to bomb Iran, government sources in Tehran claimed that the president’s letter “is not exactly clear, (but) is not an ultimatum.” Indeed, Araghchi’s assertion that “indirect negotiations can continue,” was a message reiterated by another close adviser to Khamenei.
While, as noted above, Iran’s president has also repeated this message despite Trump’s recent threats, in the wake of the Signal Group Chat fiasco, senior administration officials are unlikely to risk their necks competing to influence Trump’s stance on Russia, Iran or indeed any other country. Like their counterparts in Tehran, Jerusalem, Moscow and other capitals, his security advisers must tread carefully in their attempts to manage Trump’s fiery temperament and careening impulses.
A longer version of this article originally appeared at Arab Center Washington DC.
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