Trump's midterm defeat gives the Gulf a chance to escape America's forever wars

Regional leaders must use their influence in Congress to prevent another attack

on Iran and negotiate a non-aggression pact with Tehran on their own terms

The US midterm elections were fought over the cost of living, the pundits will say. Look closer and a foreign policy verdict comes into view. Voters passed judgment on Washington's role in the Middle East: on its unconditional backing of Israel, and on Donald Trump's war on Iran. Both lost.

Republicans surrendered both houses of Congress, and several states that had voted red for decades turned blue. Commentators have already noted the irony. Trump set out to change the regime in Tehran. Tehran, by outlasting him, helped change the political order in Washington.

The results also mark a turning point for the Israel lobby and its neoconservative hyperactivism. An endorsement from Aipac, the pro-Israel lobby group, once a prized asset, has become a stain that candidates hurry to wash off. The lobby adapted by moving its money through less visible channels.

It spent millions against candidates who questioned America's unequivocal and open-ended military and financial support for an Israeli government that has thrown the region under the bus. In key races, the money failed to move voters.

Michigan offers the clearest case. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat who won the state's Senate seat, ran on American interests. His opponents tried to turn the race into a referendum on Israeli ones.

Voters saw through it and punished a Republican candidate, Mike Rogers, whose campaign offered empty pledges of loyalty to Israel and little on the everyday concerns of Michiganders. Washington's loyalty to Israel dragged the US into its worst military defeat since Vietnam.

Unlike the defeats in Iraq or Afghanistan, this one was felt by ordinary Americans at home, in their pockets. The war on Iran left Americans poorer, their country more vulnerable and Washington more exposed in its competition with China and Russia.

Tehran, for its part, played a patient game. It absorbed months of bellicose rhetoric from Israel and the Trump administration, both apparently eager to engineer another round of major war before the vote.

It also refused to hand Trump a diplomatic breakthrough he could campaign on. That calculation carries a risk, as Iran now faces a president who may want to settle scores.

The rise of the Gulf lobby

As the Israel lobby weakens, the Gulf lobby arguably grows stronger. While Israel is a net consumer of American power in the region, the Gulf states have presented themselves as net contributors. They give the US strategic depth in one of the regions most vital to American interests.

They have pledged trillions of dollars of investment in the American economy, and their sovereign wealth funds help underwrite American growth. Qatar and Oman have also repeatedly handed Trump diplomatic off-ramps from quagmires of Israel's making, from Gaza to Iran.

The Gulf states nonetheless remain the most exposed party in the standoff between the US, Israel and Iran. Together with Iran, they have taken the heaviest economic hit and carried most of the war's burden.

Disillusionment with Trump and the Maga movement in Gulf capitals is palpable. Trump promised to end America's forever wars in the region. Gulf leaders embraced his pledge to make America great again.

What they got was one more pro-Israel president, played with ease by Benjamin Netanyahu in pursuit of the Israeli prime minister's personal agenda.

Riyadh, Doha and Abu Dhabi have therefore begun to imagine a post-American Middle East. In that order, the US keeps a footprint in the region, while its partnership with the Gulf sits inside a wider web of complementary multilateral agreements.

The midterms also let Gulf leaders picture a post-Trump America: more predictable, less erratic and content to stand on the sidelines. That last quality matters most. For the Gulf, an America that stays out of the region's conflicts is now preferable to one that keeps getting sucked into unwinnable adventures and leaves the region worse off each time.

Lame-duck Trump

The Gulf states have already moved toward strategic autonomy and self-reliance. A lame-duck Trump will speed that process. Gulf governments will loosen their overreliance on Washington and supplement the relationship with other partners, Europe among them.

The lasting answer lies in the region itself. The Gulf states and Iran need deeper integration, anchored in a non-aggression pact they negotiate among themselves, with the US outside the room.

Two conditions must hold for this to work. First, the Gulf states have to pool their influence in Washington and spend it on a single goal: preventing an American return to war.

Another round would hit the Gulf harder than the last, and Israel alone would gain from it. Every military option Trump has floated ends in catastrophe for the Gulf, destroying wealth and leaving the world economy weaker.

Second, someone must build a diplomatic framework acceptable to two sides whose trust in each other is close to zero. Once again, that lonely weight falls on Qatar's shoulders.

Time is short. Trump has little left to lose, and he never cared much for the Republican Party anyway. Without a breakthrough soon, a strike to satisfy his ego becomes more likely, and sooner.

There is one reason for hope. Iran withheld concessions while they would have handed Trump an electoral win. With the votes counted, that motive is gone. Tehran may now prove more flexible, and an interim deal could still get across the line.

American voters have shifted the balance in Washington. Many of the newly elected lawmakers echo the original promise of Maga: an America that leads from behind and works through partners able to take responsibility for their own backyard.

The Gulf lobby must adjust accordingly. Its task now is to court this new generation in Congress, which is challenging the neoconservative dinosaurs of a bygone era and supports the Gulf's readiness to take regional security into its own hands.