Trump’s appointee for Pentagon Middle East adviser has called for ‘pressure’ on Israel

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Trump’s appointee for Pentagon Middle East adviser has called for ‘pressure’ on Israel

“We’re really there to counter Iran, and that’s really at the behest of the Israelis and the Saudis,” Michael DiMino said of the U.S. troop presence in Iraq and Syria.

Andrew Bernard

An aerial view of the Pentagon, Washington, D.C., May 11, 2021. Credit: U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Brittany A. Chase/U.S. Department of Defense.

(Jan. 22, 2025 / JNS)

The man whom the Trump administration appointed on Monday as chief Middle East policy advisor at the Pentagon had urged the Biden administration to “pressure” Israel to deliver more aid to Gaza. Michael DiMino also believes that the United States has “no vital or existential” interests in the region and supports a policy of “offshore balancing” to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq and Syria.

DiMino, a former CIA analyst, was sworn in on Monday as U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East.

In his tenure as a fellow at the Washington think tank Defense Priorities, which bills itself as a “hub of realism and restraint” and was founded with money from the libertarian Koch brothers, DiMino expressed skepticism about U.S. commitments in the Middle East, including its relationship with partners like Israel.

“There are no vital or existential U.S. interests in the region,” DiMino said in a February webinar.

Washington’s two interests in the region are natural resources and countering terrorism, the threat of which DiMino stated was “exaggerated,” he said in February.

“We’re really there to counter Iran, and that’s really at the behest of the Israelis and the Saudis,” he said, of the U.S. troop presence in Iraq and Syria.

DiMino said he favored “offshore balancing,” a controversial policy that proponents argue is a realistic response to a multipolar region. Critics allege that it amounts to appeasement of Iran at the expense of U.S. allies like Israel and partners like Saudi Arabia.

“I’m absolutely in favor of getting closer to a point of offshore balancing, reducing U.S. security commitments in the region,” DiMino said. “Removing troops is a way to do that.”

In his comments, many of which were first reported by Jewish Insider, DiMino at times suggested that the Jewish state has been the more aggressive party in the region, while Iran has been “fairly moderate.”

After an Iranian ballistic missile attack against Israel in October, he said that the Jewish state was “pushing to change the facts on the ground as much as they can,” while “the Iranians are going to try to hold back.”

Writing in January 2024 for the eponymous publication of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, another Koch-backed think tank, DeMino said that the United States should engage the Houthis in Yemen diplomatically by providing more aid to Gaza.

“This would also necessitate increased diplomatic pressure on the Israeli government to allow more aid into Gaza, a step the Biden administration remains uninterested in taking,” he wrote.

In November 2023, DiMino wrote that he expected Hamas to continue to govern in the Gaza Strip in any post-conflict scenario. “It is hard to imagine a workable alternative to Hamas under Gaza’s status quo, and something similarly radical is likely to grow from its ruins,” he said.

Trump’s appointment of DiMino is the president’s latest step to raise eyebrows among Israel supporters since he resumed office on Monday.

At the Pentagon, DeMino will report to Elbridge Colby, whom Trump nominated to be under secretary of defense for policy. Colby, who served in the Department of Defense during the first Trump term, has argued that the United States needs to empower Israel but shift its priorities to the Indo-Pacific.

On Tuesday, Trump publicly fired his former Iran envoy, Brian Hook, who as recently as November was reportedly leading the Trump administration’s transition team at the State Department.

In an interview on Wednesday with Fox News, Steve Witkoff, the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, was asked about a claim from a Hamas spokesman that the terror group was “prepared for a dialog with America and achieving understandings on everything” after the ceasefire-for-hostages deal between Israel and Hamas.

“I think it’s good if it’s accurate,” Witkoff said.

A billionaire real estate investor who is a personal friend of Trump’s, Witkoff, who is Jewish, also praised Qatar, with which he has had business dealings, and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani for their role in the negotiations.

“Qatar was enormously helpful in this,” Witkoff said, adding that Sheik Mohammed’s “communication skills with Hamas were indispensable here.”