100 days in: Is the Middle East Trump’s new playground?
As the United States marks 100 days since President Donald Trump assumed office, analysts say his sporadic policies in the Middle East have only made the region a more volatile place.
During his election campaign, Trump systematically sold himself as an isolationist, vowing to invest US resources domestically rather than in the Middle East. But his actions in his first 100 days as president have proved otherwise.
His policies on immigration from the region to the US, the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), and peace efforts between Palestine and Israel, have only mired the US deeper into Middle East conflicts.
"Far from an isolationist, as many of his supporters believed him to be, Trump has quickly proven that he remains intent to continue long-standing US military engagement in the Middle East," Abdullah Al-Arian, an assistant professor of history at Georgetown University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera.
On one of the major conflicts plaguing the Middle East - Syria - Trump promised to become less militarily involved and instead focus on the fight against ISIL. Instead, he sent 59 missiles to a Syrian airbase following a suspected chemical attack in the country.
