Michael DiMino, tapped as deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, has said that the U.S. has ‘minimal to nonexistent’ vital interests in the region
Jewish Insider
The Trump administration’s pick for deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East brings a record on Iran, the Houthis and the region that is alarming pro-Israel conservatives, having described Iran’s missile attack on Israel as ‘fairly moderate’ and who has urged the U.S. against bombing the Houthis, instead calling for American pressure on Israel.
Michael DiMino, who was a military analyst at the CIA and an official at the Defense Department during the first Trump administration, has been a fellow at Defense Priorities, a Koch-funded isolationist think tank founded by allies of libertarian Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). He has called for a reduced U.S. presence in the Middle East and argued that the U.S. does not have any critical interests in the region.
In a webinar in February 2024 with Defense Priorities, DiMino, who was sworn in on Monday, declared that the Middle East does ‘not really’ matter for U.S. interests, arguing that ‘vital or existential threats’ in the Middle East are ‘best characterized as minimal to nonexistent,’ and that the U.S.’ role in the region has not provided any benefits.
He said the U.S. can prevent terrorist threats emanating from the region without a major military presence, instead using diplomacy, leaning on local actors, intelligence monitoring and long-range strikes. He said the U.S. should significantly reduce its troop presence in the region, remove military outposts in Iraq, Syria and the Levant, and ultimately reassess its presence in the Gulf.
‘The people that try to tell you that Iran is somehow going to take over the Middle East, I think it’s fearmongering and not supported by the facts,’ DiMino said in a February 2024 radio interview.
‘Iran’s military has limited conventional force projection capabilities,’ he said in a co-written November 2023 policy paper.
DiMino, after Iran’s second ballistic missile attack on Israel last year, dismissed the attack as a ‘fairly moderate’ response to Israeli operations against Tehran and its terrorist proxy groups and suggested that Iran was holding back.
‘I think similarly, the Iranians are going to try to hold back,’ DiMino told Newsweek, ‘maybe in the hopes that the Harris administration is more willing to move back to something that looks like the JCPOA or something similar.’
He has vocally opposed attacking Iran’s nuclear program, suggesting that an Israeli attack could lead Iran to release its ‘restraint,’ and elsewhere praised former President Joe Biden for pressuring Israel not to attack such sites in April 2024.
DiMino told Bloomberg that he did not believe Iran’s first missile attack against Israel in April was designed to cause real damage, a conclusion disputed by most foreign policy experts across the political spectrum.
He has repeatedly warned that Israeli attacks on Iran and its proxies further endanger U.S. troops in the region by prompting Iranian-backed retaliation against U.S. bases.
Rather than striking Iran or its proxies in response to attacks on U.S. forces in the region, as some conservatives advocate for, DiMino said the U.S. should pull its troops out of areas like northeastern Syria.
Addressing the war in Gaza, meanwhile, DiMino said in the radio interview and November 2023 policy paper that it was in the U.S.’ interest to use diplomacy to end the war as quickly as possible. He said that attempting to end Hamas’ rule would only lead to the rise of ‘Hamas 2.0’ in Gaza, criticizing policies he said have undermined the Palestinian Authority.
In an op-ed in January 2024 in Responsible Statecraft, a publication run by the Quincy Institute, DiMino dismissed continued U.S. strikes against the Houthis in Yemen — which came in response to Houthi attacks on U.S. ships, international shipping lanes and Israel — as futile.
‘While legitimate military analysts and regional experts knew these strikes were doomed to fail from the start, it should now be obvious there is no credible military solution to the crisis in the Red Sea,’ DiMino wrote, urging a diplomatic approach including ramping up aid shipments to Gaza through ‘increased diplomatic pressure’ on Israel — an approach that has been anathema to most conservatives.
He declared that U.S. ‘economic and national security interests are largely unaffected by Red Sea transit,’ which has been impacted for months by Houthi strikes on international vessels, and that the U.S. ‘can truly afford to do nothing there.’ He said the U.S. should leave China to deal with the problem by pressuring Iran and the Houthis.
On the February webinar, DiMino said further that it’s ‘a stretch’ to believe that U.S. strikes can degrade the Houthis’ capabilities or even deter them or change their strategy. He agreed with another panelist that the U.S. is ‘addicted’ to airstrikes but that they cannot restore deterrence. He also said air strikes are more a ‘therapeutic’ and ‘optics-driven’ response.
Trump’s appointment of DiMino is causing deep concern among national security conservatives concerned about the threat Iran poses in the Middle East.
‘DiMino doesn’t believe that the U.S. should be focusing on our interests in the Middle East. When he does discuss the Middle East, he says we shouldn’t be using our military there. When it comes to allies and enemies, he doesn’t think Israel should be trying to eradicate Hamas,’ a Republican congressional defense staffer told JI. ‘None of these things are what President Trump believes or what Defense Secretary-designate Pete Hegseth at least says he believes.’
An official at a pro-Israel organization said they were ‘deeply concerned that this individual’s views not only run contrary to the president’s promise of peace through strength, but are a continuation of the Obama-Biden line of appeasement of the mullahs of Iran. Someone who states that the U.S. has no interests in the Middle East or downplays the Iranian threat shouldn’t be running Middle East policy at the Pentagon.’
DiMino’s comments on Iran echo another Pentagon official in the new Trump administration whose dovish views have faced scrutiny from some pro-Israel conservatives. Elbridge Colby, whom Trump tapped as undersecretary of defense for policy, has opposed direct military action against Iran, while arguing that containing a nuclear Iran ‘is an eminently plausible and practical objective,’ among other claims.
The official who worked on the presidential transition said they believe Colby was primarily responsible for DiMino’s hiring. DiMino’s hiring comes in spite of Trump’s directive that he didn’t want staffers affiliated with the conservative donor Charles Koch in his administration.
Though some conservatives see Hegseth as more hawkish, the former official warned that people such as DiMino and Colby will be briefing Hegseth and will play a major role in setting policy.
‘They have enormous leverage — they’re flying around the region, controlling resources and planning and options,’ the former Trump official said. ‘They have an enormous amount of power they wield in subtle ways. This foreign policy is the same as Obama’s foreign policy in the Middle East.’
‘We are at a point of choosing whether to allow Iran to become a nuclear weapons power, and walking into a room with those who don’t think it’s a threat to the United States if Iran becomes a nuclear power,’ the former official continued. ‘They don’t align with the secretary of defense or deputy secretary of defense.’
On Lebanon, DiMino argued in an interview with the isolationist American Conservative magazine in June that ‘the U.S. and international community should do everything it can to prevent’ a full-scale Israeli war against Hezbollah, saying that it would require the U.S. to step in directly to defend Israel.
In fact, Israel was able to severely degrade Hezbollah’s capabilities and eliminate most of its leadership without sparking a larger regional war.
He also argued on a webinar that the U.S. troop presence in various partner countries in the Middle East was motivating ‘reckless’ behavior, including by Saudi Arabia. He said the U.S. should decrease its permanent bases in the region and instead focus on ‘surging forces back and forth from different areas of need.’
He said definitively that the U.S. should not provide any security guarantees to Saudi Arabia as part of a normalization agreement between the kingdom and Israel, and, in the November 2023 policy paper, described a normalization deal as ‘only nice to have — not necessary — for U.S. policy objectives in the Middle East.’
DiMino and his co-author dismissed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman as ‘an erratic figure who has repeatedly demonstrated poor judgment that would be a U.S. liability in a treaty alliance,’ and said that any U.S. security guarantee would embolden his ‘worst instincts.’
For his part, Trump has spoken admiringly of the Saudi crown prince, calling him a ‘visionary’ and ‘a great guy’ in an interview before the November election. He has also vowed that expanding the Abraham Accords will be ‘an absolute priority’ in his second term, with an eye on normalizing ties with Saudi Arabia.
A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. DiMino could not be reached.
DiMino has said that there is no need for a U.S presence in Syria to prevent the resurgence of ISIS and to constrain Turkish advancement, saying that ISIS has been degraded, that Turkey was not capable of or interested in further incursions and that protecting the Kurds did not constitute a key U.S. interest. Turkey did step up its offensive against the Kurds after the fall of the Assad regime, but has since reportedly agreed to a truce with Kurdish forces.
DiMino suggested that the Kurds should instead seek to work with the Assad regime, and that Iran-backed Shia militias which have been attacking U.S. forces could take a role alongside the Kurds in preventing ISIS’s resurgence.
DiMino said the U.S. should not further escalate strikes in response to the deaths of U.S. service members in an Iran-backed militia strike on the Tower 22 base in Syria.
Outside of the Middle East, DiMino has dismissed the utility of continued U.S. aid to Ukraine, arguing that Ukraine is incapable of repelling Russia and urging the U.S. instead to push for a negotiated settlement to the war.
He’s also been a defender of former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s controversial nomination for director of national intelligence and has criticized surveillance powers supported by top national security Republicans.