Many in the Muslim world are furious at President Donald Trump—but not some of its most important leaders.

Even as Trump draws global scorn for halting immigration from seven Muslim countries, key Arab leaders in the Middle East whose countries weren’t included in the ban are mostly staying quiet. The reason: they see Trump as a crucial ally against Iran and the Islamic extremists who threaten their own regimes, according to diplomats and experts.


But some foreign policy insiders with Middle East contacts warn that pro-Trump Arab governments are playing a dangerous game, focusing on how he'll end their longtime frustrations with U.S. policy under President Barack Obama without worrying about the blowback Trump might spark.

“There’s a big blind spot,” said Brian Katulis, a fellow at the Center for American Progress who visits the Middle East regularly. “I do think there’s more than a little wishful thinking, and willful blindness, on Trump’s anti-Muslim bigotry.”

Jordan’s King Abdullah proceeded with a trip to Washington, arriving Monday for a meeting with Vice President Mike Pence at the White House.

Abdullah raised the issue of Trump’s new travel bans, according to an official statement from his government, which said Abdullah “emphasized that Muslims are the number one victims” of Islamic terrorists, who he called religious “outlaws” who “do not represent any faith or nationality.”

But even that did not represent a condemnation of Trump’s action. And several analysts said they don’t expect Abdullah, one of Washington’s most reliable Arab allies,“to go farther for now.”

The visit followed Trump’s phone calls Sunday with two of the most important Arab monarchs, King Salman of Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi's crown prince, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

An official Saudi account of the call made no mention of Trump’s executive orders on immigration and refugees. The state news agency of the United Arab Emirates, of which Abu Dhabi is the capital, said only that Mohamed told Trump that “extremism and terrorism had no religion or identity,” according to an English-language report from the country. The White House made no mention of the issue in its own readouts of the calls.

Analysts say they also don’t expect much complaint from Egypt’s president and military dictator, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, with whom Trump has struck up a relationship.

Arab rulers, who may find Trump’s rhetoric and actions distasteful in private, are betting for now that their strategic interests lie in warm relations with the new president.

“They don't want to say anything that would maybe move him in the wrong direction,” said Dennis Ross, a senior Middle East policy official under three presidents. Their view, Ross added, is: “Maybe he’ll see the light.”

Most important to America’s Arab allies — especially those with Sunni Muslim majorities, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt — is Trump’s talk of more forcefully countering Iranian influence in the Middle East. Many Sunni Arab leaders feared that Obama saw his nuclear diplomacy with Tehran as kicking off a new era of diplomacy and cooperation with Iran, a view Obama called mistaken.

“They are so relieved to have Obama gone, who they thought saw Iran as part of the solution and not the problem — and that in fact they were the problem,” Ross added.

Obama further alienated those leaders by chiding their progress on human rights, democracy and economic reform. Trump has shown no interest in shaping the internal affairs of U.S. allies, and Arab officials expect the American “lectures,” as they sometimes call them, to be a thing of the past.

Sisi, who has overseen a massive political crackdown in his country, was a prime target of criticism from Obama, who largely cut off contact with the Egyptian leader.

Trump has expressed his admiration for Sisi as an ally against terrorism. The Egyptian was one of the first leaders with whom Trump spoke after his election, and the two men spoke again by phone last week.

Sunni Arab leaders are also delighted by Trump’s fierce talk of cracking down on Islamic extremism, which threatens their own control. They especially welcome reports that Trump may designate the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group that has both violent and nonviolent political wings, as a terrorist group.

A U.S. terrorist designation would trigger sanctions and other penalties on the group’s members worldwide. Saudi Arabia and the UAE already consider the Brotherhood to be a terrorist organization. So does Sisi’s regime, which ousted a Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohamed Morsi, in July 2013, and has since jailed hundreds of its members.

Those governments see the Muslim Brotherhood “as the primary competing approach to organizing the region,” and a threat not only to their own governments but in Syria, Libya and Gaza, said Tamara Cofman Wittes, a former top Obama State Department official for Middle East issues.

Arab officials are also encouraged by some of Trump’s early personnel moves. Defense Secretary James Mattis is well known to them from his service as chief of U.S. Central Command, which oversees America’s military presence in the Middle East.

Trump’s top national security council official for the Middle East, Derek Harvey, has written on his personal website that the U.S. must rebuild Arab alliances he believes were weakened under Obama. Harvey has also called Obama’s criticisms of Sisi wrongheaded.

And during his Senate confirmation hearing, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, labeled the Muslim Brotherhood “an agent of radical Islam.”

“We are very, very optimistic about the Trump administration. And on working closely with it to deal with the many challenges, not only in our region, but in the world,” Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Adel Al-Jubeir, said in Riyadh last week.

A statement from the Saudi embassy added that Jubeir “explained that the Kingdom is largely in accord with President Trump’s stated policies, including containing Iran, defeating extremists such as Daesh (ISIS) and restoring the U.S. presence in the world.”

But some analysts question whether Trump will engage in the Middle East, particularly given his repeated complaints that U.S. interventions in the region have been wrongheaded.

“They may not get what they are hoping for,” Wittes added. “Trump's narrow and transactional approach to foreign affairs does not leave much optimism for those who bank on longstanding alliances or traditions of partnership to generate an American investment in helping them solve their problems.”

Others wondered how long the warmth between Trump and Arab states can last if Trump continues to press an agenda that many observers call anti-Muslim, and which is whipping up anti-American sentiment in the Arab world.

“The more Trump takes stances that are perceived as anti-Muslim in their populations, the more they’re in a difficult spot,” Katulis said.