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“Traditionally we’ve tried to play a role of fireman in the Middle East. Now we’re playing the role of arsonist,” said Ilan Goldenberg, a former State Department and Pentagon official who runs the Mideast program at the Center for a New American Security.

Trump’s withdrawal last week from the Iran nuclear deal, against the protestations of European allies, appears to have emboldened both Israel and Iran to move more forcefully toward full-on confrontation. In Syria, Trump’s eagerness to pull out U.S. troops as soon as the Islamic State group is defeated has forced a reckoning by Iran’s enemies about the possibility that Tehran will fill the void.

Dan Shapiro, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, said Washington is not responsible for the fact that Iran acts as “the major source of tension and instability in the region.” But he said the question is whether Trump’s administration, having pulled out of the nuclear deal, has a strategy to deal with Iran in its absence.

Shapiro, who is now at the Institute for National Security Studies in Israel, said that while some U.S. allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia have celebrated the pullout, the reaction “will soon be followed by some degree of concern about whether the administration is sufficiently focused, prepared, staffed and able to devote the necessary attention when it’s also managing another major foreign policy challenge in North Korea at the same time.”

U.S. officials insist the administration remains committed to restarting the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process. In a speech at the embassy opening, Trump’s son-in-law, senior adviser Jared Kushner, said the U.S. “is prepared to support a peace agreement in every way we can.”