When reports emerged shortly after the 2024 presidential election that Brian Hook would be leading the second Trump administration’s State Department transition team, many in the beltway who espoused traditional Republican views on foreign policy were pleased.

Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the choice portended “highly qualified and competent people staffing the department who will implement the president’s policies of peace through strength.” Danielle Pletka, foreign policy analyst at the hawkish American Enterprise Institute, likewise called Hook a “great choice,” arguing that “No one knows better than he the menace Iran represents to us and our allies.” His inclusion was met equally warmly by legacy American-Jewish groups, which had previously hailed his role in curtailing Tehran’s malign activities.

Through his transitional role, Hook appeared poised to serve as a senior diplomat in the second Trump administration. Yet in a stunning move, Trump announced on Truth Social that Hook would not be serving in his forthcoming administration, suffering the same fate as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. “Brian Hook from the Wilson Center for Scholars…YOU’RE FIRED!” Trump belted from his social media platform.

Why did this occur? During his time in Trump’s first term, Hook was a reliable exponent of the president’s foreign policy vision. He marshaled his extensive experience from previous Republican administrations to achieve the Abraham Accords between Israel and four Arab states and the freeing of American hostage Xiyue Wang from Iran. His presence reassured constituencies reluctant to vote for Trump, including national security conservatives and defense-oriented American Jews, that his leadership would leave the Middle East in a far better condition than that which he inherited.

Yet it may have been his very experience – his status as an “insider” – that earned him Trump’s scrutiny and eventual fire-by-fiat. The fact that he spent a significant portion of his career alongside figures whom the ‘America First’ wing of the Republican Party now derides as “neocons” and the “deep state” likely set the stage for his departure. Once lost beneath the din, his national security credentials could no longer keep him in good standing with Trump and his MAGA allies.

Many of those who praised Trump’s relocation of the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and negotiation of the historic Abraham Accords are bewildered at the ignominious fates of public servants like Hook. The inclusion of Hook and similar figures in the first Trump administration indicated a coherent philosophy of American engagement with the Middle East: one of “peace through strength” predicated upon the forging of an anti-Iranian axis comprised of Israel and moderate Sunni states.

While a number of officials in his second administration – most notably National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and likely U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Elise Stefanik – are sympathetic to Hook’s foreign policy philosophy, Trump’s recent inclusion of dovish voices on the Middle East such as Elbridge Colby and Darren Beattie has raised eyebrows among a significant percentage of his pro-Israel supporters. Considered in sum, they convey a less than certain picture of Trump’s engagement with the Middle East.

In his confirmation hearing and new role, Secretary of State Rubio has expressed openness to the prospect of brokering a new nuclear deal with the Iranian regime. “My view of [Iran] is that we should be open to any arrangement that allows us to have safety and stability in the region,” Rubio said before the Senate before his unanimous confirmation for the role. Such a statement belies over a decade of Republican orthodoxy on America’s engagement with its most formidable Middle Eastern adversary. Yet it is demonstrative of the new era in which Republican foreign policy finds itself under the second Trump presidency. It is an era less ideological, less interventionist, and less defined by principle than by transactionalism and the prospect of “deal-making.”

If Hook’s firing should serve as any reminder, it is that Trump is willing to forge new avenues of diplomacy and may readily dispense with a significant degree of his own foreign policy precedent. As we saw with his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff’s brokering of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal shortly before his presidency – a deal that bore close resemblance to President Biden’s 2024 offer – it is more than a mere possibility. Indeed, it is the most likely outcome, and reflects the new era of foreign policy the United States has entered under Trump – in which Hook and the Republican defense establishment from which he hailed will likely have little sway.