President Donald Trump proclaimed a decisive break with decades of US interventionism during his Middle East tour, promising a new American foreign policy based instead on his beloved art of the deal.

Trump vowed during his swing through Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates that there would be no more "lectures on how to live", saying the region had achieved a "modern miracle the Arabian way."

In an extraordinary rupture with his predecessors, Trump then lambasted what he called the "neo-cons" that oversaw bloody US military interventions in the region and beyond.

"In the end, the so-called nation builders wrecked far more nations than they built," Trump told an investment forum in Riyadh, the first stop on his tour of the Gulf.

"Far too many American presidents have been afflicted with the notion that it's our job to look into the souls of foreign leaders and use US policy to dispense justice for their sins."

Trump did not name them but the targets were clear.........

© Al Monitor