Jordan’s King Abdullah believes Donald Trump’s presidency will shake up the Middle East and ‘change the status quo.”
In an interview with ABC’s Lateline, the King said that Trump’s Presidency could be a game changer for the region.
"It will definitely, I think, change the status quo of a lot of issues I think we've been dealing with," King Abdullah said.
"We'll have to see how the transition team comes along and what their view of our part of the world is but also the rest of the world.
"So it's not just people in our region that are waiting with bated breath, I think everybody is."
The King touched on the concerns that Trump may align himself and the US with the Assad regime and Russia, saying that so-far, the President elect’s plans for dealing with the conflict has been vague.
"I think most of us that understand Syria realise that there cannot be a solution [to the Syrian conflict] without the Russians, and this has been something all of us have been discussing for the past year or two," King Abdullah said.
King Abdullah said he hoped Russia and the United States could come together to fight their common enemy.
"At the end of the day we're dealing with a global terror problem, a new third world war by other means … not post-Cold War where I had a feeling that there was more hatred between Moscow and Washington than there was against the extremists that we're dealing with globally," he said.
The interview also covered Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric during the election campaign, alongside his selection of racist and white nationalist figures for his cabinet team. Most recently, General Michaell Flynn was picked as national security advisor, a man who described Islam as a "vicious cancer", and a "political ideology" that "hides behind the notion of it being a religion".
When questioned on this, the King put this down to a lack of understanding of Islam and emphasised the need to avoid an ‘us-versus-them mentality.’
“Whatever comments are made on the campaign trail I tend to put aside and give people the benefit of the doubt, and I think we should give the new administration the benefit of the doubt on this issue.” he said.
However, overall, King Abdullah did not appear too concerned about the impact that new US government would have on the Middle East and the world.
"America is built on institutions, so there will be some changes in policy but I don't think to the extent that everybody's panicking about," he said.
