THE Middle East has never been kind to presidents of America. Then again I suppose, rarely have they been kind to the Middle East. On Tuesday as the world reeled in disbelief at Donald Trump’s election, a couple of curious headlines popped up on social media.

Among those that caught my eye was news that the Israeli company Magal Security Systems Ltd, which built the wall around Gaza, saw a spike in its shares when a Trump victory looked imminent. This, of course, is a sign that the possibility of a wall on the border with Mexico has suddenly become a more tangible business opportunity.

According to Magal chief executive Saar Koursh, the “border business” had been in something of the doldrums. Then along came the threat of Islamic State (IS) followed by the Syrian conflict and now the arrival of Mr Trump as US president and the wall building game has never looked better.

As Mr Koursh pointed out, “the world is changing and borders are coming back big-time”. If Magal executives were salivating at the potential profits of a substantial uptick in the barrier building business, the Israeli political right was also rubbing its hands with glee.

One of its spokesmen, Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett, made headlines with the blunt observation that “the era of a Palestinian state is over”. Anyone who knows anything about the Middle East will recognise that this is incendiary talk. For so long now the perennial issue of Palestinian statehood has underpinned, or helped fuel, so much of the wider instability across the region and the world at large.

So there you have it. Mr Trump has barely set foot in the White House and the ominous signs of what his presidency is capable of sparking in the Middle East already seems to rear its head. Worrying as these early responses are, the truth is that, with the possible exception of the thorny issue of the Iran nuclear agreement, Mr Trump’s take on the Middle East and its labyrinthine problems remains something of an unknown quantity.

So vague or contradictory has the president-elect been on Middle Eastern and foreign affairs that policy affecting the region remains an open book. Perhaps when Mr Trump has mastered locating most Middle Eastern countries on a map things might be different.

So far it appears that he is struggling to put together a “team” to help him find his way through the Middle-East policy maze. If recent reports from inside the US intelligence, military and diplomatic community are anything to go by, advisers and experts are not exactly queuing up outside the president-elect’s door. This is hardly surprising given that he never really put much store by foreign policy advisers even during his presidential campaign.

Assessing what a Trump presidency means for the Middle East very much depends on where in the region you are standing. Jerusalem, Gaza, Tehran, Riyadh, Ankara, Damascus and Baghdad are all looking on towards Washington with a mixture of hope, trepidation and, above all, uncertainty.

Over the past few weeks while in Iraq covering the battle to oust the jihadists of IS from Iraq’s second largest city Mosul, I spoke to senior Kurdish officials who welcomed the prospect of a Trump presidency. I should stress that none of these diplomats, politicians and soldiers thought that Mr Trump was the sharpest pencil in the box.

But the fact that he had at least expressed his support for the Kurds in their fight against IS and might continue to extend a degree of US military largesse in the direction of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) was good enough for them; for the time being at least. Mr Trump talks tough of course, and that will go down well with some Middle Eastern leaders reared on the “strongman” doctrine. Perception in foreign policy is vital, more so in the Middle East than in most places. For many people in the region Mr Trump’s election will make a mockery of the notion that the US is a beacon of democracy.

Many too among the Middle East’s leaders will be watching carefully for signs that a Trump administration is unwilling to prioritise the region and the stability it needs. Should there be sufficient evidence of this or of a sense of not being able to count on Washington, regional players might feel compelled to shape their own interests with even more unilateral authority. If any Middle Eastern issue looks set to be Trump’s first port of call it is the vexed issue of the hard-won Iran nuclear agreement that was implemented in January.

During his election campaign Mr Trump lambasted the Iran accord and hinted he’d like to reimpose sanctions. Inside the US there has been a vociferous lobby urging him to pull the rug on the deal. Many of the threads on that rug lead all the way back to Jerusalem. Should a Trump presidency succeed in killing off the Iran deal it would have profound implications both inside Iran, which has a crucial election of it own looming, and across the wider region.

Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, a relative pragmatist who pushed for the deal hoping to open Iran’s reclusive society to the international economy, said this week that Mr Trump could not change the agreement but diplomatic analysts are not so convinced. In a worse-case scenario, should it all fall apart, we can look to Iranian hardliners gaining ground in the elections and calling the shots across the region, where Tehran has tremendous influence from Syria to Iraq, Lebanon and beyond. It will only increase tension, too, with its great rival Saudi Arabia.

How tragic and potentially dangerous it would be if that process of rapprochement between the West and Tehran were to be squandered.

Mr Trump has consistently said that fighting the threat of IS would be among his Middle Eastern policy priorities. As I saw for myself recently in Iraq, that battle is going comparatively well and the jihadists are on the back foot in places like Mosul and, soon, in Raqaa in Syria. For that to continue, however, the fragile alliance that has come together in Iraq and elsewhere against IS needs to remain solid and see that military campaign through. Iran, through its influence on the predominately Shia government of Baghdad, is a crucial player in that process whether Mr Trump likes it or not.

Who knows whether Mr Trump has given any thought whatsoever to substantive policy with regards to the Middle East. If not, then he had better start doing so soon.

The region has always been politically complex and volatile, but perhaps never more so than at present. There is a lot at stake for the people of the Middle East and for ourselves. Handling the issues the region has thrown up requires a delicate political choreography. Terrifyingly, if there is one thing that is already abundantly clear, it’s that Mr Trump is neither delicate nor a diplomatic dancer.