Whilst all eleven candidates for the Conservative Party’s leadership are far from perfect when it comes to peace-making, it seems the best candidate through this particular lens may well be Nadhim Zahawi.

Owing to a number of domestic crisis priorities, as well as the ongoing situation in Ukraine, peace-making in the Middle East and other key conflict regions has not been a particular point of interest in the current Conservative leadership election. Regardless of which contender wins, it seems as though this aspect of foreign policy will largely take a backseat, particularly as nations such as Syria and Afghanistan begin to stabilise.

Nonetheless, the historic positions of each candidate on military intervention and other relevant aspects of international affairs give us a strong sense of what their leadership might mean for key crisis zones. Whilst many take broadly hawkish stances, those who have deeper personal rooting amongst the affected nations often take a more reasoned approach.

The Frontrunners

As it stands, the candidate with the most nominations from Conservative MPs is the former Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who resigned in protest against Boris Johnson’s leadership just last week. His sharp focus on the economy has created some cause for concern when it comes to foreign policy.

Most notably, Sunak masterminded the UK Government’s abandonment of its commitment to spending 0.7% of its GDP on developmental aid, as well as the scrapping of the world-leading Department for International Development. Cutting this budget will inevitably devastate the top five recipients of British aid, which include such nations as Yemen and Afghanistan.

Considering his commitment to the Prime Minister’s ‘Global Britain’ strategy, this seems rather misguided, to say the least.

Whilst pulling the ladder away from poorer citizens of the Middle East, Sunak announced eight new freeports for England, including the Solent and Liverpool. These low-tax areas are specifically designed to encourage foreign direct investment, including from affluent investors in the Middle East. Combined with the stamp duty holiday which disproportionately benefitted London’s wealthy Arab elite, it seems Sunak is far more willing to make in-roads with the aristocrats of the Middle East, but not with its everyday people.

Sunak is currently leading Penny Mordaunt into second place on nominations, although polls suggest the latter could win a leadership contest overall. An MP since 2010, Mordaunt has a richer voting history on issues of war and peace and voted for military action in both Iraq and Syria, as well as for the continued deployment of British troops in Afghanistan.

Mordaunt’s hawkish tendencies likely stem from her military background. Named after a British naval ship, she is also a Royal Navy Reservist and has held a number of related roles in government, including a month-long stint as Defence Secretary. At a 2018 Policy Exchange event, Mordaunt was keen to express the need for greater cooperation between the military and civilians during conflict scenarios.

More reassuringly, she also has some tangible experience of the humanitarian side of conflict, having worked in a hospital following the 1999 Revolution in Romania.

Perhaps even more hawkish is Liz Truss, currently in third place on internal nominations alone, and having been Foreign Secretary since September, she has one of the clearest foreign policy doctrines. Truss has been one of the Cabinet’s more aggressive members when it comes to Ukraine, advocating for the total expulsion of Russian troops, including in Crimea. She has carefully crafted an image of herself as a Thatcher-like warrior, with glitzy photo opportunities riding tanks in Estonia perfectly encapsulating this.

Unlike other candidates where disregard is merely implied, Truss has been more obvious about her lack of focus on peace and justice in the Middle East. Questioned by a committee of MPs, she highlighted the important status of the Gulf States as allies but declined to say whether she had questioned their governments on their arguably weak human rights records. She has also explicitly stated that the Ukraine crisis is her ‘biggest focus’, pushing Middle Eastern struggles into the periphery.

With backings from loyalists like Nadine Dorries and Jacob Rees-Mogg, Truss is now widely viewed as the ‘continuity Johnson’ candidate. As such, expect a premiership led by the current Foreign Secretary to be far more focused on security in the Indo-Pacific region than in Palestine or Syria.

The Middle of the Pack

In contrast, a former Foreign Secretary who has thrown his hat into the ring is Jeremy Hunt, whose experience of foreign policy is more well-suited to the Middle East. In this role, he was far more aggressive than his moderate image might suggest, particularly on Yemen.

Hunt is very supportive of the Saudi military action there and praised the larger state as one of the UK’s ‘biggest military allies’. He even publicly defended the action when a school bus was destroyed by a coalition bomb.

Like most Conservatives, Hunt continues to support arming the Saudi government. When Germany stopped doing so, he took this support a step further, and actively criticised the German government, arguing that it did not look like a serious Western actor for withdrawing its support.

On the other hand, Hunt was fiercely critical of the United States’ recognition of the Golan Heights as Israeli territory and has taken a stronger line against human rights abuses than colleagues like Liz Truss. He threatened the UAE, for example, with ‘serious diplomatic consequences’ for its detention of a British student on false allegations of espionage.

Tom Tugendhat has also crafted a moderate image, but seemingly more successfully. Of all the contenders, he is among the most experienced in the region, having served as a soldier in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the latter conflict, Tugendhat demonstrated a quite genuine interest in peace and stability by setting up the National Security Council of Afghanistan and government in Helmand Province. He was critical of the UK’s botched exit from the nation, and vocally opposed the cut in the foreign aid budget when many of his colleagues would not. He seems a more principled and grounded choice that his rivals based merely on these criteria.

However, none of these contenders are perfect. Tugendhat has a history of disparaging the Israel-Palestine war, writing, in an article for the Spectator magazine, that it ‘does not matter’ when compared to other territorial disputes such as those in Tibet and the Western Sahara.

At eleven years old, Nadhim Zahawi fled to the UK from Iraq as a Kurdish refugee, establishing him as one of the few contenders with grounded experience in Middle Eastern conflict. In the early 1990s, Zahawi used this experience to assist Jeffrey Archer with the now-controversial Simple Truth concert campaign, which was supposed to raise money for Iraqi Kurds.

To this day, the current Chancellor retains a key interest in Kurdish affairs and is the vice-chair of the APPG on the subject. He has, however, been criticised for the maintenance of tight links between that group and Gulf Keystone Petroleum, of which he was Chief Executive. Whilst Zahawi is experienced in the field of Middle Eastern conflict, it appears he can be externally influenced.

This should not detract from relative strength overall. Unlike many of his colleagues, Zahawi has, in a ConservativeHome article, condemned the foreign policy approach that led to the 2003 Iraq War, labelling the Bush administration’s approach ‘no help at all’. In the same article, he called for greater funding for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and a greater focus on diplomatic means to solving conflict. He also stressed his support for pro-democracy groups in Syria and elsewhere.

Whilst this is certainly a more measured foreign policy approach than many of his rivals, Zahawi’s focus is nearly entirely restricted to Iraqi affairs. Peace settlements elsewhere may therefore fall victim to this sharp focus.

The Rising Stars

These grandees considered, there are also a number of rising stars taking part in this leadership election. One such figure is Kemi Badenoch, probably the biggest foreign policy enigma of the eleven. Since her election in 2017, Badenoch has focused her career on so-called ‘culture war’ issues, with peace clearly no priority.

Her domestic stances tell us a little about how her foreign policy might shape up, however. For instance, her assertion that she ‘doesn’t care’ about colonialism will surely ring alarm bells in former colonial states now ravaged by war such as Afghanistan or Syria. During the contest, she also implicitly criticised the ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s for its pro-Palestinian stance, suggestive of a disdain for peace in that region too.

Suella Braverman, the Attorney General, has a similar set of policy priorities to Badenoch, but has applied these on a more international scale. Her leadership campaign has been built around two points, both of which reflect poorly on her ability to make peace.

Firstly, she opposes refugees arriving to the UK and has threatened to stop boats from crossing the English Channel. This, of course, restricts the freedom of many Afghans, Syrians, and others to live in a peaceful and stable nation.

Secondly, Braverman advocates the UK’s withdrawal from the European Court of Human Rights, a body subscribed to by all European countries apart from Russia and Belarus, whose governments are autocratic. If she is willing to facilitate human rights abuses on home soil, it seems unlikely she would take an activist stance in campaigning against them around the world.

The Also-Rans

Although they are now out of the running for Prime Minister, it is worth considering what impact the three now-withdrawn candidates might have had on Middle Eastern policy.

The most prominent of these was Sajid Javid, who is widely regarded as one of Parliament’s most staunchly pro-Israel politicians. At an event in 2015, Javid suggested that any cultural institution which boycotts Israel should be stripped of its public funding and threatened to cancel Europe’s largest Palestinian convention.

It was Javid who introduced the bill which banned Hezbollah in the United Kingdom, a fact he was eager to stress at a party attended alongside Tzipi Hotovely. Here, he also claimed that ‘Israel’s security is our security’, subtly undermining the need for a two-state solution.

Even more controversially, despite opposition from Palestinian groups, Javid visited the Western Wall in 2019, becoming the first British minister in nineteen years to do so. When recounting the trip to the Conservative Friends of Israel, Javid told activists who opposed the visit to ‘get stuffed’.

Whilst Business Secretary, Javid highlighted his horrendous peacekeeping credentials further. In 2017, he was accused of ignoring advice which could have bettered peace conditions by continuing to sell arms to the Saudi government despite being warned otherwise by a senior civil servant.

Another also-ran was Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary. There is very little which can be confidently said about what a Shapps premiership might have meant for UK policy in the Middle East, but it is noteworthy than he voted with the party line on air strikes in Syria and Iraq.

During his brief tenure as a minister in the International Development department, Shapps made a visit to Somalia and the disputed region of Somaliland. Here, he suggested that the latter was a strong model of ‘peace and democracy in a troubled region’ which should work with neighbouring countries to work towards peace and stability.

The final contender in this leadership contest was Rehman Chishti, whose chances always looked quite slim. Eventually picking up no endorsements at all, Chishti’s campaign ended after just two days, but he might actually have been one of the better choices through a Middle Eastern lens.

A former advisor to Benazir Bhutto, Chishti has a proven track record of diplomacy in times of conflict, and of helping countries transition to democracy.

In 2015, Chishti wrote an ultimately successful request to the then-Prime Minister David Cameron asking his government to use the term ‘Daesh’ instead of ISIL, reflecting best practise seen in France and elsewhere. This demonstrates an understanding of the politics of language on conflict not so confidently grasped by other candidates.

He may, however, have vested interests in Saudi Arabia. Chishti came under fire from the Liberal Democrats in 2016 for speaking in favour of Saudi Arabia in Parliament whilst on the payroll of the King Faisal Centre, a Saudi state sponsored think tank.

So Who Works Best?

Overall, it is apparent that all eleven leadership candidates have deeply flawed approaches to Middle Eastern policy, and the conditions for peace are unlikely to substantially improve whoever becomes Prime Minister.

It is broadly clear that these contenders fit into three rough categories, namely hawks, the disinterested, and those with a tangible connection to the Middle East. It is this latter grouping, including Tom Tugendhat and Nadhim Zahawi, who would likely provide the most grounded and diplomatic solutions to contemporary problems in the region.