Overview

Background

Trager graduated from Harvard University with a degree in government and language citations in Arabic and Hebrew, then served as a research assistant at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy from 2005 to 2006. From 2006 to 2007, he lived in Egypt as an Islamic Civilizations Fulbright fellow, studying at the American University in Cairo and earning a master's degree in Arabic studies with a concentration in Islamic studies. He was in Egypt during the 2011 anti-Mubarak revolts and returned frequently to conduct firsthand interviews with leaders in Egypt's government, military, political parties, media, and civil society.

Trager served as the Esther K. Wagner Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy from 2011 to 2017. He authored a 2016 book, Arab Fall: How the Muslim Brotherhood Won and Lost Egypt in 891 Days, assessing the rise and fall of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. His writings appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, the Atlantic, and the New Republic. He also served as an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan, and the University of California.

After leaving the Washington Institute, Trager took on various roles as a professional staff member for Republican senators. He served as a staff member for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Middle East and North Africa issues and later, as a professional staff member for Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee since 2018. In that capacity, he worked under Senators Jim Inhofe and then Roger Wicker, supporting the committee's work on defense and foreign policy in the region.

Throughout this period, Trager maintained a consistent hawkish orientation. While at the Washington Institute, he urged members of Congress not to meet with Muslim Brotherhood officials, describing them as an extremist hate group. He staked out hawkish foreign policy positions regarding the Middle East, with his research focusing on Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Public Role in the Second Trump Administration

Appointment and Portfolio

Trager, then a staff member for Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee and a former Washington Institute for Near East Policy fellow, was named the National Security Council senior director for the Middle East and North Africa in the new Trump administration. The senior director's role carried responsibility for advising Trump on two of the incoming president's top priorities: ending the war in Gaza and brokering new agreements between Israel and Arab countries. His appointment was welcomed by hawkish voices in conservative policy circles. Rich Goldberg of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies publicly praised the selection, suggesting that Trager's arrival signaled a harder line toward actors such as Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Trager filled the position at the NSC previously held by Brett McGurk, a senior member of President Biden's Middle East staff who had participated in negotiations surrounding the release of hostages kidnapped from Israel by Hamas, a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, and who had served as a key interlocutor with Saudi Arabia. Trager thus inherited one of the most complex and active portfolios in the administration at the outset of the second term.

Work Inside the Administration

Trager worked closely with White House Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff on the Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal and was deeply involved in preparing President Trump's trip to the Middle East. Underscoring just how rapid the subsequent turnaround would be, the Middle East advisor at the White House NSC who was photographed taking notes while Trump spoke to the leaders of Syria and Saudi Arabia in May was one of the officials later fired. His presence alongside Trump during the May 2025 regional visit illustrated the access he had reached at the peak of his tenure.

Unlike some previous Middle East directors at the NSC, his influence in the White House was described as limited relative to the personal-envoy model that Trump favored — one centered on figures like Witkoff operating outside traditional interagency structures. Nonetheless, Trager appears to have played a substantive staff role in the detailed preparation and coordination that supported those higher-profile diplomatic efforts.

Recent Developments

NSC Middle East and North Africa senior director Eric Trager and NSC Israel and Iran director Merav Ceren were among those pushed out on May 23, 2025, as part of a purge aimed at significantly downsizing the NSC staff. Trager and Ceren had both been hired by former National Security Adviser Mike Waltz. Waltz himself had already been removed from the NSC adviser role by that point, and the broader restructuring was overseen by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was serving concurrently as acting national security adviser.

Trager's firing surprised many inside the administration because he had worked closely with Witkoff on the Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal and was deeply involved in preparing Trump's trip to the Middle East. Trager, who was the senior director for the Middle East and North Africa — the lead official on the Middle East — was a Trump administration political appointee but was pushed out in what one official called a purge of "the Deep State" inside the NSC.

The firing of pro-Israel staffers at the NSC, including Trager and Ceren, came at a time when President Trump claimed that negotiations with Iran were going well, even as Iran publicly insisted it would never agree to end its uranium enrichment program. The dismissed officials were broadly characterized as traditional hawks who had supported Israel's offensives in Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, and all had been critics of compromising with Iran to reach a nuclear deal. Israeli officials were reported to be concerned about the removal of Trager alongside Ceren.

Wayne Wall replaced Eric Trager as senior director for the Middle East after the Trump administration restructured the NSC in spring 2025. Wall was one of the first senior hires at the NSC since the broad purge ordered by Trump and acting national security adviser Marco Rubio.

Outlook

Trager's departure from the NSC left him without a public institutional role as of mid-2025, and no subsequent appointment has been reported. His brief tenure at the NSC illustrated both the influence and the limits of the hawkish, institutionalist wing of Republican foreign policy in the second Trump administration. Officials like Trager — credentialed regional experts recruited through traditional channels — found themselves operating in an administration that, when it moved to reshape its national security apparatus, prioritized personal loyalists and military intelligence figures over think-tank alumni and congressional staff professionals.

The broader trajectory of the NSC restructuring in which he was caught suggests that the administration's Middle East policy calculus shifted in early 2025 toward direct personal diplomacy conducted by figures like Witkoff, with the traditional senior-director layer playing a reduced part. Whether Trager returns to government, to the Senate staff world, or to the policy research community from which he came remains to be seen. His record — hands-on scholarly expertise, years of bipartisan Senate staff service, and direct involvement in the Gaza and regional diplomatic files during a critical opening stretch — will likely keep him visible in Republican foreign policy circles.