Area specialists trained in the Middle East Area Program (MEAP) became the core staff in the State Department's division of Near East and South Asian Affairs (NEA). Through language skill, academic training and hard work they built genuine area expertise. They based their policy recommendations upon what they had studied in their university training and the MEAP, the information they gathered using their language skills and their experience working as political reporting officers in posts across the region. Their worldview was shaped not just by education but also by their direct experience of tumultuous events and violence toward American diplomats and institutions in the region.

The Middle East hands were committed to promoting America's national interests and supporting US policy, but they did not have a homogenous point of view. They saw themselves as diplomatic professionals, with no commitment to any faction in the region or either side in the Arab–Israeli conflict. As political reporting officers they developed a discreet set of fundamental values rather than a dogmatic set of beliefs. Unlike the persistent Arabist stereotype, or the Orientalist reality, they were not apprenticed into a rigid policy system by senior officers.

From the foundation of their training, each Foreign Service officer (FSO) built their expertise without a rigid list of policy absolutes handed down from above. As regionalists, they recognized the Arab–Israeli conflict as the core problem facing US policy in the Middle East and one that endangered vital American interests. They saw the Soviets as opportunists and communism as a political philosophy that held little appeal for Arabs and Muslims. This clashed with the prevalent Cold War focus in Washington. Although Soviet subversion was a concern, it did not overrule everything else in their analysis.

The lessons learned by the Middle East hands can be summarized in six “Beirut Axioms”.

1. A comprehensive peace, based upon defined borders and resolution of the refugee problem, should be negotiated between Arabs and Israelis. The refugee problem, if left unresolved, portended violence for the peoples of the region and difficulties for American interests there.

2. The United States should not be too closely allied with or identified as siding with any faction or regime, whether Arab or Israeli.

3. The Soviets were not the primary regional threat and could only win by default.