Home » The challenges of Joe Biden’s visit to the Middle East – Francesca Gnetti

The challenges of Joe Biden’s visit to the Middle East – Francesca Gnetti

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The challenges of Joe Biden’s visit to the Middle East – Francesca Gnetti

July 13, 2022 4:29 pm

The last time Joe Biden was on an official visit to the Middle East was March 2016. He was the vice president of the United States. In the White House was Barack Obama. Eight months later Donald Trump allegedly challenged Hillary Clinton in the presidential election, but many at the time considered his rise to power an impossible dystopia. Relations with Israel were strained: Washington was reluctant to unreservedly support Tel Aviv’s expansionist policy towards the Palestinians. Israel had diplomatic relations with only two Arab countries: Egypt and Jordan.

In Saudi Arabia, the minister of defense, Mohammed bin Salman, son of King Salman, who had been in office for a year, was beginning to emerge as the strongman of the country and had launched a military operation, presented as quick and painless, in neighboring Yemen. Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi regularly wrote comments on Al Arabiya and the Middle East Eye and appeared in the international media, beginning to quarrel with the authorities over his critical positions. The Iran nuclear deal, which had been in place for less than a year, seemed to be holding up.

Six years later, on his first visit to the region as president, Biden will find a very different Middle East. As Patrick Kingsley writes in the New York Times, “alliances, priorities and relations with the United States have changed significantly”. His visit begins today, July 13, in Israel and Palestine, and ends in three days in Saudi Arabia. And these countries represent more than any other reality the evolutions and developments, but also the immobility and gangrene, which have characterized the region in recent years.

New dynamics, old problems
The most significant legacies left in the Middle East by the four years of Trump’s presidency were probably two. The first is what the former president himself called the “deal of the century”, but many rejected it as “a farce”, which involved Israel’s annexation of large portions of the West Bank. The second is the promotion of the so-called Abrahamic Agreements with which Israel normalized relations with three other Arab countries – Bahrain, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates – considered “a betrayal” by the Palestinians. We must not forget the exit from the Iranian nuclear agreement, decided unilaterally by Trump in May 2018. For the rest, more generally, his administration has implemented a policy of disengagement from the Middle East, trying to intervene as little as possible. possible and also violating some commitments made, as evidenced by the decision to abandon the Kurdish allies in Syria in 2019.

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When he took office as president, Biden vowed to reshape US foreign policy in the Middle East, with an emphasis on promoting democracy and human rights. In fact, Aamer Madhani and Darlene Superville in the Associated Press point out, “he had difficulty on several fronts in significantly separating his approach from that of former President Donald Trump.” Many criticized Biden for changing his attitude towards Saudi Arabia – which he had defined as a “pariah” state due to the bad situation of human rights – and in particular of Mohammed bin Salman, known as Mbs, who in the meantime became crown prince and protagonist of the world political scene, accused of having ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018.

A new regional alliance is emerging against Iran, which should be formally announced during Biden’s visit

Now Biden seems to have changed his calculations, and has come to the conclusion that “there is more to be gained by courting the country rather than isolating it,” Madhani and Superville continue. The Russian attack on Ukraine turned the tables: Biden needs the Saudis and other oil-rich countries to agree to increase production to mitigate the global energy crisis and reduce dependence on Moscow. In a column published in the Washington Post on July 9, Biden defended his choice to go to Saudi Arabia, referring to US national security.

According to The Arab Weekly, the visit marks “the renunciation of clearly unrealistic attempts” to marginalize MBS for its responsibility in the Khashoggi case and the commitment to find a balance between “rupture and continuity” with respect to Donald Trump’s legacy. Biden is also likely to take advantage of this to reaffirm US influence in the region. In particular, Simon Tisdall points out in the Guardian that there are also profound implications for Yemen and Syria: “Ending the war in Yemen, which produced the worst humanitarian emergency in the world since the Saudi intervention in 2015 against the rebels supported by the ‘Iran, is a key target of Biden. The hope is that bin Salman will make the truce in force in the country permanent. In what would be another major shift, the United States could also offer economic incentives to a second pariah, Bashar al Assad, in an attempt to counter Russian influence in Syria ”.

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In the wake of Trump
In the background of Biden’s visit there is another sensitive issue: the restoration of the Iranian nuclear deal. The indirect talks between the US and Iran in Qatar in late June ended without progress, but Tehran, hoping for a relaxation of sanctions, insists that an agreement is still possible. According to Tisdall, Biden also has another incentive to reach some kind of agreement: this could “triple the amount of Iranian oil on global markets”.

Meanwhile, a new regional alliance is emerging against Iran, which should be formally announced during Biden’s visit. An article by René Backmann on the French site Mediapart explains which countries are joining and with what objectives. Called the Middle East Air Defense Alliance, this Washington-sponsored organization is set to combat the threat Iranian missiles and drones pose to states in the region. It includes Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Qatar. It is based, explains Backmann, “on the existence in each member country of an advanced detection system for hostile airborne intrusions, a protected communication network and weapons for interception, all interconnected. This allows each ally to warn others, in real time, of the arrival of a drone or missile from Iran or one of its allies in the region. And eventually to neutralize it “.

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The alliance is part of the logic of the Abrahamic agreements, demonstrating that in a certain sense Biden’s policy in the Middle East follows the trail left by Trump. The trend is also confirmed with regard to Israel and Palestine. As a candidate Biden had condemned the Trump administration’s support for the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. But as president he was unable to stem Tel Aviv’s anti-Palestinian policy or to propose new initiatives to restart the long-standing peace talks. In a letter to Biden, family members of Shireen Abu Akleh, killed in May in the West Bank, accused her administration of justifying the Israeli army, held responsible for the death of the Palestinian journalist.

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After all, no one expects much from this visit, if not a confirmation from the United States of the new dynamics and the new order that is taking shape in the Middle East. The old critical issues and problems that have characterized the region for decades remain in the background, without the slightest hint of a vague intention of wanting to address them. Madhani and Superville comment in the Associated Press: “Biden often talks about the importance of relations in foreign policy. His decision to visit the Middle East on a trip that promises little in the way of tangible results suggests that he is looking to invest in the region over the long term ”. It is also true, as several experts point out, that Arab leaders already seem to be looking beyond Biden, towards an era in which the United States could again be led by Donald Trump or “his avatar,” as he told The Associated. Press Aaron David Miller, former US consultant in Israeli Arab negotiations and now a member of the Carnegie endowment for international peace. Meanwhile, the coming months will tell if Biden will be able to promote a policy of dialogue in the Middle East in a period of great geopolitical uncertainty. It would already be something.

This article is an excerpt from Mediorentale, Internazionale’s newsletter that tells what is happening in the Middle East. Sign up here.

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