Business Times
Back to the Middle East?
Is Biden embracing a new US strategy for the region or is he just muddling through?
Tue, Jul 12, 2022
IN THE aftermath of the costly US interventions in Iraq and the rest of the Greater Middle East, there has been a lot of talk in Washington about the need to reassess America’s military presence there and perhaps even consider a gradual disengagement from the region.
Indeed, much has changed since the heights of the American interventions in the region following the series of major Arab-Israeli wars, and the oil crises that followed the 1973 Middle East war and the 1979 revolution in Iran.
Those crises demonstrated the Western economies’ dependency on the energy resources in the region and the need to contain the Soviet threat there during the Cold War coupled with concerns over anti-American sentiments in the Arab World over the US support for Israel.
That was the backdrop for the interventionist US military policy in the Middle East and its activist diplomacy aimed at resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. It continued even after the end of the Cold War when the US forced Iraq out of Kuwait in 1991, propped up Saudi Arabia and the other Arab oil-producing states and led an Israeli-Palestinian peace process, achieving a hegemonic position in the region.
But the war against terror and ensuing US military interventions in the region highlighted the high costs of those policies, at a time when the American economy was facing serious challenges while it ceased to rely on oil imports from the region, becoming a major energy producer.
President Barack Obama responded to those geopolitical changes by ending the war in Iraq and distancing the US from its two traditional allies in the region, Israel and Saudi Arabia, and by reaching a nuclear deal with their arch-enemy, Iran.
President Donald Trump, like his predecessor, resisted pressure to intervene in the civil war in Syria. He placed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the foreign policy backburner while revoking the Iran nuclear deal and trying to help forge military ties between Israel and the Arab Gulf states.
President Joe Biden entered office trying to revert to the policies of his former boss, Barack Obama. Biden pledged to return to the nuclear deal with Iran as he faced growing pressure from the left-leaning forces in the Democratic Party to reassess the “special relationship” with Saudi Arabia and Israel.
And, indeed, when it comes to Saudi Arabia, the changes in US policy have been quite dramatic. The murder of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents, the Saudi brutal tactics in the war in Yemen, and opposition by the Saudis to any US rapprochement with Iran, helped ignite a diplomatic crisis between those two old allies.
President Biden stressed his commitment to revive the nuclear deal with Iran, demanded that the Saudis end their participation in the war in Iran, and threatened to reduce arms sales to the Saudis and their allies.
Moreover, the Biden administration’s climate strategy aimed at reducing the American economy’s reliance on fossil fuel industries only helped to underscore Saudi Arabia’s reduced geo-economic power and value to US geo-strategic interests.
President Biden went on to publicly criticise the Saudis and, reflecting the influence of the human rights lobby in his party, he promised to turn Saudi Arabia into an international “pariah” and ordered the release of US intelligence findings that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (aka MBS) was behind the murder and dismemberment of Khashoggi.
These US policies towards Saudi Arabia, coupled with the attempt to renew the nuclear deal with Iran, were also now welcomed in Jerusalem. The Israeli government, in the aftermath of the signing of the historic 2020 Abraham Accords, was hoping that Washington would help facilitate the growing ties between Israel and the Arab Gulf states, as part of an effort to contain the power of Iran in the region.
Some reports suggested that the Israelis and the Saudis were close to establishing diplomatic relations and the tensions between the Americans and the Saudis weren’t going to help that to happen.
And then geopolitical reality in the form of the Russian invasion of Ukraine struck. The war since February this year, and the ensuing sanctions against Russia, coupled with the earlier efforts to restrict oil production in the name of saving the environment, have put upward pressure on global energy prices.
And together with the tariffs imposed on China, exploding government spending and Fed monetary policies, the evolving energy crisis helped ignite massive inflationary pressures that threatened US economic recovery as well as President Biden’s chances of getting re-elected in 2024.
Facing that changing economic and political environment, President Biden and his aides concluded that the key to countering the sky-high energy prices and strengthening the West’s position in its confrontation with Russia, not to mention helping the president get re-elected, was in the hands of MBS. In a way, the Saudi leader was in a position to increase oil production and put downward pressure on the price that American consumers pay for their gas at the pump.
So after emphasising for two years his readiness to isolate and punish the Saudis and MBS, President Biden will travel this week to the Middle East, including to Saudi Arabia where he would meet with MBS during a major gathering of regional leaders in Jeddah, the Saudi port city.
Administration officials insist that the visit to Saudi Arabia and the meeting with MBS should not be seen for what they are -- an American president pleading with an alleged human rights violator to help the US and its Western allies by flooding the energy markets with new oil supplies.
President Biden's first stop this week will be in Israel and the West Bank where he will be conferring with Israeli and Palestinian leaders and outlining what his press secretary described as his “affirmative vision for US engagement in the region over the coming months and years”.
Biden administration officials reiterate that the Middle East trip isn’t about oil. But the Middle Eastern leaders whom the president will meet this week recognise that it was unlikely that the US president would be visiting were it not for Russia's invasion of Ukraine and its impact on the global oil market.
President Biden and his aides have said that the administration would be working to facilitate an improvement in the Israeli-Saudi relationship and try to advance the peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
But America’s allies in the region and, in particular, the Saudis and the Israelis, are very sceptical of the notion that the Biden administration intends to return to full-time US diplomatic activism in the Middle East.
They remain concerned that despite all the many diplomatic setbacks it has faced in trying to revive the Iran nuclear agreement, the White House is still hoping to reach a deal with Tehran that both Jerusalem and Riyadh regard as a move that will threaten their core national security interests.
President Biden would try to reassure the Arab Gulf states that the US plans to help them stop Iran from going nuclear and spreading its influence in the region. According to some reports, he would promise to provide them with an advanced integrated air defence system against missiles and drones
But while America may not be withdrawing from the Middle East, it has to deal now with other priorities, including Russia and China, and no one expects Washington to return to playing an active role in bringing the Israelis and the Palestinians together to the negotiating table. In short, the US isn’t about to re-pivot back to the Middle East anytime soon.
It’s an open secret that Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are hoping that President Biden would not be re-elected and that the friendlier Republicans will return to the White House in 2024.
Both Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu -- who is projected to return as Prime Minister after Israel’s parliamentary election in November -- and Saudi Arabia’s MBS maintained close political and personal ties with former President Donald Trump and his son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner as well as with the top Republicans who are planning to run for president in two years.
The bottom line is that President Biden will be meeting this week with Middle East leaders who probably don’t trust him very much and, in any case, don’t expect very much from him.