Biden should use what remains of his presidency to act in the Middle East
By Robert E. Hunter - November 11, 2024
Without domestic constraints, he is free to stop aligning US policy with the wishes of Benjamin Netanyahu
With last Tuesday’s election in the US, President Joe Biden officially
became a lame-duck, even though he still has a little over two months
left in office. That is certainly true in domestic matters, where
Congress would also need to act. Not so in foreign policy. Biden will
retain all the powers of the presidency until high noon on January 20.
He
could act, especially in the Middle East, where the president and other
American political leaders have been previously constrained by domestic
politics. Those constraints no longer apply, and Biden has virtually
cost-free latitude to stop aligning US policy with the wishes of
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
American
sympathies were all with Israel after Hamas’s monstrous assault on
October 7 2023; but Israel’s excesses in Gaza and now in Lebanon,
killing and wounding thousands of civilians and turning Gaza into a
wasteland, have turned support to widespread outrage. And the US has in
effect become an unacknowledged co-belligerent because of Israel’s
almost total dependence on American weaponry.
Biden
faces a self-imposed deadline of November 13. On October 15, his
secretaries of state and defence wrote to Israel’s security leaders that
it would need to permit real humanitarian relief for Gaza within 30
days. The deadline was obviously chosen to fall beyond the US elections.
The letter said: “Failure to demonstrate a sustained commitment to
implementing and maintaining these [humanitarian] measures may have
implications for US policy under . . . relevant US law.”
Biden
is thus obliged to tell Israel to open borders to true humanitarian
relief or to face some unstated consequences. To have any chance of
success, these need to be a full cutting off of all US military and
political support for Israel unless and until Netanyahu complies.
The
US president could do the same when it comes to halting the conflict in
Gaza and Lebanon, replacing them with US-led ongoing diplomacy. This is
in American interests, but for Biden, who has almost always deferred to
Netanyahu, it would almost surely be a bridge too far.
Geopolitically
more important is Iran. Netanyahu has tried for years to drag the US
into direct confrontation with the Islamic republic.
A key concern is Iran’s nuclear programme. As president, Barack Obama
took care of that risk, at least for a decade, by negotiating the 2015
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Iran would severely limit its
nuclear programme (it did), and the US would lift many sanctions (it
did). But in a supreme irony, Netanyahu vigorously opposed this step to
reduce the risk of an Iranian bomb, including in two speeches to joint
sessions of the US Congress (in 2015 and 2024.)
Just
resuming efforts to address the nuclear crisis would mean achieving
nothing under Biden’s presidency, and Netanyahu appears to be (almost
certainly) looking to Trump to give him a green light on military action
against Iran — and with a high chance that the US would get dragged in.
Only a bold move — rejoining the JCPOA — has a chance of breaking the
cycle and reducing Netanyahu’s opportunity to use Trump as enabler for
Israeli military action against Iran.
Now
it is argued that Iran is close to having enough fissile material for
the bomb. And the world is waiting to see whether Israeli-Iranian
hostilities will escalate, which could bring major risk of all-out
regional war and threats to the west’s vital oil supplies. Biden could
try to break this cycle with a stroke of a pen by rejoining the JCPOA
and challenging Iran to reciprocate. The US has nothing to lose.