Uncle Joe and the Shifting Dunes of the Middle East

Dr. Saul Zadka, our international analyst, interviews himself about the recent visit of the American president to the region…

Will it be fair to say that all Biden wanted to achieve by his trip was to lower the Saudi oil prices in order to ease the pressure on the American economy?

Certainly not. He had other burning issues on his agenda. First and foremost, he wanted to re-set American relationship with the Arab World after a long period of disengagement under presidents Obama and Trump.

So why did he go to Israel? Was it a necessary stopover?

Because he wanted to re-assure the Israelis that he is committed to non-nuclear Iran and because he wanted to build on the Abraham accords of his predecessor and form an anti-Iranian Arab-Israeli military alliance, modelled on NATO. More than anything else he wanted to bring Saudi-Arabia into such an alliance by persuading the kingdom to normalise relations with Israel like UAE, Morocco and Bahrain did.

And did he succeed?

Of course not. The Saudis would not recognise Israel without an independent Palestinian state and that’s the reason why Biden met the president of the Palestinian authority during his visit to Israel. All the Saudis were willing to give was a free passage to Israeli commercial jets to use its airspace, but under the table much more is happening between the countries.

And did he manage to grant the Palestinians their wish? Did he commit himself to their independence?

No. He offered them money and a lot of sympathy, but not sovereignty. He told them that he supports a two-state solution, but it must wait since the “ground is not ripe” for implementing the idea. He did not elaborate, but he probably meant that Israel is ruled by a caretaker government and that Hamas, the ruler of Gaza, does not even recognise Israel’s right to exist. He did not even promise to re-open the American Consulate in Jerusalem and the Palestinian mission in Washington, closed by President Trump.

So the Israelis must be happy about it…

Yes and no. On one hand he did not even call for a halt to settlements building in the West Bank. On the other, he indicated that his administration would safeguard Palestinian rights in the future. His visit to East Jerusalem could be seen as recognising the Palestinian link to this part of the city.

He neither shared the Israeli view about the Iranian nuclear deal…

And that’s another bone of contention. Biden wants a deal. Israel opposes any deal. But Biden would not object to any step that the Jewish state takes in order to prevent Iran from obtaining the bomb. In other words, Israel has a free hand to assassinate nuclear scientists, missile engineers and Revolutionary Guard leaders. Israel is also given a tacit green light to sabotage nuclear facilities and destabilize the regime.

To the delight of the Sunni Arab world…

Yes. Arab leaders may hide their public glee when such assassinations take place, but unlike Israel they want a deal with Iran, even in its current form. They regard Trump’s decision to scrap the deal as a mistake because it allowed the Ayatollahs to develop its nuclear programme without supervision.

In Saudi-Arabia he was forced to meet Muhammed Bin Salman who was accused by the CIA to order the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. In his election campaign he also branded the Kingdom a “pariah state”. How did square the circle by his visit?

Oh. That was a bitter pill to swallow. The administration tried to portray the visit in Jeddah as a summit with regional leaders and diminished the importance of the encounter with MBS. It also pretended that the Saudis would be represented by his father King Salmam. In the end Biden did not shake hands with the Crown Prince, but they rubbed fists with each other. MBS, on his part, accused the Americans of human rights violations during its occupation of Iraq.

So did Biden cement the US relations with the Arab world?

Again. Yes and no. Nothing is clear cut in the Middle East. He failed in his attempt to rally it against Iran. The UAE told him that they prefer Cooperation and not confrontation. Ironically, the Emirates are in the process of improving relations with Tehran and so is Saudi-Arabia. The UN-brokered ceasefire in Yemen is still holding and a military alliance with Israel without solving the Palestinian problem does not seem to be an attractive option in Arabia.

Suddenly Khashoggi does not seem to be so important and the Saudi kingdom ceased to be a pariah state…

Yes. Because there is so much more at stake. As Biden himself said when announcing that the US in back in business: “We would not walk away from the Middle East and leave a vacuum filled by Russia, China and Iran”. The oil prices were not mentioned but they linger in the air. More important was the American attempt to stop the Saudis inching towards Beijing and Moscow where human rights are non-existent.

And to think that the trip itself was triggered by the war in Ukraine…

And that’s why Biden started his talks from a position of inferiority. He did not mention human rights violation with his Egyptian counterpart whose country suffers from a wheat shortage due to the invasion of Ukraine. He even refrained from criticizing the Iraqi PM over a new recent law passed by the Parliament in Baghdad according to which any contact with Israelis is punishable by death.

So, in the end, did Biden succeed in his mission?

On the face of it everybody expressed satisfaction. In reality nobody was overwhelmingly happy. For the US it is the start of a long process to re-assert itself in region after many years of negligence. Vladimir Putin is in Tehran on Thursday and no Arab leader would choose his side now. They still need the Americans and Washington is aware of that. The Middle Eastern version of NATO will wait for a better day.

Saul Zadka

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