Unfortunately, the Middle East is finding a way to impose itself (on Washington policy). While Biden’s team has responded well to regional challenges, it still lacks a comprehensive regional strategy that our friends and partners can digest.
The Biden government has so far prevented the Middle East from boiling over, despite the need to focus on domestic issues and then the relations of the great powers. Joe Biden’s government has a clear position on the Iran nuclear deal and has stood against Tehran’s outrageous demands. At a time when the US Congress is not happy, Biden’s team has found creative ways to show the renewed US commitment to Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Kazemi, who desperately needs Washington’s support in the fight against pervasive corruption and destructive domination.
Biden’s team also rode a narrow rope, one side of which is the punishment for the murder of Jamal Khashgeji on the other hand, accepting the fact that the United States has an interest in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, then made it clear that Washington will not abandon the Saudis. Similarly, during the last battle in Gaza, the US government emphasized Israel’s right to self-defense and at the same time sought an immediate ceasefire and humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians. Given the situation on the ground, this performance of the United States was not so bad.
Unfortunately, the Middle East is finding a way to impose itself (on Washington policy). While Biden’s team has responded well to regional challenges, it still lacks a comprehensive regional strategy that our friends and partners can digest.
Over the past two months, we, the authors of this article, have traveled to Iraq, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, meeting with most of the top leaders of the three countries. Wherever we were, we felt hope and doubt about the US government’s approach to the region. In all of these countries, we found a constant point, which is the same confusion about what the Biden administration is looking for in the region, and there was a sense that Washington’s policies are passive and depend on the situation of each country. If Washington is to overcome this confusion, it must provide a comprehensive picture that encompasses all special country strategies to achieve a larger set of goals.
Formulating comprehensive strategies is never easy and cannot be reduced to a set of slogans. However, having such strategies is important to reassure our friends and deter our rivals, especially now that we have the twelve-year legacy of former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, during which the United States is slowly leaving the Middle East.
The vacuum created by this approach contributes greatly to the ongoing turmoil in Libya, Syria, Yemen, the civil strife in Egypt, Iraq and Turkey, the rise and fall of the Islamic State, the resurgence of authoritarianism after the hope of Arab spring, hundreds of thousands killed, millions of refugees, and in the midst of all this, the slow advance of Iran and its proxies, who took advantage of this opportunity and added to the troubles of this region.
The good news is that Biden and his team have convinced their Middle East partners that they will not forget the region altogether and that, unlike Obama and Trump, they will not back down from further Iranian aggression and expansionism. However, the Biden government has not told its Middle East partners how it intends to do so and what role they will play in the framework.
Designing such a strategy is difficult because Iran has significant gains across the region, and the United States and its allies must find a way to repel Iran without using massive resources. At the same time, such a strategy requires initiatives to help US regional partners cope with the consequences of the epidemic, the information revolution, the new global energy market, the balance of global transformative power, and the internal transformations of their own societies.
But doing so, no matter how difficult, will be costly if not done. In the absence of such a strategy, no government in the Middle East will know what the United States expects, wants, gives or receives, and in principle, what conditions the United States wants to create in the region and whether those conditions meet their needs and requirements. A senior Middle East leader told us: The United States is signaling to the region, “Do not follow me, I am lost.”
If America’s allies are not convinced where the United States will take them, they will not do much against the threats and will go their own way. Often, these actions block alternative processes that are preferred by the United States or are the source of new catastrophes in the region. This is exactly what happened during the Obama and Trump eras when the Saudis and the UAE invaded Yemen; Turkey, UAE, Egypt and Qatar intervened in Libya; Turkey intervened in Syria and northern Iraq, and of course, foreign powers such as Russia became more interfering. It was at this time that Israel sought to repel threats from Iran’s progressive nuclear program and its presence in Syria, pursuing a sustained air campaign in Syria and deadly covert operations inside Iran.
Of course, despite a clear overarching strategy for the region, the United States may not always be able to deter its allies from taking drastic action. But in the absence of such a strategy, it is almost certain that all countries in the region will adopt unilateral approaches, which will seldom have the effect of a coordinated approach with the United States and could lead to a wider conflict between them and the “axis of resistance.” Let Iran do what they do not want.
The Biden administration seems to have learned the lesson that while the US military does not want to make the Middle East a priority, it cannot ignore it. Without a comprehensive strategy for the region, Washington runs the risk of exploding the region so much that the United States will have to make it a priority again. This is the last thing President Biden needs!