As a candidate, Joe Biden made clear his intentions to take a vastly different course of action in foreign policy than his predecessor. As president, his first weeks in office have shown he is largely making good on those promises.
One of the starkest contrasts between Biden’s Middle East doctrine and that of Trump’s is that the new president’s approach is far less engaging. As of now, Biden’s strategy has been a sharp step back from the previous administration’s proactive stance. The years of Trump in office were marked by an aggressive plan of putting down threats to the region’s stability and U.S. interests. On the diplomatic end, Trump pushed normalization treaties previously thought impossible, the benefits of which will continue to be felt for years.
While Biden has attempted to tout his strategy as a return to normal, his new, more hands-off approach is presenting serious threats, not only to U.S. allies and interests but to the safety of the entire region.
At the center of Biden’s change in tactics is his shift on Iran. Throughout the campaign trail, Biden was adamant about the need to reset ties with the Tehran regime. He pledged to reintroduce a nuclear deal with the Ayatollahs to replace the one nixed by his predecessor in 2018. While the attempts to revive the deal have not progressed as quickly as Biden would have hoped, the very fact that Biden has chosen to a large extent disengage already benefits the regime tremendously. For years, Iran has been actively pursuing regional hegemony through its militant proxies the likes of Hezbollah, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and a host of militias trained and funded by the country’s Revolutionary Guard. Nations throughout the region have been alarmed by this so-called “Shia Crescent” agenda for the better part of two decades.
In a recent interview, one of the first since leaving the White House, former envoy to the Middle East, Jason Greenblatt, explained how Biden’s deference towards Iran will enable the regime to act with impunity. “The administration must stop its ostrich politics,” said Greenblatt, pointing to the president’s optimism that Iran will cooperate with the U.S. Greenblatt also spoke out against the current White House position of being prepared to make concessions to Iran if it sees the Ayatollahs are prepared to cooperate. “The Biden administration says it wants to see movement from the Iranians. But what does movement mean?” Greenblatt pointed out that it is dangerous for any U.S. president to expect Iran to act in good faith. “Iran is an enemy of the United States and an enemy of [its] Middle East allies. We have to stop pretending it will act like a normal nation.”
The soft-handed doctrine being pushed by the Biden White House could not come at a worse time for the region. Despite being in the throes of economic collapse, Iran’s expansionist projects have ramped up in recent years. Iran has been a primary source of arms for the Yemen Houthi rebels, the militant group that triggered the most devastating active conflict in the world today. Hezbollah, the Lebanese army of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, and an internationally recognized terror group receive millions in funding from Tehran annually. The long list of Iranian militant projects, from Gaza to Syria, to South America, have earned Tehran the designation as one of the top terror supporters in the world. Biden’s complacency on Iran simply sidesteps all these facts
Empowering an aggressive force like Iran would be bad enough. Unfortunately, all of Biden’s decisions have also come at the expense of an important U.S. ally in the region, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Biden’s antagonism toward the Saudis has been long known. During the campaign, the president referred to Saudi Arabia as a “pariah state” claiming its current leaders possess “very little social redeeming value.” By the early weeks of his presidency, Biden had translated these feelings into action. In February, the administration stated it would end support for Saudi Arabia’s operations in Yemen, even as the Kingdom continues to suffer attacks at the hands of the Iran-backed rebels. In another move to discredit the Saudis, the White House authorized the release of an intelligence report blaming the Crown Prince Muhamad bin Salman for the murder of a journalist in 2018. These and similar actions are being spurred by a position that has gained substantial popularity amongst Washington elites as of late, namely that Saudi Arabia is in fact not an important U.S. ally. According to a recently penned piece by Greenblatt, nothing could be further from the truth. Not only are the Saudis indispensable for American interests, denying this according to the former envoy, threatens the stability of the entire Middle East. “Based on my nearly three years at the White House working on Middle East-related matters, I believe the Kingdom and its leadership check the box on all [that] pertain to many of our regional interests.”
As Greenblatt drives home, the about-face being advocated by the Biden White House serves to weaken security relations that underpin the region’s stability. Furthermore, pushing the Saudis aside and engaging Iran directly is undermining much of the social and security progress in the Middle East as a whole. As Greenblatt put it: “Unless we behave and speak in a nuanced manner, recognize the differences we may have with our friends, partners, and allies, but also understand that we will only move our societies forward if we work together where we can, respect each other, and not arrogantly assert that ours is the only correct path, we will not make anywhere near the type of progress we must make.’
