Juan Cole
At least one thing is now obvious in the Middle East: The Biden administration has failed abjectly in its objectives there, leaving the region in dangerous disarray. Its primary foreign policy goal has been to rally its regional partners to cooperate with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremist government. Simultaneously, it would uphold a “rules-based” international order and block Iran and its allies in their policies. Clearly, such goals have had all the coherence of a chimera and have failed for one obvious reason.
US President Joe Biden’s Achilles’ heel has been his “bear hug” of Netanyahu, who allied himself with the Israeli equivalent of neo-Nazis and launched a ruinous total war on the people of Gaza. He did this in the wake of the horrific October 7 Hamas terrorist attack Israel suffered in 2023.
Biden also signed on to the Abraham Accords, a project initiated in 2020 by Jared Kushner, the son-in-law and special Middle East envoy of then-President Donald Trump. Through them the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco all agreed to recognize Israel’s statehood. In return, Israel granted them investment and trade opportunities, as well as access to American weaponry and a US security umbrella.
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