The Middle East is one of the world’s most volatile regions. How can the United States use its power to help bring peace there? A blessing in and of itself, Middle East peace would also free the U.S. to turn its attention to what is now an area of greater strategic importance to it, the Asia-Pacific region.
The Obama and Trump administrations had two diametrically opposed solutions to the problem. Obama followed a policy of appeasing Iran, a revolutionary and expansionist regime since the 1979 revolution. By negotiating the 2015 nuclear arms agreement with Iran, the U.S. pushed back Iran’s progress toward acquiring nuclear weapons. The price, however, was lifting sanctions and making cash payments. The result left the Iranian regime better able to expand its power in the region by non-nuclear means.
Trump followed a different policy. With the Abraham Accords, the Trump administration got four Arab states—Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates—to normalize relations with Israel, with Saudi Arabia a silent partner. It’s a milestone to have former enemies agree to open up to each other. So is the geopolitical bottom line, to wit, building an anti-Iranian coalition in the Middle East. It was part of a Trump administration strategy to keep the peace in the region by a combination of tough sanctions on Iran, toleration of Israeli covert actions against Iran’s nuclear facilities, closing off the financial spigot that financed Palestinian terrorism, and the encouragement of new agreements between Muslim states and Israel. That strategy, however, is now being upended by a return to Obama era policies.
The Biden administration is determined to negotiate a return to the 2015 deal with Iran, or at least a revised version thereof, in which Iran would pledge to slow its drive toward nuclear weapons in exchange for the lifting of sanctions and perhaps additional financial incentives. In practice, a revised deal won’t work. Iran cheated on the 2015 deal with gusto and will surely cheat again. The upshot will be the very nuclearization of the Middle East that the U.S. wishes to avoid. If the U.S. agrees to Iran’s condition of lifting all sanctions, the U.S. will lose any leverage of enforcing the deal other than by violent means. More important, Iran is destabilizing the Middle East other than with the threat of nuclear weapons: with Iranian militias in Syria; Iranian support for the Houthis in Yemen and their attacks on Saudi Arabia and on Israeli shipping; with its support of Hezbollah in Lebanon; and with the threat of missile attacks on Israel.
In its first hundred days, the Biden administration has lifted sanctions against the Houthis. It has restored aid to the Palestinian Administration (PA) that the Trump administration had cut off because of the PA’s support for terrorism. Biden has appointed several anti-Israel advocates to important foreign policy positions in the administration. It may or may not be an accident that the Houthis have since launched drone attacks that the Saudis have shot down. Or that Iranian-backed rocket attacks, on targets in Iraq housing U.S. personnel, have increased. Or that the PA has canceled the upcoming elections that threatened its hold on power. Or that violent riots targeting Israeli civilians have recently broken out in Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Iran has frequently said that it considers the destruction of Israel among its chief foreign policy goals. Israel has said that it considers a nuclear Iran to be an existential threat, and so it opposes a renewed deal. As part of that deal with Iran, the U.S. will surely try to prevent any future Israeli covert actions against Iran, no doubt on the grounds such as (a) they could only stop Iran temporarily and (b) they would only stir up a violent reaction. Israel has said that that it won’t feel bound by any new deal, and that it will retain its freedom of action against Iran. Where will that leave the US-Israel relationship? And where will it leave the anti-Iran coalition of the Abraham Accords? The participants might double down on the agreement or they might decide to make friends with Iran after all.
Saudi Arabia is at least considering the latter course. While the Iranians have greenlighted increased Houthi attacks on the Kingdom, they have also begun talks with the Saudis to explore détente. Ever fearful of a threat from Iranian expansion, the Saudis no longer feel that they have Washington’s support for a policy of confrontation, as they did under the Trump administration. Although not a party to the Abraham Accords, Saudi Arabia’s behavior will influence the agreement’s future.
Morocco, on the other hand, is a party to the Accords, and has recently been given grounds to maintain its support. The Biden administration has agreed to abide by the Trump administration’s decision to recognize Morocco’s claim to the disputed territory of Western Sahara. That recognition was Morocco’s condition for signing the agreement, so Morocco will presumably continue in the Accords. Yet Morocco is hardly a major player on the level of the Saudis.
History shows that appeasement works only if the state to be appeased is fundamentally peaceful and committed to co-existence. Iran is not such a regime. It has ambitions to dominate the region, export revolution even further afield, and to destroy the state of Israel.
“Death to America!” is second only to “Death to Israel!” as a chant used to stir up crowds in Iran, and has been since the revolution of 1979. It is hard to understand why the U.S. government wishes to empower such a regime. Why is the U.S. pursuing such a destructive course of action? Who benefits?
The Middle East will be many things under the Biden administration but, unfortunately, more peaceful is not one of them. Just the opposite is likely to happen.
—Barry Strauss
Barry Strauss is a military historian and classicist at Cornell University and the Corliss Page Dean Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author of Ten Caesars: Roman Emperors from Augustus to Constantine and hosts the podcast ANTIQUITAS.
