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On the campaign trail, newly-inaugurated President Joe Biden’s main pitch was that his presidency would mark a sharp break from that of his predecessor, Donald Trump. Biden promised a return to decency and normalcy, a restoration of the nation’s soul. On the crucial topic of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, however, the new boss doesn’t seem very different from the old boss.
Given the prevailing sense of anxiety over the Trump administration, it was only natural that voters would look to Trump’s opponent as a more sensible, kinder foil to the former real-estate mogul. But a glance over Biden’s history in U.S. politics shows this hope to be little more than wishful thinking. Biden has always been a hawk in his attitude toward the world outside the U.S.A.’s borders. A quick glance over Biden’s record in the Middle East illuminates this fact.
In June 1986, less than four years since the end of Israel’s war of aggression (defined at the Nuremberg trials as “the supreme international crime”) against Lebanon, in which over 20,000 civilians were killed, then-Senator Joe Biden proclaimed that “it is about time we stop… apologizing for our support for Israel… It is the best $3 billion investment we make. Were there not an Israel the United States of America would have to invent an Israel…”.
Two decades later, when the George W. Bush administration was gearing up for another war of aggression in the Middle East, this time against Iraq, Joe Biden was in a position to potentially inhibit it. He chose instead to enable it. As chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he supported Bush’s illegal war at every step.
In July 2002, Biden organized a series of hearings in the Senate to discuss Iraq. None of the witnesses called to testify objected to the lies that Iraq was harboring weapons of mass destruction and that al-Qaeda received direct support from the Iraqi government. On Oct. 11 of that year, he voted to authorize war against Iraq, which went on to kill a million Iraqis and destabilize the region for decades. It is thus perhaps not surprising that twenty years later, Biden is turning down another opportunity for peace, this time with Iran.
One of Biden’s major promises on the campaign trail was to re-enter the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal (officially the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA). The deal, which Trump unceremoniously tore up in 2018, obligated the Islamic Republic of Iran to halt its nuclear program and submit to inspections in exchange for an end to crippling sanctions imposed by the US.
Iran has maintained its willingness to re-enter the JCPOA on the ground that the United States, as the party to initially break compliance, first return to its obligations under the deal. However, on 1 Feb., 2021, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif demonstrated a willingness to adopt a more flexible approach, proposing that both countries synchronize their resumption of JCPOA obligations under European Union supervision. The Biden administration, however, dodged this offer, insisting that Iran must halt its nuclear program before the US would reciprocate.
Iran has repeatedly asserted that it will not wait forever for the United States to soften its stance. In Dec., 2020, Iran’s parliament passed legislation which set a two month deadline for the United States to lift sanctions on Iran, after which its negotiating stance would harden. The Iranian presidential elections, set to occur June 2021, impose another potential time limit on the U.S. Given Iran’s current political climate, Iran’s current moderate President Hassan Rouhani will likely be replaced by a conservative, who may refuse to re-enter the deal at all.
While Biden’s approach to Iran thus far differs from Trump’s stylistically, it amounts to the same end: the intensification of hostilities between the two nations. Iran has every reason to resent Washington’s sanctions regime: the sanctions restrict Iran’s supply of crucial medicines and other essential goods, a death sentence for many Iranians even before the COVID-19 pandemic, which has affected Iran worse than any other Middle Eastern country.
Biden’s policy towards Israel presents another point of comparison. While Biden is unlikely to be as openly supportive of Israel’s illegal policies towards the Occupied Territories as Trump, he is just as unlikely to substantially challenge Israel on those policies.
Biden has so far refused to revise any of Trump’s policies towards the Israeli occupations of Palestinian and Syrian land. The Biden administration has confirmed that the US Embassy in Israel will remain in Jerusalem, effectively legitimizing Israel’s illegal annexation of East Jerusalem shortly after its occupation in June 1967. The Biden administration’s policy towards the Syrian Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in 1967 and illegally annexed in 1981, appears to be more of the same.
Questioned on the occupied Golan Heights, Secretary of State Tony Blinken stated that “leaving aside the legalities of that question… the Golan is very important to Israel’s security as long as Assad is in power in Syria…”. Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights is illegal under international law, violating UN Resolution 242, which mandates the “[w]ithdrawal of Israel[i] armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict [the 1967 Six-Day War].” Far from Syrian possession of the Golan Heights being a danger to Israel, Israeli possession of the territory is a severe danger to Syria, given that Israel has launched hundreds of attacks on Syria since 2011, many of them from the Golan Heights. In effect, Blinken is stating that inducing Israel to follow international law is of secondary importance to allowing Israel to use the Golan to further violate international law.
The only area of Biden’s Middle East policy which breaks from the previous administration’s is the 4 Feb. announcement that Biden would cut off military aid to Saudi Arabia in its war against Yemen. The war in Yemen has been raging since the Ansar-Allah movement (colloquially called the Houthis) ousted the unelected government of Abdrabbah Mansour Hadi in late 2014. In 2015, Saudi Arabia, backed by the Obama-Biden administration, attacked Yemen to reinstate Hadi, causing 130,000 deaths and the imposition of famine conditions over much of Yemen.
Though likely a positive development overall, Biden’s promise includes several caveats. First, Biden has only ended support for ‘offensive’ Saudi operations in Yemen. Given the ambiguity of the distinction between ‘offensive’ and ‘defensive’ military operations, especially given that Saudi Arabia has frequently framed its war on Yemen as ‘defensive,’this could easily be used to justify further US support. Secondly, Biden administration officials have clarified that the decision does not affect US operations against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Given the constantly-shifting and ambiguous pattern of regional alliances on the ground in Yemen, this could also be used as a blanket justification to conduct strikes in the country.
Biden’s policy towards the Middle East so far should serve as a sobering reminder. Just as Biden broadly follows Trump’s lead in the region, so too did Trump broadly follow Obama, Obama Bush, and so on. US actions in the Middle East are guided by imperial interests, not the individual personalities of individual presidents. For Iranians denied essential medicine under a harsh sanctions regime, Palestinians displaced by Israeli settlements, and Yemenis surviving under Saudi bombardment, it really doesn’t matter who sits in the Oval Office.
