From time to time, America deceives one of its Middle Eastern allies. “Who lost Iran?” they asked in 1979, while the chess regime was moving sideways, with Jimmy Carter and the State Department answering. “Who lost Egypt?” they asked in 2012, as the Muslim Brotherhood took power, with Barack Obama and the State Department answering.
“Who lost Israel?” will soon be added to this puzzled refrain. The answer will be President Biden and the State Department.
But this time, America will lose the region as a whole – to its historical rival, Russia. The Iranian war will escalate again, and Washington’s Arab and Israeli allies will move on without anyone losing too much sleep on what the White House thinks about anything. This is a deliberate strategic choice and will lead to the collapse of American influence in West Asia.
The Biden team seems determined to revive Iran’s agreement at all costs. The costs include the completion of the Democrats’ removal from the Jewish state and the complete alienation of America’s Sunni Arab clients. Moreover, when the nuclear deal is revived, Washington will repeat a failed experiment in hopes of different results.
The Iranian regime will not accept a tougher agreement than the 2015 agreement, and the Biden administration is Obama 3.0: The same team seeks to rehabilitate its reputation, not to ensure the national interest. The Obama-Bidenites will accept any humiliation from Tehran and will call it a diplomatic discovery.
The Obama-Biden Mideast pattern, favored by much of Washington’s foreign policy knowledge, involves abandoning America’s allies and perversely empowering the Tehran regime, putting what Henry Kissinger called “a flat path to a weapon.” nuclear power ”.
Former President Donald Trump rejected that pattern. He knew bankruptcy when he saw it and told the Americans what the rest of the world already knows: their experts are stupid, their policies in the Middle East are a catalog of failure.
Trump renounced the agreement with Iran and chose isolation. And it shattered the “land for peace” paradigm between Israel and the Palestinians – and concluded peace agreements between the Jewish state and four Arab states.
Fortunately, much of Trump’s legacy is blocked. The Biden team cannot withdraw the Abraham Accords, nor can it return the US embassy to Tel Aviv. No one in the region now imagines the total withdrawal of Israelis from the disputed territories known as the West Bank.
The only area where Trump’s legacy is not blocked is the agreement with Iran. Do not believe the new Secretary of State Antony Blinken when he says that the administration wants an extended agreement or that the administration will consult with the American allies. The Biden team is a rebirth of the Obama administration and inherits the ignorance and arrogance that led to the obtaining of Obama’s nose from the desert sand by Ayatollah Khamenei.
The Biden team has already indicated that it wants to re-evaluate relations with Saudi Arabia and has taken Yemeni Hudists from the list of terrorists as part of Iran. The Prime Minister of Israel had to wait for his call from Biden.
The Bidenites might imagine putting America’s poor and needy allies in their place. But in reality, the Biden team is only accelerating the arrival of a post-American Middle East.
The Israelis have announced that they have assassinated Iranian nuclear planner Mohsen Fakhrizadeh without any US involvement and with minimal notification to Washington. The Saudis are moving towards open relations with Israel as the anti-Tehran front strengthens.
Russia has already replaced America as the main foreign power in the region, and Netanyahu would probably prefer to deal with Vladimir Putin with Biden. Turkey is pushing for Syria and Iraq.
Meanwhile, Chinese investment is pouring in. If the United States loses control of the Middle East and, in particular, the Persian Gulf, it will lose control of the most valuable waterway in the world.
So the question is not so big “Who lost Israel?” as “The US loses the entire Middle East?” And the answer must be yes.
This prospect alarms American Jews and evangelical Christians, but Israel will be fine without Washington. His new friends need his technical and military strength, and his new bosses do not share the left-wing fetish for the Palestinians.
The United States, however, will not be okay: it will be reduced to a decaying, irrelevant power, capable only of blocking movements and blocking – and being excluded from the world of the 21st century.
Dominic Green is the US Deputy Editor of the Spectator.
Twitter: @DrDominicGreen