The Biden administration has already made it clear that it will have a different approach to the Middle East. This seems like a good time to try to outline some of the major challenges it will face. I think there are three major countries that will command the lion's share of the U.S. attention: Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia.
This is a necessarily simplistic approach that understates the extent to which relations with one of these countries directly affect relations with the other two. It also ignores the implications of policy for countries outside the Middle East. The obvious case in point is the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the official name of the "Iranian nuclear deal") which requires the U.S. to seek the cooperation of not only Britain, France and Germany, but also Russia and China.
Iran: Enemy or Opponent.
The Trump administration made it clear that it regarded Iran as an enemy to be blamed for a wide range of "nefarious actions" and coerced with "maximum pressure" to comply with American demands. Leaving the nuclear deal and reinstating U.S. sanctions that made it extremely difficult for Iran to sell its oil on the open market was intended to inflict serious and widespread economic pain on Iran. And it did. The logic of causing widespread hardship for your enemy's population is that they will blame their leadership and its policies for their suffering and there will be serious anti-regime sentiment. But all the evidence, from studies of bombing Germany in World War II to the reaction of Americans to 9/11, suggests that people do not blame their leaders for their suffering but blame the foreigners who are inflicting the punishment. Iran has not reduced its support for its allies in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and elsewhere, nor has it stopped development of short and medium range ballistic missiles. The other five signatories to the nuclear deal have made serious efforts to to ease Iran's economic burdens and maintain the broad outlines of the agreement, while other outside actors have resorted to sabotage and targeted assassinations to try to cripple Iran's nuclear program. Nonetheless Iran has resumed the uranium enrichment that the world found so alarming five years ago.
Announcing the intention to rejoin the nuclear deal is easy; doing it is hard. Rejoining means lifting a series of economic sanctions imposed by the Trump administration and dealing with the fact that Iran is out of compliance with the specific terms of the deal covering the enrichment of uranium. The United States position is that it cannot lift the sanctions until Iran is back in compliance; Iran insists it cannot shut down the centrifuges until the United States lifts the sanctions. It will take some sophisticated diplomacy and hard bargaining behind the scenes to square the circle so each side can get what it needs without seeming to capitulate to the other. The most optimistic feature of the Biden team's approach to Iran is that it includes some of the most important players in the Obama administration's successful negotiation of the original deal. The hope is that the Iranians will respond to people with whom they have dealt in the past and can somehow be persuaded that whatever is agreed to now will not be swept aside by the next administration in Washington.
Which Israel?
The skill of Benjamin Netanyahu in cultivating a personal relations with Donald Trump was matched only by his skill in creating the myth that supporting Israel meant supporting Netanyahu and his right wing government. The governing coalition has pursued conservative religious, social and economic policies, emphasized Jewish national identity, and an anti-Arab attitude that, for some of the more extreme parties, was unabashedly racist. A socially conservative, somewhat xenophobic American administration with a soft spot for tough guy rulers would be predisposed to back Netanyahu. And the prominent place of American supporters of Netanyahu and his more hard line allies in Trump's circle of friends and informal advisors, along the special place support for Israel has in the evangelical Christian community led to a series of actions that undermined any chance America could be seen as an honest broker in peace talks.
March 23 is a momentous day in the history of Israel. For the fourth time in the past two years, Israeli voters will go to the polls to decide whether Benjamin Netanyahu will continue his tenure as Israel's longest serving Prime Minister. Israelis do not actually vote for Prime Minister and the actual question on the ballot is which party the voter prefers. But the national campaign and all the media coverage make it clear that regardless of which party the voter selects, they are voting for a member of a coalition that will either return Netanyahu or replace him.
The Israeli system is quite different from the American Not only is it a parliamentary system in which the leader of the party (or parties) with the most seats in the Knesset becomes Prime Minister, but representatives are not chosen by geographical constituencies. Instead there is only one ballot with all the eligible parties listed. Knesset seats are assigned based on the percentage of the national vote a party receives and each party has its own list of candidates that it uses to fill as many seats as it has won. As long as a party gets 3.5% of the national vote, it is entitled to at least one seat. It has been 50 years since one party actually won a 61 seat majority; Israeli governments are coalitions of medium-sized and small parties creating either a center-left or center-right government. The system has given outsized weight to small parties representing West Bank settlers or ultra-Orthodox religious groups.
Israelis are faced with the fourth national election in two years because the country is deeply polarized between more liberal, secular voters and more conservative and religious voters. The coalitions Netanyahu has put together have collapsed because they have included very small parties that have made demands that other coalition members would not agree to.
There are two elements in the coming election that make it different from the preceding three. One is that Yair Lapid, the opposition leader in the Knesset, is better known and more popular than Netanyahu's previous opponents. The other is the fact that Netanyahu has been charged with several counts of corruption and is actually on trial, with court proceedings suspended until after the election.
A continuation of Netanyahu's government with its close ties to the Republican party, evangelicals and conservative American Jewish groups will provide a direct challenge to the Biden administration's stated desire to have a more even handed approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, forestall Israeli plans to annex parts of the West Bank, and restrain the rapidly expanding network of settlements. A potentially fragile coalition put together by Netanyahu opponents would be easier for Biden to work with but would be unlikely to significantly curtail support for settlements or countenance the reversal of the most egregious Trump administration moves, including moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and annexing parts of the Golan Heights.
Any Israeli government in the near future would be either flatly opposed to dealing with the Palestinians or too weak to seriously negotiate. At the same time the Palestinian Authority is headed by 1970's era guerrillas and riddled with opportunists for whom a government position is a license to steal via bribes and kickbacks. The regime is not able to spare the Palestinians the indignities and aggravations associated with the Israeli occupation, the encroachments of the settlers, and the frustrations of a venal and largely incompetent bureaucracy and has only tepid support among Palestinians, particularly the half of the population who are less than 23 years old.
The House of Saud: The King's Dilemma
Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud is the King of Saudi Arabia and Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. At 85, he is the last living son of Abdul Azziz ibn Saud, the founder of the kingdom. (Ibn Saud is reputed to have had around 100 wives and even more concubines, making him the literal as well as figurative "father of his country.") His son Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (aka MBS) is the heir apparent to the crown and is already regarded as the real ruler of the country.
The departure of Trump and MBS's BFF Jared Kushner has already begun to rebalance the U.S.- Saudi relationship from a narrow focus on the Saudis as leaders of an anti-Iran coalition and customer for lucrative arms sales to a more nuanced approach that identifies areas in which our interests are similar and areas in which we are sharply opposed. The Biden administration cannot and will not treat the Saudis as either allies who can do no wrong nor pariahs who can do no right. The tacit support the administration gave to releasing the CIA report on bin Salman's direct complicity in the murder of Adnan Kashoggi followed by the administration's refusal to publicly condemn or sanction him is an example of trying to thread the needle of a complex relationship.
Under Mohammed bin Salman's leadership, Saudi Arabia had played a more assertive role in the Middle East, including turning the civil war in Yemen into the worst humanitarian disaster in the world today. The Trump administration , despite bipartisan opposition from Congress, encouraged the disastrous intervention in the name of opposing Iran and arms sales. That support has already been reversed.
The conflict in Yemen began as a revolt against the government in San'a by northern tribes. Since the Houthi tribes of the north are largely Shi'a Muslim and the groups controlling the government in the south are largely Sunni Muslim, the Saudis perceived the hidden hand of Shi'a Iran at work and began a massive military intervention. When Iran did begin to support the Houthis, the violence escalated to include indiscriminate bombing of civilians and blockades of key ports that prevented food and medicine from reaching as much as 80% of the population.
Mohamed bin Salman was initially hailed as a reformer who would removed the most onerous and outrageous restrictions on women and begin to move Saudi Arabia into the modern world. I think it is fair to say that he has pursued a moderately reformist agenda but within the constraints of "the king's dilemma": a would-be reforming monarch can either resort to increasingly harsh and repressive measures to try to control the scope and pace of reform at the risk of a revolution or allow reforms to proceed to the point that the monarchy morphs into a much diminished constitutional monarchy. There are many examples of the failure of the first strategy; from the perspective of an absolute monarchy like Saudi Arabia, the success of a series of British monarchs in giving up the ability to rule in exchange for the right to reign symbolically is not a very attractive model.
Governments, as the Biden team should already have learned, do not have the luxury of asking various parts of the world to just chill and be patient until we can get around to you guys. China, Russia, and Western Europe demand immediate attention. And as the rest of world comes to realize the impact of the Covid pandemic on the less developed nations of world, Americans will no longer be able to echo the 19th Century British Prime Minister who disdainfully dismissed much of the world as "...people about whom we know little and care less."
