For most of his first two years in office, U.S. President Joe Biden has been extremely fortunate to have avoided sustained entanglement with the Middle East, a place where more often than not, U.S. foreign-policy ideas—good and bad—have gone to die.
Biden may have a harder time avoiding the Middle East in 2023 and beyond, though. The administration’s top foreign-policy priorities remain Russia’s war against Ukraine and a rising China. Yet Biden may soon have his hands full with smaller yet determined regional powers eager to advance their own interests and unwilling to play by U.S. rules. With five states—Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, and Libya—in various stages of dysfunction, the Arab world will remain a source of instability, with the exception being wealthy Persian Gulf states (Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) that are acting with greater independence from Washington while insisting on U.S. support.
But it’s really the two non-Arab powers, Iran and Israel—one, the United States’ foremost regional adversary, the other its closest regional friend—that may set the agenda for the next two years. And the implications of that are not particularly uplifting.
For most of his first two years in office, U.S. President Joe Biden has been extremely fortunate to have avoided sustained entanglement with the Middle East, a place where more often than not, U.S. foreign-policy ideas—good and bad—have gone to die.
Biden may have a harder time avoiding the Middle East in 2023 and beyond, though. The administration’s top foreign-policy priorities remain Russia’s war against Ukraine and a rising China. Yet Biden may soon have his hands full with smaller yet determined regional powers eager to advance their own interests and unwilling to play by U.S. rules. With five states—Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, and Libya—in various stages of dysfunction, the Arab world will remain a source of instability, with the exception being wealthy Persian Gulf states (Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) that are acting with greater independence from Washington while insisting on U.S. support.
But it’s really the two non-Arab powers, Iran and Israel—one, the United States’ foremost regional adversary, the other its closest regional friend—that may set the agenda for the next two years. And the implications of that are not particularly uplifting.
With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s return to office, the Biden administration now confronts the most extreme right-wing government in Israel’s history, one likely to cause a serious rise in—if not an explosion of—tensions over the Palestinian issue and Iran’s nuclear program. If you believe the rhetoric of its extremist ministers—and there’s no reason not to—this coalition is determined to alter Israel’s democratic system, transform society along Jewish exclusivist lines, sow tensions with Israel’s Arab citizens, and erect a gravestone over the buried hope of a Palestinian state by permanently lashing the majority of the West Bank and Jerusalem to Israel.
How bad the situation in the West Bank becomes may be tied to the degree to which Netanyahu can exercise influence over coalition partners he desperately needs to pass legislation that will postpone, if not nullify, his ongoing trial. Being not as far right as other members of his party, Netanyahu would much prefer a coalition without extremists and may be already thinking about broadening his government at some point. But his legal travails are existential. Without some skyhook, he almost certainly faces prison if convicted—or, more likely, a plea bargain and an exit from politics. He cannot, therefore, jettison the extremists; for the time being, he’ll have to manage them.
Netanyahu will do what he can to smother or divert their most egregious policies, but it’s hard to see how he can completely control them and easy to see how the fiefdoms…
Read More: Iran and Israel May Set Biden’s Foreign-Policy Agenda Going Forward