From time to time, America loses one of its Middle Eastern allies. “Who lost Iran?” they asked in 1979, when the shah’s regime sided, the answer being Jimmy Carter and the State Department. “Who lost Egypt?” they asked in 2012, when the Muslim Brotherhood came to power, the answer being Barack Obama and the State Department.
“Who lost Israel?” soon it will be added to this perplexed chorus. The answer will be President Biden and the State Department.
But this time, the United States will lose the region as a whole – to its historic rival, Russia. Iranian wickedness will increase again and Washington’s Arab and Israeli allies will move on without anyone losing sleep over 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 committed to reviving the deal with Iran at all costs. The costs include completing the removal of Democrats from the Jewish state and alienating Sunni Arab customers from America completely. In addition, in reviving the nuclear deal, Washington will repeat a failed experiment in the hope of different results.
The Iranian regime will not accept a tougher deal than the 2015 deal, and the Biden government is Obama 3.0: the same team seeks to rehabilitate its reputation, not to guarantee national interest. The Obama-Bidenists will accept any humiliation from Tehran and will consider that a diplomatic advance.
The Obama-Biden model in the Middle East, preferred by many Washington connoisseurs of foreign policy, involves the abandonment of the United States’ allies and the perverse empowerment of the Tehran regime, placing it on what Henry Kissinger called “a path plan for a nuclear weapon ”.
Former President Donald Trump rejected this model. He knew bankruptcy when he saw it and told Americans what the rest of the world already knows: its experts are fools, its Middle East policies a catalog of failures.
Trump dropped the deal with Iran and opted for containment. And he destroyed the “land for peace” paradigm between Israel and the Palestinians – and forged peace agreements between the Jewish state and four Arab states.
Fortunately, much of Trump’s legacy is blocked. The Biden team cannot reverse Abraham’s agreements or return the United States Embassy to Tel Aviv. No one in the region now imagines Israel’s total withdrawal from the disputed territories known as the West Bank.
The only area where Trump’s legacy is not blocked is in the deal with Iran. Don’t believe the new secretary of state, Antony Blinken, when he says the government wants an expanded deal or that it will consult America’s allies. The Biden team is a revival of the Obama administration and inherits the ignorance and arrogance that led Obama to have his nose rubbed in the desert sand by Ayatollah Khamenei.
Biden’s team has already signaled that it wants to reevaluate relations with Saudi Arabia and has removed Yemeni Houthis from the list of terrorists as an award to Iran. Israel’s prime minister had to wait for Biden’s call.
The Bidenites can imagine that they are putting America’s rough 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 made it clear that they murdered Iran’s nuclear planner, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, without involvement of the United States and without notice to Washington. The Saudis are moving towards open relations with Israel as the anti-Tehran front hardens.
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 advancing in Syria and Iraq.
Meanwhile, Chinese investment arrives. If the United States loses control of the Middle East, and the Persian Gulf in particular, it will lose control of the most valuable waterway in the world.
So the question is not so much “Who lost Israel?” like “Is the US losing the entire Middle East?” And the answer has to be yes.
That prospect alarms American Jews and evangelical Christians, but Israel will be fine without Washington. Your new friends need your technology and military power, and your new customers don’t share the left-wing boutique fetish for Palestinians.
The United States, however, will not be well: it will be reduced to a decadent and irrelevant power, capable only of grudges and small blocking movements – and excluded from the world of the 21st century.
Dominic Green is vice-editor of The Spectator in the United States.
Twitter: @DrDominicGreen