Israel reins in retaliation, to Biden’s relief
Foreign policy has been a black mark on US President’s bid for re-election
US President Joe Biden can breathe a bit easier, at least for the moment, now that Israel and Iran appear to have stepped back from the brink of tipping the Middle East into all-out war.
Israel’s retaliatory strikes on Iran and Syria caused limited damage. The restrained action came after Biden urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Government to temper its response to Iran’s unprecedented direct attack on Israel and avoid an escalation of violence in the region.
Iran’s barrage of drones and missiles inflicted little damage and followed a suspected Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus this month that killed two generals.
Iran’s public response to the Israeli strikes on Saturday also was muted, raising hopes that Israel-Iran tensions — long carried out in the shadows with cyberattacks, assassinations and sabotage — will stay at a simmer.
The situation remains a delicate one for Biden as he gears up his reelection effort in the face of headwinds in the Middle East, Russia and the Indo-Pacific.
Foreign policy matters are not typically the top issue for American voters. This November is expected to be no different, with the economy and border security carrying greater resonance.
But public polling suggests that overseas concerns could have more relevance with voters than in any US election since 2006, when voter dissatisfaction over the Iraq War was a major factor in the Republican Party losing 30 House and six Senate seats.
“We see this issue rising in saliency, and at the same time we’re seeing voter appraisals of President Biden’s handling of foreign affairs being quite negative,” said Christopher Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion. “That combination is not a great one for Biden.”
Biden has staked enormous political capital on his response to the Israel-Hamas war as well as his administration’s backing of Ukraine as it fends off a Russian invasion.
Biden also has made bolstering relations in the Indo-Pacific a central focus of his foreign policy agenda, looking to win allies and build ties as China becomes a more formidable economic and military competitor.
But Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, have an argument to make that Biden’s policies have contributed to the US dealing with myriad global quandaries, said Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at a Washington think tank.
Republicans have criticised Biden’s unsuccessful efforts earlier in his term to revive a nuclear deal with Iran brokered by the Obama administration and abandoned by Trump, saying that would embolden Tehran. The agreement had provided Iran with billions in sanctions relief in exchange for the country agreeing to roll back its nuclear programme.
GOP critics have sought to connect Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan and they blame the Obama administration for not offering a strong enough response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 2014 seizure of Crimea.
“You can make an intellectual case, a policy case of how we got from Point A to B to C to D and ended up in a world on fire,” said Goldberg, a national security official in the Trump administration. “People may not care about how we got here, but they do care that we are here.”
Biden was flying high in the first six months of his presidency, with the American electorate largely approving of his performance and giving him high marks for his handling of the economy and the coronavirus pandemic. But the President saw his approval ratings tank in the aftermath of the chaotic withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in August 2021 and they never fully recovered.
Now, Biden finds himself dealing with the uncertainty of two wars. Both could shadow him right up to election day.
Israel and Hamas appear far away from an agreement on a temporary ceasefire that would facilitate the release of remaining hostages in Hamas-controlled Gaza and help get aid into the territory. It’s an agreement that Biden sees as essential.
CIA Director William Burns expressed disappointment this past week that Hamas has not yet accepted a proposal that Egyptian and Qatari negotiators had presented this month. He blamed the group for “standing in the way of innocent civilians in Gaza getting humanitarian relief that they so desperately need”.
At the same time, the Biden administration has tried to demonstrate it is holding Israel accountable, imposing new penalties on two entities accused of fundraising for extremist Israel settlers that were already under sanctions, as well as the founder of an organisation whose members regularly assault Palestinians.
West’s weakness panned
Meanwhile, Iran’s exiled crown prince told The Telegraph the West needs a Reagan-Thatcher style leadership pairing to confront Tehran because the current policy of appeasement has failed.
Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son of the late last Shah of Iran, is the founder and former leader of the National Council of Iran, an exiled opposition group he left in 2017, and a prominent critic of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s Islamic regime.
He said there had been a “weak approach” by Western leaders “on both sides of the Atlantic” towards the Islamic Republic and called for a “reset” of Europe’s relationship with Tehran, starting with proscribing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terror organisation.
He argued that the “root cause” of Iran’s malign influence across the Middle East — particularly its antagonistic role with regards to Israel — was the West’s policy of “appeasement”.
“That has always been based on expecting a behaviour change by the regime that hasn’t panned out,” he said, adding that what was needed was a revival of “an era where there was some stronger leadership that changed the world in a very significant way: Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher at the end of the Cold War”.
“Right now you see what [Vladimir] Putin is doing in Moscow, you see what the Chinese are doing,” he added. “What is [being done] to counter that in terms of decisive, strong, co-ordinated leadership in the West? I don’t see any.”