Biden will set own Middle East agenda, says Egyptian ex-minister
Joe Biden will not want to lose Washington’s chief Arab allies when he becomes US president, although there may be some coolness in his dealings with them at first, according to Egypt’s former foreign minister Nabil Fahmy.
Speaking at his home in Cairo, Mr Fahmy, 69, a former ambassador to the US who dealt with Mr Biden for years, painted a picture of an Arab Middle East where nations were left to resolve their differences.
The US with Mr Biden as president will not entirely ignore the Middle East, Mr Fahmy said, but Washington will focus on checking Russia’s influence, set out to stop Iran’s interference in Arab affairs and end what he called Turkey’s abrasive behaviour.
Equally, he said, Arabs will continue to view the US as a world power they can look to when needed, but they will increasingly attempt to strengthen their security capabilities and address regional problems themselves.
“The United States will always be a major component of the world community that Arabs cannot ignore … but will be less dependent on them,” Mr Fahmy said.
He said Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are Washington’s chief Arab allies. He said they and the US wanted to see a centrist, modern and progressive Middle East that rejected extremism.
“There may be some tactical Middle East policy differences between [US President Donald] Trump and Biden,” he said. “Biden will focus on some issues that Trump did not raise in order to prove to his own domestic constituencies that he is different from Trump.
“You may see some tactical coolness … but Biden will not want to sacrifice US interests with these countries.”
Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, at many levels, are bound to Washington by vast economic and military ties, as well as a common strategy that was forged against the Soviet Union during the Cold War and later against extremism.
Curtailing Iran’s expansion of influence through proxies or loyal regimes in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen is also a major issue.
Relations between the US and its Arab allies deepened with Mr Trump in the White House over the past four years. But with the Republican leader defeated by Mr Biden in the November 3 election, media reports suggested the result was met with some alarm.
Mr Fahmy, who heads a think tank linked to the American University in Cairo, said that Arab nations must realise that their region was no longer top of the global agenda.
“The Middle East may have shifted in priority, but it will always remain somewhere on the American agenda,” he said.
Mr Fahmy used the Palestinian- Israeli conflict as an example of how the US grew less engaged in the Middle East in recent years.
He said Mr Biden, whose support for Israel is a matter of public record, was unlikely to undo the measures that have been taken by Mr Trump, such as recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Mr Biden, however, will appear receptive to proposals to resolve the conflict.
“Biden will certainly engage the Palestinians more than Trump did and will be more sensitive to their concerns, but he will not expend any political capital to rescind Trump’s measures,” Mr Fahmy said.
The Middle East may have shifted in priority, but it will always remain somewhere on the American agenda
NABIL FAHMY
Former foreign minister of Egypt