Biden’s Middle East Mess

Whether the game of chess was invented in Persia or not is less important than that it is becoming clear that Iran has proved to be a more effective player than the United States when it comes to checkmating the Americans in the power game in the Middle East, starting with Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

The Palestinian terrorist group struck at a time when the White House believed there wasn’t any major threat to stability in the Middle East and was expecting a process of normalizing the relationship between Israel and Saudi Arabia. No one anticipated a new Arab-Israeli war.

Indeed, a week or so before the attack, Washington was abuzz with talk about the negotiations between President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia to normalize Israeli-Saudi ties in return for a US-Saudi defense treaty.

The conventional wisdom at that time was that a mega-deal could be concluded early 2024 and would constitute a major diplomatic coup and geostrategic game changer.

A peace agreement between a leading Islamic power, joined by other Arab countries, and the Jewish State, that would also involve a security agreement between Washington and Riyadh could have helped contain Iran and reinforce the American alliances with Saudi Arabia and Israel.

It would have created a pro-American Middle Eastern military and economic bloc powered by the energy resources of the Persian Gulf and Israel’s high-tech industries and scientific centers. That would have been the most effective way to respond to the threat posed by Iran and its regional satellites.

But in the aftermath of the attack by the Hamas fighters on Israel, it was hard to imagine Saudi-Israeli peace talks progressing. That suggested that Hamas launched the assault to disrupt the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

From a geopolitical perspective, if there had been a Saudi-Israeli agreement, the power balance between Iran and Saudi Arabia would have shifted significantly in favor of the US-aligned Saudi Arabia and Israel.

In addition to a formal security treaty with the United States, the Saudis would have had access to technology, including uranium enrichment, making it possible for them to close in on Iran’s nuclear threshold advantage.

Under the conditions of all-out war by Israel on Hamas and the prospect of a bloody incursion into Gaza by the Israeli Defense Force, it would have been unthinkable for Saudi Arabia to proceed with normalization of relations with Israel. That meant severe blow to the Biden administration’s foreign policy.

Cui Bono? Iran. According to the Wall Street Journal, Iranian security officials helped the Hamas attack on Israel and gave the green light for the assault at a meeting in Beirut. Officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had worked with Hamas since August to devise the air, land, and sea incursions, reported the Journal.

Hamas and the IRGC worked out the operational details during several meetings in Beirut attended by IRGC officers and representatives of four Iran-backed militant groups, including Hamas, which holds power in Gaza, and Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group and political faction in Lebanon.

Iran had an obvious interest in hurling a torpedo at the American strategy of creating a chain of American allies linking three key choke points of global trade—the Suez Canal, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Bab El Mandeb Strait connecting the Red Sea to the Arabian Sea.

In a way, what was emerging now in the Middle East is a new and very fragile balance of power under which the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia face an Iran-led bloc that includes Hamas and Hezbollah as well as Shiite militias in Iraq and the Houthi rebels in Yemen. In that context, Syria is for all practical purposes has become a country where major areas are controlled by Iran, Hezbollah and Russia.

On one level, the war in Gaza could be seen as just another round of fighting between Israel and Palestine, or a phase in the century-old struggle between Jews and Arabs over the territory of Palestine/Land of Israel.

But this time the danger is that the war between Hamas and Israel could not be contained as a local ethnic-religious conflict. In a way, the role Iran played in orchestrating the war could lead to the regionalization of the conflict in the form of a military confrontation between Israel, a nuclear power, and Iran, which has come close to acquiring its own nuclear military capability.

At minimum, the Hamas attack has shifted the balance of power in the Middle East in the direction of Iran and its proxies, while weakening the position of the United States and its partners. Adding to a sense of Iranian aggressiveness, there were reports that Tehran has considerably ramped up its production of uranium in recent months, reviving fears that it may be speeding toward the capability of fabricating several nuclear weapons.

A failure to obstruct this Iranian drive for regional supremacy would be a geopolitical loss for the United States and undermine its global position relative to China and Russia. The nightmare scenario consists of Iran and its proxies succeeding in establishing a new balance of power in the Middle East under which Israel is left damaged, Hamas is not destroyed, and the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia remains stalled. While all this would not necessarily amount to Iranian “victory,” it would give Tehran more influence.

Iranian officials seem to believe that an escalating conflict in the Middle East will increase the costs to the United States and the West without risking a wider war. From their perspective, continuing escalation of the conflict would be cost-effective, since the United States would never take steps that risk war with Iran and would do everything to minimize those already existing.

In a way, American policies during the Gaza war have been driven by an interest in averting a war with Iran, and achieving that by pressing Israel to avoid a full-blown military confrontation with Hezbollah, restricting its military operations in the Gaza Strip, and trying to get Israel to avoid civilian casualties.

Ultimately, the United States would like to see Israel destroy the military power of Hamas and erode the power of Hezbollah, but it is preventing Israel from taking the steps to do so, including by halting the shipment of some types of heavy bombs to Israel. The Biden Administration argues that such moves help to de-escalate the war in Gaza; in reality, they are playing directly into the hands of Hamas, and its patron, Iran.

The Biden Administration has expressed reservations about the way Israel has conducted military operations in Gaza, including the use of airstrikes that resulted in the killing of thousands of Palestinian civilians and the destruction of entire neighborhoods.

The Israeli approach was condemned by the majority of UN members, especially by those belonging to the so-called “Global South.” Some European governments also expressed reservations over Israel’s conduct. Israel was also criticized by left-leaning Democratic lawmakers, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, who called on the White House to press the Israeli government to move towards a ceasefire in Gaza and not to invade the strategic zone of Rafah. This pressure at home and abroad had a major impact on the Biden Administration’s considerations as it pressed Israel for concessions.

Israel’s dependency on American military and diplomatic support has left the government no choice but to change tactics in the Gaza Strip and to shift to a new phase that relies less on airpower, and has narrow targets, and proved to be costlier in terms of manpower and less effective when it came to destroying Hamas.

But then the defeat of Hamas could have provided an opportunity for a regime change in Gaza under which the leadership of the Palestinian Authority (PA) takes control of the area. Financial support from the Saudis and other Arab oil states could help reconstruct the Gaza Strip and a multinational Arab force led by Egypt and possibly establish order there.

That could supposedly open the road to the renewal of the American-sponsored talks to normalize ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia and shift the balance of power again from the Iranian-led bloc to America and its regional allies.

But this plan assumes a lot of things that aren’t necessarily going to happen. Could Hamas be disarmed and marginalized in this process? Would the Palestinians be able to come up with a new and effective leadership that would work with Israel? And in the aftermath of the trauma of October 7 would the Israeli government agree to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on their borders.

And perhaps most important from the perspective of the geo-strategic chess game between Washington and Tehran: Why would the Iranians and their proxies accept an arrangement that would allow the United States to reassert its position in the Middle East and reverse what they see as their win on October 7?

If anything, there have been growing concerns in Washington that continuing actions against the United States by Iran and its proxies could force a more decisive retaliation on the part of the Americans, resulting in a broader regional war, which would finally provide the US with an opportunity to checkmate Iran. END