August 4, 2023
Biden is charting a
dangerous path in signaling to Saudi Arabia that Washington has its back in
return for Israel normalization.
The Washington Post reports
that Biden is embarking on a “remarkable escalation” in the Persian Gulf that
could lead to a U.S.-Iran war. He is reportedly preparing to authorize U.S.
Marines and sailors to be stationed on interested commercial vessels in an
effort to thwart Iran from seizing oil tankers in the region.
Biden is primarily
responsible for having created this situation due to two policy paths he has
chosen.
First, he chose to
negotiate America’s return to the JCPOA rather than reentering it via executive
order while also disregarding many of the key factors that made Obama’s
diplomacy with Iran successful.
Iran has undoubtedly
created its fair share of problems in the talks. But by choosing a negotiated
return, Biden also chose to keep Trump’s sanctions in place — even though key
Biden officials are on record blasting Trump’s max pressure strategy as a
dismal failure.
But today, Trump’s maximum
pressure strategy is Biden’s. One element of it has been to confiscate Iranian
oil on the high seas — in contradiction to international law — as a way to
enforce US sanctions on Iran. Predictably, Iran responded by targeting oil
shipments of countries that collaborated with Biden on this matter. This has
then prompted Biden to beef up U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf to
prevent Iranian actions that only began as a result of Biden’s own policies.
But now Biden may
“remarkably escalate” this counterproductive policy by putting U.S. military
directly into the mix. This is partly due to the second policy he has erroneous
prioritized: the Abraham Accords and getting Saudi to normalize with Israel.
Saudi Arabia has requested
a security pact with the U.S. in order to agree to normalize with Israel and
abandon the Palestinians. Biden may wisely not go for that, but as part of
wooing the Saudis, he believes he has to show that he’s willing to commit to
war in the Middle East — a commitment few in the region believe the U.S. has.
Stationing U.S. Marines on
oil tankers may be designed to signal to Mohammed Bin Salman that Biden is
serious about defending Saudi Arabia against Iran and that the (very brief) era
of the U.S. withdrawing from the Middle East is over.
It is impressive how MBS
has played Biden. He is successfully pushing the U.S. president to reverse the
many policies Saudi Arabia opposed — rejoining the JCPOA, reducing U.S.-Iran
tensions, and bringing American troops home from the Middle East.
In return, Israel gets
normalization while it continues to annex Palestinian land. And America gets to
once again enjoy the short straw of having to live on the verge of war with
Iran.
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