Biden’s Approach to Middle East Markedly Different From Trump’s, Experts Say
Some doubt Biden’s commitment to a two-state solution, but Trump’s policy is widely acknowledged to be fundamentally uninterested in a Palestinian state
Former President Donald Trump chided President Joe Biden following a deadly drone attack on a US military base in Jordan last month that killed three soldiers and wounded dozens more.
“This brazen attack on the United States is yet another horrific and tragic consequence of Joe Biden’s weakness and surrender,” Trump posted on social media, adding that such a strike on US forces in the region “would NEVER have happened” on his watch.
The Biden Administration is simultaneously navigating several crises in the Middle East and managing public perception of his foreign policy, all while Biden tries to win a second term in the White House.
Generally, foreign policy has little impact on the outcome of the presidential elections. This year, though, Trump has been using foreign policy to attack Biden, claiming that he could have avoided these escalations in the Middle East had he been in office.
Meanwhile, Biden is trying to carefully maneuver through the myriad problems in the Middle East, among them the war in Gaza.
Professor Efraim Inbar, who serves as president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, a conservative think tank, told The Media Line that former President Trump is more supportive of Israel than Biden.
“Trump has a stronger environment around him towards Israel than Biden. Biden is affected by the leftist elements in his party,” Inbar said.
Inbar described a stark difference between Trump and Biden’s Middle East policy, which he said was widely acknowledged.
“Trump is more committed to Israeli positions on the Palestinian issue. Of course, he suggested the Trump plan, which was rejected by Palestinians and accepted by the Netanyahu government,” Inbar said, referring to Trump’s 2020 peace plan, which analysts say heavily favored Israel’s position.
While president, Trump also recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.
Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, told The Media Line that the Biden administration has a complex set of policies towards Israel and the Palestinians.
“Biden was most widely known before Oct. 7 for his public and vocal opposition to Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempted ‘judicial reforms,’ which he correctly identified as anti-democratic and a usurpation of power,” Ibish said. “However, following the Oct. 7 attacks, Biden has been extremely supportive of Israel in Gaza. This is partly because he is an old-school American liberal who identifies with Israel and sees it as an ideological ally, partly because he leads the Democratic Party, which is still mainly a very pro-Israel institution—apart from the loud but small progressive left—and he doesn’t want to leave any room for Republicans to attack him from the right as insufficiently pro-Israel.”
In the minds of many, Trump’s policies and appointees allowed the far right in Israel to flourish. During Trump’s time in office, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Ambassador to Israel David Friedman changed decades-long US positions on Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law. Their efforts have placed a two-state solution seemingly out of reach.
“Biden’s approach is radically different from Donald Trump’s, or rather, Trump’s was radically different from his Republican and Democratic predecessors,” Ibish said. “Trump abandoned support for a genuine two-state solution, which had been the policy of all post-Cold War presidents,” Ibish said.
After entering office, Biden attempted to reverse some of Trump’s decisions by restoring funds to UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, and reinstalling relations with the Palestinian Authority. But he did not reopen the office of the PLO in Washington or reopen a US consulate in East Jerusalem that provides service to the Palestinians. Biden also embraced the Abraham Accords, Arab-Israeli normalization agreements signed under Trump, and is trying to broker a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
“Biden maintains Trump’s efforts to promote Arab normalization with Israel as a strategic benefit to the United States, but views Palestinian statehood as an integral part of US policy and strategic planning in the region, whereas Donald Trump sought to virtually eliminate US support for a meaningful and viable Palestinian state, independent of any greater Israel,” Ibish said.
Following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks, Biden provided Israel with unconditional support. For a period, he seemed to ignore the high Palestinian civilian casualties, a decision that resulted in domestic backlash.
In a conversation with The Media Line, Ramallah-based Palestinian-American business consultant Sam Bahour called the Biden Administration’s policy on Israel and Palestine “blind.”
“Blind to the fact that Israel is engaged in a plausible genocide. Blind to the fact that the American people have become measurably more educated on this issue and no longer support
Israel’s continued violations of Palestinians’ human rights. Blind to the fact that the funds the US sends to Israel are desperately needed in the US. Blind to the fact that the majority of the world supports holding Israel accountable for its actions,” Bahour elaborated.
Reports have surfaced of deep discontent among some State Department and White House employees regarding the Biden Administration’s policy on Gaza.
Palestinians say the Biden Administration is not applying enough pressure on Israel to end the conflict, casting further doubt on how invested Biden is in a two-state solution.
“The Biden Administration has proven, for anyone still needing to be convinced, that Israel, and by extension the Palestinian issue, is a domestic issue in the US,” Bahour said. He said that many American lawmakers’ policies on Israel are influenced by the pro-Israel lobby in the US.
He cited the US’s decision to cut off funding to UNRWA, which followed allegations of several UNRWA employees’ involvement in the Oct. 7 massacres, as an example of “the US losing its sense of international responsibility.”
Palestinians have long lost faith in the international community, particularly the US.
Mahmoud Al-Aloul, deputy chairman of Fatah, the ruling party in the Palestinian Authority, rejected the idea that the US is an honest broker.
“Certainly it’s not an honest broker,” he told The Media Line. “It is not only a supporter of the Israeli occupation. At all stages, it is an accomplice of the occupation in all its crimes against the Palestinian people.”
In January 2021, during the final days of the Trump Administration, Secretary of State Pompeo designated the Houthi movement, a Shia Islamist group that controls much of Yemen, a foreign terrorist organization. The Biden Administration reversed that decision one month after Biden took office, despite the group continuing its terrorist activities.
Since the outbreak of the war between Israel and Gaza, the Houthis have fired missiles and drones toward Israel and disrupted commercial shipping in the Red Sea, leading the Biden Administration to reevaluate its position on the group. Last month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken named the Houthis a “specially designated global terrorist group,” a less restrictive classification than a foreign terrorist organization.
“Trump was generally hostile to the Houthis, viewing them as an arm of Iran,” Ibish said. “Yet he sought to negotiate an end to the Saudi-led war in Yemen. Biden continued that policy, but sought to ease pressure on the Houthis, apparently as a subtext of efforts to revive the nuclear agreement with Iran. However, once the Houthi piracy in the Red Sea began, after many warnings, under Biden, the US and the UK began bombing their positions in Yemen.”
Trump and Biden had markedly different approaches to the Middle East during their respective presidencies.
Trump criticized and withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the Iran Nuclear Deal, in 2018. Under the deal, which was signed under President Barack Obama in 2015, Iran agreed to limit its uranium stockpile and to enrich uranium only to 3.67%, the purity needed to run nuclear power plants. In return, Iran received relief from sanctions that had been imposed by the US, the EU, and the UN Security Council.
Trump argued that the deal was flawed and ineffective in curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Biden expressed a willingness to rejoin the JCPOA under certain conditions. His administration engaged in negotiations to revive the deal, seeking to address concerns over Iran’s nuclear program through diplomacy rather than withdrawal.
Inbar from JISS said that Trump and Biden’s Iran policies are mostly the same.
“When Trump was in power, he didn’t do anything about the Iranian aggression,” he said. “It’s true that he killed a prominent Iran commander, but this was an exception. He was willing to accommodate to some extent the Iranians.”
