Donald Trump bequeathed to Joe Biden a Middle East that was stable, increasingly prosperous and as peaceable as it had been in decades with our ally, Israel, strong, secure and the region’s de facto hegemon. Contributing factors were: the United States’ high standing, which combined with respect for Israel’s power and the two allies’ shared resolve to anchor the Abraham Accords, made them not simply peace treaties on paper, but the foundation for a formidable, if informal, Mideast alliance.
By contrast, Joe Biden’s bequest to the second Trump presidency is a strategic dumpster-fire. The Abraham Accords are still technically in place, but they have been severely stressed and their appeal diminished by developments since October 7th. These include Iran’s continued progress towards attaining nuclear weapons and the fact that, despite myriad tactical successes, Israel has yet to defeat decisively Iran and its proxies, substantially due to the interference of a treacherous U.S government. Unsurprisingly, what passes for America’s other friends in the Mideast are cutting ominous deals with China, Russia and Sharia-supremacists in Iran and Turkey.
Meanwhile, in Syria, a new Islamist uprising threatens to further destabilize the region. Its emergence has been fueled in part by the blind-eye Team Biden has turned toward Turkey’s cultivation of former ISIS and other Sharia-supremacist forces in order to execute a campaign aimed at realizing its overt neo-Ottoman imperial ambitions. The survival of the Assad regime seems increasingly in question and, while Russia, Iran and Turkey jockey for position there, the United States is absent – apart from actively weakening/alienating our Mideast allies.
Particularly concerning are recent actions by Egypt. The Biden administration’s policies are not only endangering the Abraham Accords, but all peace treaties Israel has had since the first in 1979 with Egypt. For example, the Egyptians have faced a growing Islamist threat of their own from Libya. But rather than being helped to contend with those Sharia-supremacists outside the country, the regime in Cairo has been relentlessly pressed by Washington to relax its efforts strictly to control the Muslim Brotherhood’s subversive activities inside Egypt.
That may help explain why, for at least the last two years, Al-Sisi’s regime has allowed the Brotherhood’s Palestinian franchise, Hamas, to use smuggling tunnels massively to rearm, making possible the October 7 attack on Israel.
Greatly exacerbating all these challenges is Egypt’s economic crisis arising from the Houthis’ effective closure of the Suez Canal.
Because of these factors, the Egyptian government now appears intent on finding new and powerful sponsors. It has been improving relations with China and Russia, whose ships are still paying canal transit fees as they are allowed free access to the Red Sea by the Houthis.
The Cairo regime has also recently freed large numbers of very dangerous Muslim Brotherhood convicts in what may be a bid to improve its often-strained relationship with the Brothers’ sponsors in Turkey and Qatar, probably with a view to securing their political and/or financial support. Such steps could well presage the emergence in the eight-front war imposed on Israel on October 7th yet another, Egyptian one.
Before Team Biden does any further damage to vital Israeli and American interests – notably, by redoubling its efforts to change the facts on the ground before Inauguration Day in a bid to make it difficult, if not impossible, for Donald Trump to help the Jewish State decisively defeat her enemies, and ours – we need the President-elect to reject his predecessor’s disastrous and ongoing wrecking operation and do everything possible to stop it now.
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The Working Group on Israel is a new, informal coalition of American national security practitioners, subject matter experts, religious leaders, human rights activists and other patriots determined to examine, analyze, where appropriate critique and endeavor promptly to improve U.S. Mideast policy. The object is to maximize the economic, physical and national security of the American people and to secure the help of Israel and other allies to that end. The views expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect those of all WGI members.