Eurasia Press & News
From the lack of a clear Israeli strategy on the Iran nuclear deal to the new Middle East approach of President-elect Joe Biden.
What are the several geostrategic Middle East challenges Israel will have to face with the changing administration in the United States?
From the lack of a clear Israeli strategy on the Iran nuclear deal to the new Middle East approach of President-elect Joe Biden, an analysis titled “The Middle Eastern Game of Thrones: On the Eve of Biden Administration,” published by the Reut Institute, warns of the rising threats Israel will encounter, both from inside and out.
From an inside point of view, Israeli political rivals are fighting over the formulation of a new nuclear deal with Iran, without being able to coordinate and find a clear strategy.
On the one hand, the analysis reported, Israel is adopting an approach that will make it difficult for the Biden administration to achieve a new nuclear agreement with Iran. “Do not return to the previous [Iran] nuclear deal,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a clear message he sent to Biden last month.
However, on the other hand, the Jewish state is also formulating a strategic approach to influence the Iranian nuclear deal as the Israeli Foreign Ministry set up a team to work with Washington toward that end.
“Although a thoughtful and measured combination of these approaches may be theoretically effective,” Reut CEO Eran Shayshon said, “in practice, these opposing approaches are led by people who are fundamentally divided on the nuclear issue.”
The Israeli political battle went even further, as when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not inform Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz or Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi about his meeting with Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, where important discussions took place on the Iranian issue.
Netanyahu continued the trend of not informing Gantz and Ashkenazi of key diplomatic developments. Neither did he inform them in advance of the agreements he reached with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
When it comes to outside threats, it seems unlikely that the Biden administration will radically change America’s Middle East diplomatic policies that have been enforced during the last four years – and he is expected to resist the pressure from his party’s progressive forces to implement a more liberal foreign agenda, explained the authors of the analysis.
From the moving of the US embassy to Jerusalem, to the killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, Trump’s legacy in the Middle East is a success that led to three peace agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan, and that should be maintained by the next administration, the analysis said.
In the continuation of these policies and in the wake of the Abraham Accords, Saudi Arabia still holds on to its normalization card for Biden, and has refused to establish formal diplomatic ties with Israel without first resolving the Palestinian issue, as stipulated in the Arab Peace Initiative, which Saudi Arabia initiated.
The paper also warns that while Turkey is trying to ease tensions with Israel, the cooperation between the two countries is expected to only be tactical and temporary for Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, just as there were reconciliation efforts between Israel and Turkey following the Gaza flotilla raid. However, shortly after that reconciliation, Erdoğan returned to disparage Israel.
