When Joe Biden took over the Oval Office from Donald Trump after a rather dodgy election process, the situation in the Middle East was calmer than it had been in decades.
Almost three years later, on 29 September 2023, Biden’s National Security Advisor Jack Sullivan was still able to boast that “the Middle East region is calmer today than it has been in two decades”.
Eight days later, the world woke up to 7 October. How could this happen?
In American Greatness, historian Victor Davis Hanson points to five steps Biden took, each of which brought the Middle East closer to chaos and disaster, and makes it understandable how 7 October could happen.
The main actor, of course, is Iran.
In short, theocratic Iran – the source of almost all terrorism and conflict in the Middle East today – was unleashed by Team Biden after being neutered by the Trump administration.
Choosing Iran over Saudi Arabia
First, Biden attacked America’s closest ally among Arab countries, describing Saudi Arabia as a “pariah” and criticising them for war crimes against the Houthis in Yemen. In other words, Biden sided with Iran’s terrorist allies.
In 2022, rising oil and gas prices led Biden to beg Saudi Arabia to increase production to bring prices down. The humiliation was total, especially when it ended with Biden having to continue his begging trip to Venezuela.
Second, Biden-Harris nihilistically killed the Trump administration’s “Abraham Accords”.
This was Trump’s great diplomatic breakthrough, a successful plan for moderate Arab nations seeking détente with Israel and focusing instead on the common threat posed by Iran.
But Biden continued to side with Iran, calling for Iran to rejoin the so-called Iran deal that effectively ensured Iran would eventually get the bomb.
Many billions of dollars immediately went into confirming the entire stable of Iran’s proxy terrorists. Weapons flowed to Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. At the same time, Iran increasingly allied itself with Russia and China.
The disaster in Kabul
Then came the Kabul disaster, when the US withdrawal from Afghanistan was a total failure, a blot on American history. The humiliation was complete when Biden left behind more than $80 billion worth of US military equipment.
In doing so, he virtually destroyed American deterrence in the Middle East, emboldening enemies and endangering friends.
Fourth, Biden-Harris restored hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the West Bank and Gaza, but without any guarantees that the Palestinian Authority and Hamas would desist from their past serial terrorist acts.
So Biden first enabled Iran to arm Israel’s enemies, and then made sure the US filled the terrorists’ coffers too. The path to war was as open as America’s southern border.
“Proportional”, two-state solution, ceasefire
Fifthly: Once the war was a fact of life after 7 October, Biden-Harris immediately began pressing the Israelis to act “proportionally” in response to the massacre of some 1,200 Israelis and nearly 20,000 rockets, missiles and drones fired at the homeland by Iran, the Houthis, Hamas and Hezbollah.
Then came the eternal clamour for a ceasefire and a two-state solution. In this way, Biden put Israel in a straitjacket while they were in the middle of an existential war. This gave Iran additional motivation, and we are seeing the results now, with Israel and Iran on the brink of war.
The result was that the Netanyahu government found it necessary to sideline its closest ally.
Why?
But why did Biden-Harris act so foolishly in the Middle East, Hanson asks.
Hanson thinks it may be partly a desire to revive the Obama administration’s old, discredited idea of “creative tension” – of empowering a rogue Iran and its terrorists in order to play Israel and the moderate Arab regimes off against each other.
In this way, Biden would create a kind of balance of power, a divide and conquer strategy in the Middle East powder keg.
After 7 October, Biden-Harris was increasingly pressured at home by the rise of exploding Jew-hatred on American campuses and in key swing states.
Biden-Harris was both naive and gullible.
The two were fooled by our enemies’ standard anti-Americanism and anti-Israel repertoire. So they set out to redeem themselves by viewing Iran and its terrorists as the moral equivalent of democratic, pro-American Israel.
The malignant legacy of the Biden-Harris regime’s naïve gullibility is the disaster now unfolding in the Middle East.
Fourth, Biden-Harris restored hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the West Bank and Gaza, but without any guarantees that the Palestinian Authority and Hamas would desist from their past serial terrorist acts.