Is the Biden administration about to put the Abraham Accords at risk?
By: Eric R. Mandel, Opinion Contributor (The Hill)
So, will Biden choose a pathway to peace or a pathway to war? Will Biden choose to throw Israel under the bus for the sake of saving an Obama era agreement that Iran will try to circumvent? Whose side is Biden on?
Biden is demonstrating, once again, that the United States is a feckless and unreliable ally. Sure the United States can deliver all the guns, bombs, and missiles any country would desire. The United States has proven to be a reliable source of support for autocrats and dictators willing to threaten and coerce neighboring countries. And the United States can be counted on to avoid the fighting when the war starts.
Biden has clearly signaled a desire for stability, maintaining a status quo stalemate, rather than nurturing green shoots of peace. Biden doesn't know how to win a peace and Biden refuses to fight a war. What is amazing is that the Middle East even pays attention to the United States any longer.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Which is more important to President Biden, rejoining the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or strengthening the Abraham Accords between Israel and its Arab neighbors? There should be little doubt that Biden has shown he prioritizes the Iran nuclear agreement. But does that mean the death knell for the two-year-old Abraham Accords if the Iranians finally say yes to the American offer after the U.S. midterm elections?
Despite the protests for regime change running rampant through the Islamic Republic, the Biden administration has signaled to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that it desires a return to the JCPOA — no matter what Iran's "morality police" may do to their citizens. Although it is not a binary choice, a Biden foreign policy triumph with a return to the nuclear agreement would profoundly affect the sustainability of the groundbreaking Abraham Accords.
The impetus for the Accords in 2020 was mainly the threat of an expansionist Iran. However, America's return to the nuclear deal without considering Iran's aggressive behavior, or its breaches of the JCPOA since 2015, undermines the Abraham Accord signatories' trust in America and the sustainability of that agreement.
One way to understand the relationship between the JCPOA and the Abraham Accords is through the prism of American politics. The Biden administration sees a return to the JCPOA as indispensable for Middle East stability. Yet, the bipartisan U.S. Senate Abraham Caucus co-chair, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), called the Accords — not the JCPOA — the "most significant peace agreement of the 21st century."
Except for the Iranians and Palestinians, most people welcomed the Abraham Accords as a substantial development. However, many in Congress, including members of the president's party, see an Iran nuclear deal as the ultimate force for securing regional stability.
According to Ben Weinthal, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, "there are question marks over whether the Biden administration's overtures to Tehran are now encouraging the demise of the accords. … Are Sunni Arab nations hedging their bets and engaging in a rapprochement with Tehran, leading to a deterioration of the normalization process?" In fear of a potential (nuclear) deal, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) recently sent their ambassador back to Iran after a six-year hiatus to appease the ayatollah.
Although technically unrelated, the success or failure of the Iran deal and the Abraham Accords is interconnected. The ascendency of one agreement may mean the withering of the other. The Biden administration has tried to have it both ways. In March 2022, Secretary of State Antony Blinken joined six Arab foreign ministers for a summit in the Negev, providing a public display of support for the Abraham Accords.
Yet, the Biden administration has chosen not to use diplomatic capital to bring other Arab nations into the accord, lest it antagonize the Iranians and dissuade them from rejoining the JCPOA. Blinken's Negev summit cannot be a one-and-done.
As Ambassador Aaron David Miller said, "If you plant a garden [Abraham Accords] and go away … what have you got when you come back? Weeds. Having deprioritized the Middle East … the weeds grew."
A foundational block of the Accords was the shared anxiety of an empowered and threatening Iran. However, with America withdrawing from the region and offering hundreds of billions of dollars in sanctions relief to Iran, the logic for remaining in the Abraham Accords diminishes. As a senior adviser to the previous U.S. ambassador to Israel wrote, "Failure to enhance and advance these accords could leave the region as it has always been: a series of bifurcated and fractured relationships, leaving a vacuum for China, Iran and Russia to grow and spread their influence."
The Sunni nations are in a wait-and-see approach — waiting to see whether the Iranians rejoin the JCPOA. If they do, it may spell the end for the Accords. New nations won't want to join. Current governments will move away from normalization with Israel, in order to not antagonize the Iranians, who will have nearly $1 trillion over the next 10 years to undermine their neighbors' regimes. They will do anything not to become Iranian satrapies.
So, what did President Biden accomplish this summer in what the Woodrow Wilson Center referred to as his "Abraham Accords trip" to the Middle East? The answer depends on your political party or the newspaper you read. CNN reported: "Biden and his team were enthusiastic when they boarded Air Force One in Saudi Arabia, congratulating each other on what they viewed as a successful four-day swing through the Middle East." The left-leaning Brookings Institution said, "The summit of the nine Arab leaders is a clear accomplishment."
However, the most important goal — to convince Saudi Arabia to increase fossil fuel production — was wholly rebuffed this autumn by the Saudis, making the trip a definitive failure.
American foreign policy specialist David Wurmser wrote, "Virtually nobody was pleased by the outcome of the trip. … The regional countries most critical to the U.S. position in the region — Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates — were the biggest losers. … The Arab states were falling all over themselves in the 24 hours after President Biden left to appease Iran. … The message they received from the United States was disconcerting. … They measured up Washington, heard weakness and are now reacting accordingly."
Israel's ambassador to the U.S., Gen. Michael Herzog, says it best: "[The] Abraham Accords offer a better future for the Middle East and are one of the best answers to Iran." If only the Biden administration saw it that way. American national security interests would be strengthened, and the focus on Ukraine and China would be more manageable.
Dr. Eric R. Mandel is the director of MEPIN, the Middle East Political Information Network. He regularly briefs members of Congress and their foreign policy aides. He is the senior security editor for the Jerusalem Report. Follow him on Twitter @MepinOrg.
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Biden even botches up the botched up agreement with Iran. Iran is the keystone for stability in the Middle East? Really? C'mon, Joe, this is 2022 and not 1972.
Biden is going to start another war that Biden will refuse to fight. Didn't Biden learn anything during is long (and forgotten) political career? The status quo of quagmire after quagmire is not what's best for the United States or the rest of the world. Maybe it's time for a change.
Isn't Iran still trying to develop nukes...in the midst of a possible regime change?
Who knows? More importantly, who cares?
What's Iran going to do with one bomb? Or ten bombs? Iran won't be building thousands of bombs. Iran doesn't have the wherewithal to detonate as many nukes as the United States did with open air tests. After hundreds of open air nuclear tests the world did not end.
The COVID pandemic wreaked more havoc than Iran could ever accomplish with an atomic bomb. If Iran wants a nuclear bomb then tie a ribbon on one and FedEx the damned thing. Iran would not survive a nuclear exchange. Iran having a nuclear bomb would tie their hands because every provocation would be seen as a nuclear threat and result in counterthreats of nuclear annihilation. Iran wouldn't be the only country with a nuke. And the threat/counterthreat of nuclear war won't protect Iran from asymmetric conventional warfare.
More people have been killed and more countries have been destroyed with conventional weapons than with nuclear bombs. Nuclear bombs have not even slowed conventional war. We need to face the fact that nuclear weapons have been a fizzle. Using nukes as an offensive weapon would be suicide.
Who knows or cares? Israel for one. If Iran were to build one bomb, what are the odds that they might find a way to smuggle it into Israel to destroy a city? What are the odds that the Israeli Air Force may stage a raid on production facilities and plants to prevent Iran from completing the building of an atomic weapon?
The city fathers of Hiroshima and Nagasaki might disagree. Seems to me that dropping atomic bombs on those two cities did a lot to slow and end a little conflict they called World War II.
Atomic bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1942 would not have ended the war with Japan. And there was some doubt that those atomic bombings in 1945 was going to end the war even after Japan had been destroyed with conventional weapons.
The Army Air Corps had run out of cities to bomb with conventional weapons and Japan still continued the war. It was necessary to utterly destroy Japan before those atomic bombs influenced the outcome of the war. The war with Japan did not end because Hiroshima and Nagasaki were atomic bombed. Japan no longer had the capability to fight an offensive war. The atomic bombings only emphasized that the United States would not accept anything other than complete and total surrender. And the United States would use any means available to force complete and total surrender.
Just because the United States government uses nukes to scare the American public does not mean those weapons are effective.
You're deflecting away from your initial statement. Atomic bombs didn't exist except on paper in 1942. The first atomic bomb that exploded was in July, 1945. In 1942 Japan still had most of it's Air Force available and could better defend it's home islands, and the US didn't have the long-range bombers (B-29) until September of 42 but was not used in combat until 1944. The US did not have bases near enough to Japan to even stage the B-29 in 1942 and I do not believe that a B-25 could have carried an atomic bomb, but definitely not made it off of a carrier with that weight. So there's really no way the US could have dropped an atomic bomb on a city in Japan back in 1942.
Your initial statement was
and that is what I replied to. And I believe history backs me up, dropping the atomic bombs on those two cities did indeed help to slow and end WWII.
Japan had already lost the war; the outcome was inevitable. Yet Japan refused to surrender. Japan couldn't even defend itself against conventional bombing at that stage of the war. Tokyo was gone. Japan could do nothing to prevent an invasion of the Japanese home islands. The atomic bombs only emphasized that the United States would only accept complete and total surrender. The United States was prepared to destroy Japan whatever the cost. There wasn't going to be a negotiated peace.
My point was that if the United States had atomic bombs in 1942, those atomic bombs would not have ended the war. The atomic bombs would not have prevented war or ended the war in 1942. So, the effectiveness of the bombs in 1945 has been overstated. The atomic bombs only convinced Japan that the United States was not going to negotiate an end to the war. The choice was complete and total surrender or complete and total destruction. The United States was prepared to kill millions of Japanese if that was what it took.
So, why is Biden choosing to throw Israel under the bus to make a deal with Iran? Just because Biden uses the threat of nuclear weapons to scare the American public doesn't mean much. What does Biden hope to get from Iran? When has Biden become so reluctant to pursue regime change?
Seems like the better approach would be to stand with Israel and make our own nuclear threats against Iran. Most of the Middle East seems to be buying into that approach.
Why does the United States pee into its boots because Iran might develop a nuke? If Iran persists is attempting to develop a nuclear weapon then firebomb Tehran and back that up with our own nuclear threat.
Why does Iran warrant so much more attention than the regional attempt to establish peace with the Abraham Accords? Why is Biden deliberately botching up the green shoots of peace that the Abraham Accords seems to allow?