TThe year since the October 7 attacks has demonstrated how closely the politics of the US president are intertwined with developments in the Middle East. Each exerts a gravitational pull on the other, often damaging both.
Foreign policy rarely matters much in U.S. presidential elections, but this year could be an exception. In a contest likely to be decided narrowly in a handful of states, the fallout from conflicts in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, where war with Iran is looming, will have a major impact on Kamala Harris’ future. There is a possibility of giving.
Meanwhile, the outcome of the November 5 election could have an unpredictable but significant impact on the Middle East. Despite clear limitations on Washington’s ability to control its closest partner, Israel, the United States remains the most influential external power in the region.
Joe Biden has steadfastly supported Israel despite heavy civilian casualties in Gaza, and Benjamin Netanyahu has clearly defied US-led efforts to establish a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon. is alienating many progressive Democrats.
Kamala Harris hasn’t distanced herself significantly from Biden’s Middle East policy, and now faces an especially tough battle in Michigan, home to a large Arab-American community. Losing the state would significantly complicate Harris’ path to the presidency.
The escalation of the war and the outbreak of open conflict between Israel and Iran, combined with doubts about the Biden-Harris team’s foreign policy abilities and the threat of rising oil prices at the worst possible time, will send Michigan far into the future. It is likely to have an impact on the presidential election campaign. Harris. That could turn out to be a fatal October surprise for this election.
Daniel Levy, director of the U.S.-Middle East Project Policy Institute, said, “We are now seeing Americans evacuated from Beirut, which means that the world is in even more turmoil because of these vulnerable people.” “It really feeds President Trump’s overall narrative that he’s here.”
Just as the Middle East may influence U.S. politics more than any other region of the world, U.S. politics has a clear and continuing impact on the Middle East. Demonstration support for Israel has become extremely troubling for Republican and Democratic presidential candidates, largely independent of Israel’s actions.
Dana Allyn, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, noted that Israel’s untouchability in the U.S. political arena has increased over time.
“This was not the way a president spoke in the Richard Nixon era. There is an irony to this loyalty insofar as the respective goals and worldviews of our two allies are further apart than ever before,” Allyn argued.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has vigorously enforced the US taboo against exercising influence against Israel. He has done so by mobilizing the power of pro-Israel sentiment in the United States against a president who seeks to rein him in.
When President Barack Obama announced that settlement construction in the West Bank should be halted, Prime Minister Netanyahu dismissed it as his own bluff. When Biden withheld the delivery of a 2,000-pound American-made bomb used to destroy homes in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli prime minister declared it “unconscionable,” then accepted a Republican invitation to address Congress and Trump I had a meeting with Mr.
Biden flies to Israel days after the Oct. 7 attack and attacks the U.S. president with more personal attachment to the Israeli cause than any of his predecessors, who literally hugged Netanyahu on the airport tarmac. I was doing it. The Israeli prime minister still criticized Biden at the first sign of doubt.
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s message is clear. Hesitating to provide weapons and diplomatic support would come at a heavy political cost. U.S. leaders held accountable will be portrayed as traitors to Israel.
As a result of this tactic, successive presidents have been extremely reluctant to use the influence of the United States, Israel’s largest arms supplier, to meaningfully curb the excesses of Netanyahu’s coalition in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. became reluctant. .
Without that force, a series of US ceasefire efforts this year have been ignored and wasted by Netanyahu in ways that are at times deeply humiliating for the US, which is supposed to be the superpower and dominant partner in the relationship. It ended in
“Prime Minister Netanyahu has spent much of his career turning America into a partisan issue, trying to convince Israelis that Israel’s fate is tied to Republican leadership,” said Dalia Scheindlin, a Tel Aviv-based political analyst. “I have done so,” he said.
It is unclear whether the Harris administration will steer in a direction significantly different from the Biden administration. Harris, on the other hand, does not have the same personal history with Israel as Biden and would be freer to experiment with policy changes if she wins in November.
On the other hand, winning the election amid widespread Democratic dissatisfaction with the Middle East could convince Harris that progressive threats on the issue can be ignored.
“One scenario is that Kamala Harris wins and continues Joe Biden’s policies. That’s kind of the thing. We want to do the right thing, but basically do what Israel wants to do. We’re going to let them do it,” Scheindlin said. “Or, in line with the more progressive wing of the Democratic Party, she might get a little more forceful and say, ‘We’re going to start applying U.S. law to arms exports,’ but honestly, I don’t think I doubt that.”
It seems almost certain that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s decision-making is influenced by expectations for a return of President Trump to the White House, but he is not alone. The Saudi monarchy may also be waiting for President Trump’s return before signing a normalization deal with Israel, but the current hostilities make such a deal unlikely in the short term. low.
If Trump returns to the White House, Netanyahu will no longer have to deal with U.S. resistance to Israel’s tightening control or even its annexation of the West Bank. In 2019, the Trump administration recognized Israeli sovereignty over the annexed Golan Heights. David Friedman, President Trump’s former ambassador to Israel, is auditioning for a second term in his new book “One Jewish State,” which argues that Israel should swallow the entire West Bank.
“With Trump in the White House, the possibility of annexation has become more aggressive,” said Khaled Elgindi, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. “This is a regime that cares even less about the lives of Palestinians than the current administration. They are also not willing to pay lip service to humanitarian aid.”
There is less certainty that newly elected President Trump will help Prime Minister Netanyahu achieve his long-standing strategic goal of mobilizing the United States for a decisive strike against Iran’s nuclear program.
President Trump’s Middle East policy during his first term was built around hostility toward Iran. In his final weeks in office, President Trump greenlighted the assassination of Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Suleimani. Meanwhile, President Trump called off a missile attack on Iran in June 2019 because he believed the expected number of civilian casualties would be disproportionate in response to the downing of a U.S. drone. And one of the consistent points of Trump’s foreign policy is his aversion to US involvement in foreign wars.
Prime Minister Netanyahu may be counting on a Trump victory in November, but the resulting support from Washington is likely to be more transactional and less emotional than Biden’s. Ram Benbarak, a former Israeli intelligence chief, worries that the Trump-Netanyahu pairing could end up deteriorating the fundamental relationship between the two countries in the long run.
“What makes our relationship with America is that we share the same values,” Ben Barak said. “The moment we have an Israeli prime minister with no values like we have today and a U.S. president like Trump who has no values, I don’t know if this bond will last.”
