1In the Middle East News Hour this week, I was joined by my colleague from the Center for Security Policy and friend David Wurmser. We focused on the fallout from President Joe Biden’s recent visit to Israel and the Middle East.
Every state in the Middle East, friend and foe—except Israel—realizes that Biden’s visit to the region was a failur.
Israel’s caretaker government under Prime Minister Yair Lapid and Defense Minister Benny Gantz is still insisting that Biden’s visit was a success. This even as Biden refused to put forward any option for preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear-armed state.
The Saudis, Emirates and Egypt all responded to Biden by looking for ways to normalize their ties with Tehran. Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to Biden’s failure by holding a summit in Tehran with Iranian dictator Ali Khamenei and Turkish President Recep Erdoğan.
David explained that Biden’s refusal to green-light an Israeli attack on Iran or consider any option but continuing down his current sure path of enabling Iranian nuclear armament should have sufficed to convince Lapid and Gantz that Israel needs to ignore the United States and move forward with its regional partners to either take out Iran’s nuclear installations by force or take down the regime, or both.
Instead, Lapid responded by putting a framed copy of his Jerusalem Declaration with Biden on the wall of the security cabinet meeting room. That is, he doubled down on his faith that the United States will keep its word and prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Gantz, for his part, went one further. He flew to the United States this week to meet again with Biden’s top advisors. Speaking in Aspen, Gantz insisted that Biden’s pledge to prevent Iran from acquiring Iran from becoming a nuclear power was a significant event.
Why America refuses to stop Iran
David and I took a deep dive into the reasons for Washington’s refusal to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. The failures of the United States are structural and conceptual, and as a result unlikely to be corrected in a timeframe relevant to preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear-armed state.
Finally, we moved to Israel itself, and the stakes in the coming election. We discussed what is liable to happen before the elections in the United States and Israel, and the important signal that Israel is sending both through its continued operations in Iran and through strategic messaging from opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu. We explained how those messages and actions are likely to impact events, for better or worse, in the coming months.
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