Washington Wednesday - Biden’s trip to the Middle East

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 20th of July, 2022.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. It’s Washington Wednesday.

Today, President Biden’s first trip to the Middle East as president.

Biden arrived in Washington over the weekend after a trip that took him through Israel and somewhat controversially, Saudi Arabia.

That stop was particularly noteworthy because when Biden was running for president, he said he’d make the country a global pariah—specifically, because of human rights abuses and the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

EICHER: So what exactly were the president’s goals for his first official trip to the region and did he achieve them?

Joining us now to help answer those questions is Jonathan Schanzer. He is a Middle East scholar who previously worked at the Treasury Department—where he would analyze the ways terrorists finance their operations.

Schanzer testifies often before Congress, and is the author of several books.

REICHARD: Jonathan, welcome.

JONATHAN SCHANZER, GUEST: Thank you.

REICHARD: The top headline out of the president’s visit to Israel was the very clear split between Biden and Prime Minister Yair Lapid on how to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons. Biden said diplomacy is the key. But Lapid said words won’t stop Tehran—only the credible threat of military force will deter them. Jonathan, your reaction to that?

SCHANZER: Well, my reaction is that this is nothing new, that this is the same debate we’ve been watching between at least the last two Democratic administrations and the Israeli government. We had a reprieve when Trump was in power. I think he understood essentially what the Israelis were arguing. Democrats see this as a legacy issue. It dates back to Obama's time. The first agreement was signed back in 2015 and they've been laboring to get back into it. But I think that the Israelis essentially have it right. After all, it is their own neighborhood. They know the actors that surround them. And really the only time that we've seen Iran slow its nuclear progress almost to a halt was when the Iranians felt as if they were potentially threatened by the United States. It's our military that they fear most, not the Israelis’—as good as they are, they're not as strong or as large as the U.S. military. So, I think Lapid had it right. Biden, you know, I think continues to stick to his guns. I think it's a mistake. And I think, you know, he got an earful when he was in the region, despite the fact that his visit to both countries went pretty well.

REICHARD: President Biden said wouldn’t rule out the use of force as a last resort, and he said his patience with Iran is running thin. Is there any reason to think that Iran believes that? That there is a potential military threat if they don’t pay ball with him here?

SCHANZER: I think the Iranians need to understand that the longer they drag this whole thing out, where they keep going back to the negotiating table, and they continue to make new demands, and their demands that the United States can't really acquiesce, that they are wearing everyone's patience down. The Israelis already have a fairly itchy trigger finger. I think that the Iranians also should know that there's likely going to be a change in power in Congress in November and you're going to see more hawkish members of Congress from the Republican party come in. And they may be looking for a different strategy from the President. So I think the Iranians had been skating on thin ice for quite some time. They would have been smart to sign this deal. It was going to give them billions and billions of dollars and essentially guarantee a pathway to a nuclear weapon. It's why the Israelis have been so opposed to this deal. Why they haven't accepted it is not clear to me, but certainly that patience wearing thin, that rings true to me as well.

REICHARD: The president also met with Palestinian leaders and again voiced support for a two-state solution. Is there any sign whatsoever that this could actually happen in our lifetimes? And should it happen?

SCHANZER: Yeah, not right now. And I think the president made that fairly clear to the Palestinians that he didn't have a whole lot to offer them. But that he simply continued to back this two state paradigm. The thing that's really interesting that Biden didn't get into when he was there is that you have a president of the Palestinian Authority, his name is Mahmoud Abbas. And he's been in power now for 14 years. And that is 10 years past his four year term. So this is a guy that is a complete and total autocrat. He's not going anywhere anytime soon, and he doesn't have the faith or confidence of either the Israelis or the American negotiators. So it's not likely that we're going to see any of this jar loose anytime soon. I think, if anything, this was really about optics for the president. He wanted to go there and to show his his left-leaning base—the progressives primarily in the Democratic Party—I think he wanted to show them that he still was thinking about the Palestinian issue, that he was still committed to the two-state solution. But as I said he had really nothing to offer while he was there.

REICHARD: Let’s talk about his Saudi Arabia trip now. Two objectives, in that many believed the president wanted to achieve: The first was to get the Saudis to commit to pumping more oil. Didn’t happen. They did not make that commitment. Why do you think they’re not cooperating in that?

SCHANZER: Well, the Saudis are watching the global economy. And if we're about to head into some sort of a severe economic slowdown or recession, then the price of oil is going to plummet. And you have to remember, this is the key source of their income. So right now, we have obviously very high gas prices, but if it's determined that we're going into severe economic retraction, it's going to drop like a lead balloon. So I think they're just trying to watch. They made it clear upfront that they were making no promises, that they wanted to hear out the president. Look, I think the President on this score did everything that he should have done, which is, A) he ended this long rift that he's had with the Saudis. This has been going on for four years. And it came in at some peril, right? I mean, the Saudis are the government sitting atop the world's largest proven oil resources in the world. So it made no sense to spurn this government. Despite some of the differences that we have, they're still strategically important to the United States. So I think what Biden has done is he's at least tried to reset relations and made it clear that he would like to be able to work more closely with the Saudis, perhaps in the next oil crisis, or if this current crisis persists. And I think the Saudis have at least left that door open. So in that sense: mission accomplished.

REICHARD: Another reported objective was to get the Saudis to agree to a regional security alliance that would include Israel. Did the president make any progress there?

SCHANZER: Yeah, there is no direct progress here. In fact, we even saw the Emiratis begin to waffle a little bit on whether such a thing could be created. They seem to have gotten cold feet, just as the president arrived in Saudi Arabia. But I think what needs to be understood here is that the Israelis are already making significant progress in normalizing with a number of countries in the region. That includes intelligence sharing, it includes military cooperation, at least in defensive areas. And, by the way, the Israelis also joined CENTCOM—Central Command of the U.S. Military. They're part of now this constellation of Arab and Middle East states where they're combining their collective defense capabilities. So I believe, actually, that this is already beginning to happen. It's just not likely going to happen formally anytime soon. No one's going to say, hey, we're now Middle East NATO. I think they're just going to be quietly cooperating under the leadership of the United States out of primarily a fear of Iran.

REICHARD: President Biden justified his Saudi actions by framing that as part of a foreign policy investment in the Middle East. He said he won’t leave a vacuum to be filled by China, Russia, and Iran. What is your reaction to that?

SCHANZER: I think that's exactly what he's doing. I mean, you have to remember that the Chinese in particular, but the Russians maybe to somewhat lesser extent, certainly are looking right now at America's continued—I mean, we've had this repeated message that we want to pivot out of the Middle East and we want to pivot to Asia. But you know, that's all fine and good, except you need to remember that China and again, to a lesser extent, Russia, they're eyeing the rest of the world for domination, right? We're heading into what we've been broadly describing as great power competition, a sort of a return to the Cold War paradigm, if you will, where it's the United States against some of its larger challengers. So, we cannot afford to leave the Middle East entirely. And I think it was the right thing for the president to do to make sure that the Chinese and the Russians and, in fact, the rest of the world saw these two important countries—Saudi Arabia and Israel—as being part of the American led system, the American led alliance. That was an important message. I hope it continues to resonate. We can't afford to spurn allies any longer. We need to be thinking about building a broader system that can be sustained.

REICHARD: Jonathan Schanzer is senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Jonathan, appreciate your time here. Thank you.

SCHANZER: My pleasure.

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