LThe main objective of the tour that the President of the United States, Joe Biden, made in the Middle East was to reaffirm his country’s commitment to a region where he has continued to accumulate disappointments. At the end of this visit, one thing is obvious: it only left people disappointed.
The Israelis could only regret his predecessor, Donald Trump, who had aligned the diplomacy of the United States like never before with the intransigent positions of the Jewish state. The Palestinians have deplored the absence of strong gestures that could have translated Washington’s stated desire to once again become the “honest broker” of an outdated Israeli-Palestinian peace process. There was no lack of opportunities, however, from the reopening of the US consulate in East Jerusalem once dedicated to the Palestinians to a true tribute to the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, probably killed by Israeli gunfire in May.
The most delicate stage for Joe Biden was scheduled for Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the scene of a meeting with the crown prince and de facto ruler of the kingdom, Mohammed Ben Salman. The 2020 Democratic presidential candidate had promised to keep him at bay because of his alleged involvement in the assassination in atrocious conditions of dissident Jamal Khashoggi.
The President of the United States has resigned himself to this reunion, hoping that his volte-face will be compensated by an increase in Saudi oil production. A drop in gasoline prices has indeed become imperative a few months before mid-term elections which could turn into a rout for his camp.
Denials
Le « fist bump », this clenched fists salute exchanged by the president with the former pariah thus rehabilitated, craftsman of a particularly authoritarian modernization of the kingdom, was a source of other disappointments. Particularly costly for Joe Biden, it was followed only by vague Saudi promises. It could hardly be otherwise. Everyone knows from Canossa that denials of this sort generally fail to restore confidence after a crisis.
There is no doubt that the crown prince has kept from his diplomatic quarantine a deep mistrust of the Democratic presidency. And Joe Biden obviously exasperated all those who could have been convinced by his initial desire to place the defense of American democratic values at the heart of his foreign policy.
In his defense, Joe Biden inherited by accessing the White House a heavy Middle Eastern liability. The last Democratic President, Barack Obama, paved the way, in 2013, for a massive re-engagement of Russia in the region by refusing any interventionism in Syria at a time when the dictatorship of Bashar Al-Assad was wavering.
His Republican successor, Donald Trump, weakened American interests even more deeply by withdrawing his country from the international agreement concluded in 2015 which framed the Iranian nuclear program. Its policy of maximum pressure aimed at bringing the Iranian regime to its knees has, on the contrary, pushed the latter to relaunch its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons and to refuse for the moment to return to the status quo ante.
Joe Biden found himself accountable for these strategic errors. By adding his own, he has complicated the American posture a little more in a region where the confrontation of the United States with the Russian and Chinese revisionist powers is also being played out.