Biden officials reverse Middle East rhetoric, signaling collapse of admin policy in the region

As Iranian proxy groups throughout the Middle East continue to attack U.S. forces with drones and missiles, senior Biden Administration officials have been forced to confront a region that is increasingly more dangerous and more volatile than the one that they inherited. Experts say that the new violence in the Middle East is a direct result of a failure by the Biden Administration to deter adversaries in the region.

Last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered sobering thoughts about the conflicts in the Middle East, warning that the region is in one of the most dangerous periods in recent history.

“I think it’s very important to note that this is an incredibly volatile time in the Middle East,” Blinken said at a press conference last week with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who was visiting the United States.

“I would argue that we’ve not seen a situation as dangerous as the one we’re facing now across the region since at least 1973, and arguably even before that,” Blinken added, alluding to the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, also known as the Yom Kippur War, when Egypt and Syria jointly attacked Israel on one of its high holy days.

The new shift in administration rhetoric comes despite officials’ previous claims that the Biden approach to the Middle East deterred aggression, promoted peace between Israel and its neighbors, and freed the United States from being bogged down in regional conflict.

In early October, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan wrote in the pages of Foreign Affairs magazine, touting the accomplishments of the Biden Administration’s foreign policy successes in the Middle East. This essay was designed to show what the Biden Administration achieved, and hoped to achieve, in its foreign policy.

Sullivan claimed that the administration inherited a region that was “highly pressurized,” with a civil war in Yemen and attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria.

“Such attacks, at least for now, have largely stopped,” he wrote. “Indeed, although the Middle East remains beset with perennial challenges, the region is quieter than it has been for decades,” Sullivan concluded.

According to Sullivan, it was Biden Administration diplomatic efforts that calmed the Middle East. President Biden’s policy “emphasizes deterring aggression, de-escalating conflicts, and integrating the region through joint infrastructure projects and new partnerships, including between Israel and its Arab neighbors,” Sullivan wrote. “And it is bearing fruit.”

Sullivan indicated that challenges still persisted in the Israeli-Palestine situation, but claimed that U.S. diplomatic efforts had succeeded in de-escalating tensions.

“The Israeli-Palestinian situation is tense, particularly in the West Bank, but in the face of serious frictions, we have de-escalated crises in Gaza and restored direct diplomacy between the parties after years of its absence,” Sullivan wrote.

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