(Credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr Commons)
In his first year as US President, Joe Biden has reversed Donald Trump’s withdrawal from many of the international treaties and agreements, including rejoining the Paris climate accord and annulling the deranged decision to leave the World Health Organization during a pandemic.
The new US leader, though, has not quite proved to be as transformational nor an honest broker as had been hoped.
Biden has been somewhat ambivalent about overturning some of the duplicitous violations committed by his maverick predecessor. Notably, these included the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in contravention to the special international status bestowed on the holy city.
Meanwhile, he has also dithered and equivocated in restoring the joint comprehensive nuclear agreement with Tehran despite the crippling and vindictive sanctions imposed as a consequence on Iran’s population of 83 million.
Instead of making reparations with Iran, Biden has sought additional and unattainable concessions more in line with Trump’s highly confrontational policy. Yet, for years as a senator, he had called for engagement with Iranian leaders, meeting with its top diplomats and even floated the idea of a visit.
“I believe that an improved relationship with Iran is in the naked self-interest of the United States and, I would presume to suggest, Iran’s interest as well,” he said as Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee in a speech to the American Iranian Council back in 2002 when he laid out modest steps Washington should take to court its long-time adversary since the Islamic Revolution.
Despite the early opportunity to rebalance the country’s exceptionally partisan policy towards the Middle East, Biden delayed intervening. As the only power able to curb Israel’s belligerence, the US permitted the latest series of blitzkrieg attacks on the destitute Palestinians to proceed with impunity in May.
The round of killings failed to prevent Benjamin Netanyahu from finally losing office, but brought about another zealous right-wing Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, the son of American immigrants. Like the UK, this month Biden appears to have bought into a new flare-up in the tanker war with Iran yet again on Israel’s side.
As the only state in the region insidiously permitted to possess an illegal stockpile of atomic weapons, it’s no secret that Israel, which describes Iran as its biggest foe, wants to thwart a renewal of the nuclear deal.
Throughout its 70-year-plus existence, Israel has, in defiance of international law and though mastering disinformation, continued to expand through militarism and violence. Israel’s tanker war against Iran has been ongoing for years, together with its extrajudicial killing policy against Iranian scientists, but has brought none of the condemnation that Western countries are currently dangerously playing to the detriment of peace and security in the Middle East.
Rather than Iran, which has never had a similarly imperialistic ploy, it is Israel that ought to be brought to heel. Distorting facts on the ground can never be the basis to resolve so many conflicts spread around the region. By sacrificing fair play, they can only prolong the instability of the Middle East that has existed since Israel was founded on Palestinian land.
It is the centre of most issues that Western powers still treat with kid gloves. They are cutting their noses to spite their faces.
