Three months after President Joe Biden entered the White House, it is already possible to discern symptoms of naiveté, misunderstanding and disregard for past failures in his foreign policy. These caveats are particularly relevant to Israel.
To stop the Iranian race toward nuclear weapons, the Obama administration made mistakes both in the negotiation process and the nuclear deal it reached with Iran in 2015. President Obama was overly eager to reach an agreement, and although he repeatedly warned Iran that “all options were open,” it was clear that he didn’t intend to use the military one. This hardened Iran’s positions and eventually yielded a comfortable compromise for them. The same problems seem to have emerged today.
Biden is going out of his way to appease Iran in an effort to restore the 2015 nuclear agreement that imposed restrictions on its program to develop nuclear weapons. Biden removed the Houthis (Iranian-backed Shi’ite forces fighting the Saudi-backed Yemeni government) from a list of countries and organizations supporting terrorism.
He assumed that the move would reduce the violence inside Yemen and against Saudi Arabia so that the severe humanitarian crisis caused by the civil war could be addressed. The result was exactly the opposite. Encouraged by Iran, the Houthis have intensified their attacks, especially on Saudi Arabia.
Although last February Biden conducted a measured attack on a pro-Iranian militia base on the Syrian-Iraq border in retaliation for an attack on a US base in Iraq, he reduced the American forces in the Gulf. His spokesmen leaked to the American media that Israel attacked Iranian ships smuggling oil and weapons into Syria.
More recently, they leaked information on an alleged Israeli attack on the Saviz, a military intelligence ship owned and operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in retaliation for Iranian attacks on two Israeli-owned commercial ships. In doing so, Biden signals that even if negotiations fail, his options would not include an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, and that he also opposes any Israeli military options. As in 2015, if Iran doesn’t fear a military attack, it will feel free to present tougher positions in the negotiations.
Democrats consider human rights as an important value in making foreign policy. But selective application of the principle raises questions. When Secretary of State Antony Blinken presented the 2020 State Department Report on Human Rights, he named countries seriously violating human rights such as Myanmar, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, but omitted Iran. The report also significantly reduced the number of citizens murdered, wounded and detained by the IRGC during the 2019 mass protests against the regime.
A similar phenomenon emerged in 2009, when the Obama administration refrained from condemning the Iranian Islamic regime for brutally suppressing mass protests against the rigging of the presidential elections. The motivation in both cases was to avoid enraging the regime, which might undermine the nuclear negotiations.
All these missteps have only toughened Iran’s positions. The regime has only agreed to indirect pre-negotiation talks with the United States in Vienna, with the other powers that signed the 2015 nuclear deal acting as mediators. The Iranian tactic was to prevent coordination and a unified front of the US and its European allies. Iran also began enriching uranium with state-of-the-art rapid centrifuges that are driving it closer to the bomb. This isn’t a move in the direction of compromise and agreement but vice versa.
Iran still presents two preconditions for negotiations with the US: They first want lifting of all the sanctions imposed by former president Donald Trump, even those related to issues other than the nuclear program, such as violations of human rights. They also insist on returning to the terms of the 2015 agreement without changes or amendments. Thus, Iran signals to the US that it expects concessions in order to begin negotiations and that it won’t budge from its preconditions. In a timid response, the Biden administration said that Iran doesn’t have to be the first side to make a concession.
VIS-À-VIS INTERNATIONAL organizations, President Biden is reversing US policy. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the US will rejoin the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and lifted the personal sanctions Trump imposed on Fatou Bensouda, the outgoing prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague (ICC). Trump imposed sanctions on her and her team over her decisions to investigate the US and Israel for alleged war crimes, in Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories, respectively.
Trump had rightly withdrawn the US from the UNHRC because it is a ludicrous, highly politicized body dominated by countries that are among the world’s worst human rights violators, such as China, Russia, Cuba, Pakistan, Libya, Venezuela and Somalia. The UNHRC is also an antisemitic body. It has one agenda item just for Israel and another for the rest of the world. It often publishes biased and false reports on Israel upon which, among other things, Prosecutor Bensouda relied in her decision to investigate Israel.
Secretary Blinken explained that returning the US to the UNHRC was intended to fix its poor performance and deficiencies from within. This is a waste of time. Blinken has learned nothing from past similar policy failures. The current UNHRC was formed in 2006 after its predecessor, the Human Rights Committee, was dismantled because it was highly politicized and constantly failed to deal with the issues for which it was founded. The Bush administration was unimpressed with the name change and demanded significant reforms in the UNHRC’s structure and conduct. The Council refused and Bush decided to keep the US out of it.
The Obama administration reversed this policy and explained that the US joined the Council to change its operations from within. But nothing changed. Trump also demanded changes in the Council’s functioning, and after being rebuffed, withdrew the US from its ranks in 2018. The Biden administration’s return to the Council unconditionally indicates naiveté and assumptions that have been proven wrong time and again.
In lifting the sanctions imposed on ICC Prosecutor Bensouda, Blinken reiterated American criticism of her decision to investigate the US and Israel, but argued that the way to deal with it is through talks and persuasion rather than sanctions. This, too, is a self-deluding belief. Blinken ignored Bensouda’s endemic hostility toward the US and Israel, and her clear attempt to force the investigations on her successor, Karim Khan, two months before her retirement.
Blinken should have conditioned the lifting of sanctions on Bensouda by telling her to refrain from opening the investigation of Israel and leaving the decision to her successor. He didn’t do it. If Khan decides to continue the investigation of Israel, equal treatment of states requires that he will also open an investigation of the US, or else prove the saying “might is right,” causing even more damage to the dysfunctional ICC.
Biden’s policies do follow the values and principles of the Democratic Party. But for the most part, appeasement in international relations achieves exactly the opposite results. This is not how a superpower should project influence and deterrence against extremist authoritarian regimes like Iran and corrupt international organizations such as the UNHRC and the ICC.
Trump left Biden with leverages of pressure and influence, but instead of using them to achieve US foreign policy goals, he has been canceling them without any return. Biden’s missteps on Iran, the Palestinians and international organizations are jeopardizing Israel’s key national interests and, therefore, require a calculated and cautious campaign to cope with them.
The writer is professor emeritus of political science and communication and a senior research associate at the BESA Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University.