A Biden administration will restore the decades-long but failed "peace process" that focused on appeasing Palestinian demands that never retreat from maximalist demands for Israel's destruction.
A few months ago, Israeli agents killed the al Qaeda second-in-command in Iran. Good. Many thanks. And America cooperated:
The United States and Israel worked together to track and kill a senior al-Qaida operative in Iran earlier this year, a bold intelligence operation by the two allied nations that came as the Trump administration was ramping up pressure on Tehran.
Four current and former U.S. officials said Abu Mohammed al-Masri, al-Qaida’s No. 2, was killed by assassins in the Iranian capital in August. The U.S. provided intelligence to the Israelis on where they could find al-Masri and the alias he was using at the time, while Israeli agents carried out the killing, according to two of the officials. The two other officials confirmed al-Masri’s killing but could not provide specific details.
That cooperation will end if the Democrats are in the White House come January. Can Israel do enough damage before a Biden administration embraces Iran?
On the Palestinian track, Biden is likely, unfortunately, to throw out Trump’s peace plan and return to the “Clinton parameters” or worse, in which Israel gives up virtually all of the West Bank and turns Jerusalem into a divided, warring city. Even so, with domestic issues on his plate like COVID-19 and an economy striving to recover from the pandemic, many believe Biden won’t replicate Barack Obama’s obsession with the stubborn, self-pitying Palestinians — who have proved unamenable to peacemakers since the late 1930s.
The much more pressing issue is Iran — which, even as it reels from U.S. sanctions and COVID-19, keeps up its nuclear and ballistic-missile development, regional subversion, and specifically its efforts to build up a military presence across the border from Israel in Syria.
Here the focus is on Biden’s plans regarding the JCPOA, Obama’s gravely flawed nuclear deal with Iran that allowed it to keep developing its conventional and nonconventional weapons, pumped it up with cash for those and other ends like sponsoring terrorism, and gave it the crowning prize of a ten-year sunset clause.
This will rescue Hezbollah and Hamas--restoring the Palestinians' title as Queen of the Victims Prom--as well as alienate Gulf Arab allies while exposing Iraq to infiltration by Iran.
Biden's planned embrace of Iran will undermine the actual Middle East peace path that Trump's policies began.
Let's not forget the hubris of the Obama people who Biden's handlers will return to power:
After a thorough review, the Obama administration [in 2013] has lowered its foreign policy objectives for the Middle East:
Susan Rice leads US to more modest Mideast strategy[.]
Expansive role of two years ago is scaled down[.]
At the United Nations last month, Obama laid out the priorities he has adopted as a result of the review. The United States, he declared, would focus on negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran, brokering peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and mitigating the strife in Syria. Everything else would take a back seat.
Is that all? What will they do after lunch? Engineer the Second Coming of Jesus Christ?
Policy-making is likened to making sausage. However much you like the final product, you don't want to see how it is made. Have a thought for all the real people who will be ground up in the process of forever seeking peace instead of achieving it.
This will work out just swell, eh?
UPDATE: Palestinians really need Iran to finance terrorism. Restarting the Iran nuclear deal is a path to allowing Iran to afford that.
UPDATE: I wonder if the election of Biden means Saudi Arabia will hold back from
making peace with Israel, which before the election had been expected
to take place at some point soon.
