The Biden administration’s foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, needs a strategic rethink, as well as an injection of new ideas. This Washington Examiner series, Middle East Mirage, will investigate how the administration has fallen short on Iran engagement, the Israel-Hamas conflict and the push for a two-state solution, and sorely needed reform in the United Nations, particularly the UNRWA. Part One will look at how the administration still does not have a coherent strategy for Iran.
Four years ago, then-candidate Joe Biden campaigned on reentering the Iran nuclear agreement, which then-President Donald Trump withdrew from in a dramatic break of foreign policy from the Obama administration.
But now, as Biden runs for a second term, progress on the nuclear agreement is dead, the current administration has been pilloried for unfreezing billions of dollars worth of assets, and there seems to be no clear strategy for how to tackle its primary antagonist in the Middle East. On top of all of that is the distinct possibility of a war the administration doesn’t want with an emboldened Tehran.
While the administration has long since given up on the belief both sides would reenter the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, it did not quite develop a clear strategy for how to engage with Tehran, according to Matthew Kroenig, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center.
“I think that the Biden administration came in [with an] Iran strategy and Middle East strategy [that] was essentially that they were going to reenter the nuclear deal that was going to stabilize relations with Iran in the Middle East, and then that would allow them to focus on China and climate and other priorities,” he told the Washington Examiner. “That didn’t work out. They didn’t get back into the deal. And I think they don’t yet have a new strategy for the region.”
The nuclear deal, which Obama agreed to in 2015 before Trump withdrew from it in 2018, “was supposed to be a baby step towards something bigger,” Alex Vatanka, the director of the Iran program at the Middle East Institute, told the Washington Examiner. “But really, it wasn’t a turning point.”
Neither Trump nor Biden has had “one big holistic” Iran policy, Vatanka said. “I would argue the United States hasn’t had an Iran policy, serious Iran policy, going back to the Ronald Reagan days. So, the Iran policy has been consistent for successive presidents since 1989 [and] is kick the can down the road and let somebody else deal with it. And you can go back to the embassy hostage-taking in 1979 and say Iran has brought no American president good news. So, nobody really wants to deal with it.”
Last year, the Biden administration agreed to release $6 billion of frozen Iranian funds, dedicated for humanitarian purposes only, in exchange for the release of several Americans held in Iranian prisons, whom the State Department had determined were wrongfully detained.
While the administration was adamant that Tehran could not use these funds for illicit purposes, it did not stop conservatives from balking at that assessment and denigrating the deal. Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack, which occurred months after the deal was agreed upon, further inflamed critics of the agreement, who argued that even if the money can only be used for humanitarian purposes, it could free up otherwise spent funds for anti-U.S. purposes.
Retired U.S. Central Command head Gen. Frank McKenzie told the Washington Examiner that Tehran has three primary objectives to foreign policy: regime preservation, destruction of the state of Israel, and the removal of U.S. forces from the Middle East.
“No. 1 is, by far, the most important objective for Iran,” he said. “That’s where you gain leverage on Iran. And so we need to keep that in the back of our minds. At the same time, Iran believes they can pursue, particularly the objection of us in the theater, if they operate below a red line that will avoid a massive United States response. The problem is they don’t know where that red line is because we haven’t clearly said it.”
The calculus regarding the U.S. policy for Iran has taken on new significance in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks due to Tehran’s support for various and semi-independent militia and militant groups in the Middle East, known as the “axis of resistance,” that all share Tehran’s stance against the U.S., Western world, and Israel.
Hamas, one of the groups that Iran supports, carried out the largest terrorist attack in Israel’s history on Oct. 7 that left roughly 1,200 people dead. The widespread slaughter of civilians, women, and children and the brutality of the massacres scarred a nation the leaders of which vowed an overwhelming response.
Eight days prior to the attack, Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan said, “The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.” About four months later, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Middle East hadn’t been in a more precarious position “since at least 1973, and arguably even before that.”
Israel has declared an all-out war against Hamas, vowing to eliminate the terrorist group from the Gaza Strip while it has also begun limited combat against Hezbollah, a more sophisticated and larger terrorist group that is based next to Israel’s northern border in Lebanon.
The U.S., in supporting Israel, surged military personnel to the region in a very publicized effort to avoid a wider conflict. But Iran’s “axis of resistance” has had other ideas in mind.
Iran supports multiple militias in Iraq and Syria that have now carried out more than 160 attacks against U.S. forces in both countries and Jordan since mid-October. The strikes have killed three U.S. troops and injured more than 100 others in total. The U.S. has carried out limited airstrikes targeting their infrastructure and facilities until the three troops were killed in late January, which prompted a more significant response in early February.
U.S. administration officials reiterated that their initial response to the deaths of the three service members in Iraq and Syria was only the start of it.
“These responses began tonight,” National Security Council coordinator John Kirby said after the first iteration. “They’re not going to end tonight.”
The Iranian-supported Houthis in Yemen have carried out roughly three dozen attacks on commercial vessels in the waterways off the coast. About 10%-15% of global shipping travels through the Gulf of Aden, Red Sea, the Strait of Bab el Mandeb, and through the Suez Canal during normal times, while many companies have since rerouted their shipments on longer voyages.
“What sort of things can you do proactively that will cause these groups to stop? And I think that’s a big open question that I haven’t seen the administration, frankly, seriously consider, at least not publicly,” Brian Carter, an expert with the American Enterprise Institute, told the Washington Examiner. “What you’re trying to achieve with deterrence is creating a level of fear within the opposing force to basically get them to stop their attacks. And to do that, you have to actually strike what they hold dear to them.“
U.S. forces have carried out multiple iterations of strikes, often targeting missiles the Houthis were preparing to launch, while they have also carried out three iterations of joint strikes with the United Kingdom and with the support of other nations as well.
The U.S. did not immediately respond with military force to the militias’ attacks against U.S. forces or to the Houthis’ attacks on commercial vessels, and when it did, it didn’t result in the cessation of the attacks.
“The idea was that, ‘Well, if we don’t hit back, the things will just die down,'” Kroenig said. “But when you’re dealing with a dangerous adversary that often doesn’t work instead, the lesson Iran took was, ‘We can get away with this. There are no consequences. This is great. Let’s step up the attacks.’ So, I think, essentially, the cautious approach invited more aggression.”
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While the Biden administration maintains Iran is responsible for the actions of its proxies due to its funding and support, it’s unclear whether Tehran is ordering their every move or if these attacks are carried out at the direction of each group.
“The Iranians have a lot more to lose than their proxy allies. They have a state they can potentially lose,” Vatanka added. “The Islamic Republic’s future could be at stake if this handling of Iran’s network of proxies gets out of hand.”
