US President Joe Biden crowned his visit to the Middle East by outlining the broad principles of his foreign policy in the region, and vowed to continue active US engagement in the region and not to allow Russia, China and Iran to fill any void, but this belated attention by an American president towards the importance of the Middle East is not free.
Biden is looking to push the Saudis to increase oil production as a price for opening up to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and to reserve a place for him in history as the sponsor of a defense alliance that unites Israel with its Arab surroundings, and seeks to restore the confidence of allies in the region in the United States.
They are ambitious goals, and they would have been realistic were it not for the fact that the Middle East he deals with today is vastly different from the one he knew when he was Obama's deputy.
There is a new, young generation of leaders in the Gulf that no longer sees Washington as a reliable partner and is building new partnerships with global powers like Russia and China, and an Israeli-Iranian conflict is slipping little by little to the brink of direct confrontation, and Iran is getting closer than ever to acquiring weapons nuclear.
It is wise to avoid betting on Biden's ability to reverse course in the Middle East;
This is a natural result when Washington tries to play seriously in the last quarter of an hour.
Over the past decade, weak US policies on regional issues from Syria to Iraq and Libya and openness to Iran have destroyed US credibility among allies, and it will not be easy to convince allies that America today will be different from the past decade.
Even on Biden's most pressing issue, the oil issue, he was unable to extract more than a Saudi repeat of previous pledges to increase production to 13 million barrels per day.
And Prince Mohammed bin Salman blocked the possibility of any additional increase in production in the future, and made it clear that oil policy decisions would be taken according to the logic of the market and completely within the “OPEC Plus” alliance.
The dilemma facing Biden in the relationship with the Kingdom is not related to oil as much as it is related to the deep crisis with it under his presidency. The Biden administration is aware of this and is betting on the time factor to restore relations, but time is not in the interest of the Democrats;
The midterm elections are approaching and they urgently need to lower fuel prices and improve their electoral chances.
However, Biden will be able to make some progress in the field of Saudi-Israeli relations, such as sponsoring a settlement to restore the kingdom's full sovereignty over the islands of Tiran and Sanafir, and Riyadh's agreement to allow Israeli commercial aircraft to fly over its airspace;
Such progress helps the path of establishing relations between the two countries but it is still long, and even if it is possible in the foreseeable future, it is unlikely to be achieved under Biden.
Also, the project of integrating Israel and the Arab states into a defensive alliance seemed more complicated than the Americans thought;
Biden has failed to secure a commitment from the Saudis to formally integrate Israel into any joint regional defense effort, and some Gulf states' enthusiasm for NATO's Middle East project has waned;
Either because it realizes its unrealism or its fear of dangers to it, as it will place it at the center of the Israeli-Iranian conflict.
Biden, by trying to sponsor an Israeli-Arab security alliance, seeks to get the allies to assume the main security role in managing the affairs of the region. .
Indeed, the Saudi visit did not dispel Gulf doubts about the future of the US role in the Middle East.
At the Jeddah summit, Arab leaders spoke about the importance of the US-Arab partnership and the need to continue it, but what they did not say is that they no longer trust US policy and that the return of US interest in the Middle East will not change the fact that this partnership is no longer sufficient alone for the countries of the region.
When Biden took office, the Middle East was not on his list of main foreign interests;
In his first foreign policy speech in February of last year, he did not mention the term Middle East, only referring to the focus of US diplomacy on ending the war in Yemen, and announcing the cessation of military support to the Saudi-led coalition there and the termination of arms sales related to it.
This significant difference in his approach to partnership with the Gulf since he assumed the presidency until today highlights how short-sighted and ignored the importance of the Gulf in global geopolitical competition, and that it does not work.
Despite the explicit pledges made by Biden at the Jeddah summit to continue the American commitment to the security of allies and protect their interests, they are in no way sufficient to repair what has been spoiled by years of American practice with the Gulf, and the region has been undergoing a geopolitical rearrangement process for nearly two years, driven by a prime minister with fears of That Washington is no longer interested in staying there.
Biden's Middle Eastern options will remain limited;
The Gulf states reap great economic benefits from high oil prices and have an oil partnership with Russia, and are not ready to forfeit both for a partnership that they no longer view as the only guarantor of their security and regional interests.
Biden is also still captive to his desire to revive the nuclear agreement with Iran, and the Americans believe - and they are partly right - that a nuclear-armed Iran is much worse than the current Iran and that a new nuclear deal with it guarantees that it will not obtain a nuclear weapon in the foreseeable future.
On the contrary, it will create a dangerous and unpredictable regional security environment and make it difficult for the United States to ease its military involvement in the region.
Many months have passed since the launch of the nuclear negotiations between Tehran and the West, and there are no signs of a settlement acceptable to all, and the Iranians strongly resist the idea of negotiating the future of their missile program and their regional role. Obama previously faced the same dilemma when he concluded the nuclear agreement with Tehran and ignored the concerns of his allies. Regionals did not last more than 3 years.
Over time, Biden becomes more realistic in approaching the Iranian nuclear issue by invoking the rhetoric of deterrence alongside diplomacy.
However, the pledges he made in occupied Jerusalem to never allow Tehran to acquire a nuclear weapon do not indicate the United States' willingness to risk re-engaging in the region's wars, and will seek to use them instead in negotiating pressure on Iran.
In addition, Biden seeks, by trying to sponsor an Israeli-Arab security alliance, to force the allies to assume the main security role in managing the affairs of the region.
This tendency is part of an American doctrine that gives allies in different parts of the world a major role in securing their security interests with less dependence on the United States, while this doctrine works successfully in Europe given the similar values between the United States and Europeans, but it does not work With a region that only oil and the need for security have in common with the United States.
The main weakness of the current US policy in the Middle East lies in its neglect of a major problem that has always been the cause of regional instability.
It is the Palestinian issue.
For years, the Americans have surrendered to Israeli extremism that seeks to destroy the chances of a two-state solution, and they believed that the Arab world was no longer concerned with this issue either.
In part, this belief seems correct, but the reality is that this issue cannot be underestimated by a mere shift in Arab priorities.
Biden would go a long way to restore the confidence of Middle Eastern allies in the United States if he made advancing the peace process a priority like Iran's oil and nuclear, but seemed incapable of offering something new and meaningful to the region.