Israeli officials believe that the Biden administration will be very friendly toward Israel but know that while the excellent working relations are likely to remain intact, the new government will likely be more rigid in its policies than the Trump administration.
Senior officials in Israel said that the intimate working relations between the professional echelons in Jerusalem and Washington would not be undermined because of the impending change of government at the end of January. The Defense Ministry and the Pentagon, the IDF and the US Army, and the two countries' intelligence agencies have a longstanding tradition of transcending any change in the administration.
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Various agreements regarding the preservation of Israel's its qualitative advantage over its rivals in the region, especially in the wake of various arms deals the followed the Abraham Accords, are also expected to stand, as will American defense aid to Israel.
The potential change that has Israeli officials worried pertains to a likely shift in US policy toward the Palestinians and Iran.
Biden has gone on the record as saying his administration will strive to re-enter the nuclear deal with Iran, which US President Donald Trump exited shortly after taking office; and while Israeli officials believed that Trump would have attempted to reach a deal with Iran as well had he been re-elected, the concern is that a Biden administration would agree to far more lenient terms that a Trump administration would have, which could again render the deal virtually toothless.
The 2015 nuclear accord devised by the Obama administration may have significantly delayed Iran's path to a nuclear bomb and limited its ability to enrich uranium and the amount of enriched material it was allowed to possess, but it did little to prevent it from advancing its nuclear research and development, and did nothing to curb its ballistic missile program or its sponsoring of terrorism.
Tehran used these loopholes to continue arming its regional proxies, including the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah and Lebanon, and various militias in Syria and Iraq.
Israeli officials believed that these issues must be a condition for any new agreement with Iran. A senior official warned over the weekend that any deal that omits these issues or allows for the removal of the economic sanctions imposed on Tehran, would allow Iran to move forward with its nuclear aspirations in other ways, as well as export terrorism to the Middle East.
In the Palestinian context, the concern in Israel is from renewed international pressure to make concessions to the Palestinians despite their declared policy of rejectionism, which has effectively prevented any progress in the peace process over the past few years .
Some sources have suggested that such a US policy may also delay efforts to see more moderate Sunni states normalize their relations with Israel.
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