US President Joe Biden commenced his term in office with a series of executive orders aimed at erasing the legacy of his predecessor Donald Trump, in particular on the domestic front.
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While Secretary of State Antony Blinken may have promised in a Senate confirmation hearing that the US would not shut its embassy in Jerusalem, it is difficult to imagine the new administration embracing Trump's legacy in the Middle East.
The Middle East isn't a top priority for Biden, especially given the huge challenges awaiting him on the pandemic front at home. Still, Biden's willingness to placate his party's progressive wing by rescinding Trump's executive order restricting entry to the US immigration from six Muslim countries from which a majority of the perpetrators of attacks on the US and Europe have hailed may jeopardize national security interests. In this new era, it seems terms like radical Islamism and Islamist terror are out of the question. In the future, we may need to add the term "nuclear Iran" to this list.
But the Middle East isn't waiting on Biden. On the day of his inauguration, the Islamic State terrorist group, the same organization whose elimination we've been informed of countless times before, carried out a deadly attack in Baghdad. The Islamic State group, then, is still alive and kicking.
Islamic State, along with supposedly more moderate groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, have taken a hit and gone underground. They failed because radicalism necessarily leads to backwardness, as we have seen in Hamas' failed attempt to govern the Gaza Strip or Hezbollah's stranglehold on Lebanon, which led that country to bankruptcy. But radical Islamic is bubbling under the surface, waiting for its chance to break out.
The Islamic State was quick to raise its head in Iraq because it recognized weakness, and it believes that under Biden, the US will disconnect from the region. The Muslim Brotherhood is waiting for Biden to lash Arab leaders for being undemocratic, allowing the organization and their ilk to once again raise its head. After all, democratic regimes tend to see such movements as authentic expressions of the public and its democratically elected officials.
Offering at once both a warm embrace and a threat, Tehran also either recognizes or seeks change. The Iranians, or to be more precise the smiling face of the ayatollah regime, Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif, declared Iran was interested in a deal with Biden, while threatening that without an agreement, Iran would act as it sees fit. In the meantime, Tehran's emissaries continue to go wild across the Middle East, as in Yemen where the launching of Iranian-made suicide drones at targets in Saudi Arabia has become a matter of routine. Jerusalem is also concerned Israel will become the target of missiles and drones launched from Yemen.
Israel and its allies aren't waiting on Biden either. Israel has ramped up the pace of its attacks on Iranian targets in recent weeks, sending a clear message that it will persevere in the uncompromising struggle to prevent Tehran's establishment in Syria.
Even the Arab Gulf states are preparing for what is to come, holding their noses and making amends with Qatar in the unfortunately incorrect thinking that if Qatar is brought inside the armored personnel carrier en route to a confrontation with Iran, it will avoid firing inside the vehicle.
In light of this reality, and given the mood of the Biden administration regarding the Middle East question, it may be best if the White House continues to focus on the domestic front and leave US policies in the region unchanged.
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