Vying for peace in West Asia and a piece of US heartland

This year the world votes — with an estimated 3.5 billion out of the planet’s 8 billion going to the polls. The crescendo will be in November, in the US

Napoleon Bonaparte is believed to have said “never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake."

Iran and Israel have been sworn adversaries and in the crosshairs for decades, raising the temperatures in West Asia well beyond the boiling point. But as Israel faces global censure for the humanitarian situation in Gaza, as civilians face an impending famine under a barrage of firepower, the tilt temporarily moved back in the way of Tel Aviv, courtesy Tehran.

Tensions between Tehran and Tel Aviv simmered recently, as Iran brazenly launched an unprecedented direct attack of drones at Israel. Israel and its allies neutralised the threats.

Tehran insisted it was responding to a provocation by Israel, when Tel Aviv allegedly destroyed an Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria, killing elite members of the Iranian Quds force. Tel Aviv never publicly accepted the claims, but was widely reported to have hit the Iranian compound, prompting questions of violating the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961) that treats embassies and consulates as sovereign territory.

Geopolitical scholars remain divided if Iran’s attacks were showboating for the multitude at home under pressure to respond, or if they were genuine attempts that were thwarted by sophisticated defence systems. Defence experts account that Iranian missiles cost the energy-rich Iran a few million, while it cost the Israeli exchequer a billion-plus to turn into dust from the skies.

Out from the shadows

The unprecedented nature was not just the brazenness, but while tensions have always simmered, between Israel and Iran, neither has attacked the other directly. For years,

Israel, with the help of US intelligence, has taken out Iranian nuclear scientists covertly or through cyber-attacks like the Stuxnet cyber virus, which neither Washington nor Tel Aviv confirm.

Iran, meanwhile, has used its proxies, in the ‘HHH’ factor — the Houthis in Yemen, the Shia militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Iran’s spiderweb and nuclear facilities in Natanz have always been a direct threat to Israel and such a bold, brazen, and premeditated attack compelled an already hawkish war cabinet to attack.

Even US President Joe Biden, who has been critiqued by several Americans for not doing enough to call for a humanitarian ceasefire, counselled, calling for restraint, citing Israel to take the win with a failed attack and not escalate tensions. Tehran’s adversary load is a heavy one, constantly at loggerheads with a three-pronged adversarial kerfuffle against Riyadh, Tel Aviv, and Washington. The irony is that the thorny relations with Tehran have led to a sort of thawing and impending rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Of course, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t epitomise restraint, and reports point to a suspected Israeli strike near a prominent nuclear facility in Isfahan, in Central Iran, historically home to several members of the Persian Jewish diaspora. Many see the attack, as a warning from Israel to Iran, of the former’s awareness of its sensitive military sites and the depth of Israel’s military reach.

Topic for debate

Meanwhile, 2024 is the year the world votes, with an estimated 3.5 billion out of the planet’s 8 billion going to the polls. The crescendo will be in November, in the US, in what seems to be the first historic rematch since 1956, when President Dwight Eisenhower squared off against Democrat Adlai Stevenson.

In US presidential primaries and debates since 1992, since the fall of The Wall, have been predominantly focused on domestic issues from recession, healthcare, gun control, and immigration. A notable exception was in 2004, in the post 9/11 era, and the war in Iraq, as George W Bush’s machinery in Karl Rove destroyed John Kerry.

Since 2008, however, the elephant in the room is China. Donald Trump’s trial rarely plays second fiddle on US news networks, but as news of campus-wide protests in the US takes centre stage, Trump, much to his chagrin, is down the totem pole of news coverage.

Looking inwards

West Asia has always been contentious for every US President, at different times for different reasons. Ignore it at your peril, but ask Jimmy Carter. His health is fragile, but he may just be able to tell you how the Iranian revolution of 1979 led to his coup de grace.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan is still wiping down the metaphoric pie on his face when he said, ‘the Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades’. This was on September 29.

The Biden campaign will tout his domestic successes, namely the American Rescue Plan Act, which provided crucial relief during the Covid-19 pandemic, from stimulus payments, and vaccine distribution. The bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act promises to give American infrastructure a much-needed overhaul. A domestic and foreign policy win in the CHIPS Act, to bolster domestic semiconductor production, and compete with China, will give Washington an edge in national security and technological innovation.

Botched foreign policy

However, in foreign policy, critics will point to a botched and hasty withdrawal in Afghanistan that replaced the Taliban with the Taliban. The war in Ukraine, which albeit, not a result of the Biden administration, gives the Trump camp enough ammunition of Biden being asleep at the wheel, while Putin marched into Ukraine like it was 1939. Then, there is a death toll in Gaza that is escalating.

Nationwide protests, against members of Congress, Mayors, Governors, and Biden administration staff have been constant. For Washington, it’s this unshakable bond with Tel Aviv, where ‘iron-clad equals iron dome’, as after protracted delays, the House passed funding Bills in terms of military aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.

With bipartisan support the Bill was approved  — that is, $26 billion, chiefly in military aid to Israel, with a smattering of $9 billion in humanitarian aid,  some of which goes to Gaza; accentuating a perverse situation where Gazans get US aid, while also being bombarded with US-made firepower used by an American ally.

Trump’s crowing

Trump will tout his successes in West Asia, as a pro-Israel advocate, moving the embassy to Jerusalem, a move that successive Democrat and Republican presidents and administrations avoided. Trump will cite the Abraham Accords as a watershed moment for West Asian peace, perhaps the most significant accord since the Oslo Accords 1993.

This paved the way for mini-laterals in the I2U2 (India, Israel, UAE, and the US) and the India-Middle East-European Economic Corridor (IMEEC) announced at the G20 last year. Furthermore, Trump doesn’t drown his bellicosity and has been apoplectic in how the Barack Obama administration signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or the Iran nuclear deal. In 2018, just like the erstwhile Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the US withdrew from the pact and any sense of rapprochement with Tehran was reversed. Riyadh and Tel Aviv were not unhappy, given their joint adversarial trepidation of a nuclear Iran.

Catch-22

Predictions and polls don’t make for prophecies, and 2016 and 2020 evince it’s a fool’s errand to read the tea leaves.  But let’s not forget, Joe Biden has a Jimmy Carter problem.

US elections come down to battleground states, and one such key state is Michigan, a vital cog in the Blue Wall States, in the Midwest. Dearborn in Michigan is home to the highest population of Arab-Americans anywhere in the US, and the role of Washington’s complicity in the assault on Gaza hasn’t gone down well with the multitude, with scores of Democrat voters and progressives vowing to vote uncommitted, or not for Biden.

In 2016, Trump won the state, the first for a Republican since George H W Bush in 1988. Biden clawed it back in 2020. But there are cracks in the Democratic counties.

Politics 101 is pouncing on the ‘uncommitted’ voter, but Trump thrives on disenchantment and ennui and will be ‘Biden’ his time until the time itself comes.

(Akshobh Giridharadas is a Washington DC-based public policy professional, and visiting fellow, Observer Research Foundation.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.