About a week before Hamas’ gunmen broke out of the Gaza Strip to kill and kidnap more than 1,000 Israeli citizens on Oct. 7, 2023, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said something about the Middle East that may follow him for the rest of his career.
“The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades now,” Mr. Sullivan said during an interview at The Atlantic Festival. “Now challenges remain — Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the tensions between Israelis and Palestinians — but the amount of time that I have to spend on crisis and conflict in the Middle East today compared to any of my predecessors going back to 9/11 is significantly reduced.”
A quieter Middle East may have been a fantasy, but it was the Biden administration’s foreign policy hope when the president took office in January 2021, according to Brian Katulis, a senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Middle East Institute in Washington. In this episode of History As It Happens, Mr. Katulis says the administration’s missteps left it “unable to achieve nearly any of its stated diplomatic and security outcomes.”
“It was quiet, but under the surface it wasn’t. On the surface, Israel and Saudi Arabia were moving toward a normalization accord. Last September, in 2023, the Biden administration announced with partners in the region at the G20 summit in India the India-Middle East-Europe economic corridor. So they had all these visions of regional integration and prosperity building on President Biden’s trip to the Middle East in the summer of 2022. But like Mike Tyson once said, everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face,” Mr. Katulis said.
Also covered in this episode, a year after the stunning Hamas atrocities, a region-wide war is unfolding despite Biden administration efforts to avoid one. Israel has invaded southern Lebanon and is expected to retaliate against Iran for launching 180 missiles at the Jewish state on Oct. 1. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims his country is winning the war as he promises to change the Middle East for the better.
Mr. Netanyahu is not the first leader to hold such dreams. Before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Mr. Netanyahu, then out of power, testified before Congress that the application of military power against Saddam Hussein would usher in a new era in the Middle East. The U.S. invasion changed the region, but not in the way its proponents imagined.
History As It Happens is available at washingtontimes.com or wherever you find your podcasts.
