In March 2023, China’s announcement that it had brokered renewed diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran threw into sharp relief the United States’ rapidly diminishing role in the Middle East. Shortly after President Joe Biden came to office, the United States completed its inept withdrawal from Afghanistan, a country that Washington had spent 20 years trying and failing to bring into the Western fold. Then the president, who as a candidate had cast Saudi Arabia as a “pariah” because of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s alleged involvement in the murder of the regime critic Jamal Khashoggi, soon found the Saudis rebuffing a U.S. request to increase oil production during the war in Ukraine. Meanwhile, U.S. diplomatic efforts to revive the Iran nuclear deal faltered amid a violent wave of repression by the Iranian regime. And the administration looked on helplessly as the most far-right government in Israeli history came to power, threatening the country’s claims to democracy, fueling a new wave of violence, and jeopardizing the Washington-backed Abraham Accords.
Observers may be forgiven for wondering whether U.S. influence in the region has declined permanently. Or for that matter, whether the Biden administration even cares, amid the war in Ukraine and the growing U.S. rivalry with Russia and China. Although former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump paid lip service to a “pivot” away from the Middle East, they both engaged in multiple military deployments and large-scale diplomatic initiatives, from promoting democracy during the Arab uprisings to engineering peace deals between Israel and Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates. Today, despite the region’s far-reaching challenges—including the ravages of civil war in Libya, Syria, and Yemen; economic decay in Egypt, Lebanon, and Tunisia; the growing threats of climate change, inequality, and region-wide instability; and resurgent authoritarianism everywhere—very little of that ambitious U.S. agenda remains.
