US combines military power with diplomacy to reshape the Middle East

The United States faces major challenges as it steps up its diplomatic and military engagement in the Middle East in an effort to end the devastating war in Gaza and push back against Iranian influence, the Wall Street Journal reported on February 5.

As Secretary of State Antony Blinken makes his fifth trip to the Middle East since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, the US aims to de-escalate the fighting and free some 130 hostages still held in Gaza, a crucial step toward advancing its more ambitious goals. Militarily, the US has been heavily attacking pro-Iranian militias in Iraq, Syria and Yemen over the weekend.

But the US effort faces major obstacles, not least demands for compromise from all sides. What is clear is that the Middle East, which the White House had hoped to relegate to higher priorities such as China and the conflict in Ukraine, has now emerged as the most pressing challenge to Washington’s foreign policy.

“The fighting in Gaza was a catalyst for the United States to change its approach to a long-running conflict,” said Martin Indyk, a former U.S. special envoy for Israel-Palestine negotiations and ambassador to Israel. “The Biden administration now recognizes that it cannot achieve its strategic goals in the Middle East without a more sustainable approach to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Just last spring, the administration took a completely different approach. Its strategy was to encourage Israel and Saudi Arabia to come together on the assumption that Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza had limited leverage and would eventually accept potential self-governance arrangements. Anticipating no major military challenge, the Biden administration also reduced the U.S. military presence in the region.

“Although the Middle East remains beset by perennial challenges, the region is quieter than it has been in decades,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan wrote in a Foreign Policy op-ed, which was originally scheduled for publication just before Hamas’ October attack on Israel and later revised.

With the death toll in Gaza sending shockwaves through the region, the U.S. strategy now calls for solving the Middle East peace conundrum by prioritizing the Palestinian issue: Advancing the Palestinians’ vision of a state of their own has become a prerequisite for pursuing Israel-Saudi Arabia normalization and, with it, the hope of forging a broad anti-Iran coalition in the region, experts say.

“War brings opportunity,” said retired Marine Corps General Frank McKenzie, who once headed the US Central Command, which controls US forces in the Middle East. “And there is opportunity here, if we can seize it.”

With US election-year politics at a critical juncture, progress toward a Palestinian state and an end to fighting in Gaza could help the White House respond to critics on the Democratic left who complain that the Biden administration has leaned too heavily toward Israel and has not threatened to cut military support.

But the collapse of the diplomatic effort could hurt President Biden’s reelection prospects, especially in Michigan, which has a large Arab-American population. The challenges to a diplomatic breakthrough include securing Israel’s cooperation, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he opposes the creation of a Palestinian state. The administration must also maintain Saudi Arabia’s support, which would likely require finalizing the U.S.-Saudi mutual defense treaty and securing Senate ratification.

Additionally, the Palestinian Authority will need to reform to be able to govern the West Bank and Gaza with the support of the Palestinian public. Even if that happens, deep-seated concerns on all sides will need to be addressed, as many Israelis remain wary of empowering a Palestinian state in the wake of Hamas’s attacks on Israel.

“We need to reconcile Israel’s fear that a Palestinian state would inevitably be dominated by Hamas or a Hamas-like group,” said Dennis Ross, a former senior US Middle East official now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “All the pieces are in place for a larger strategic move. The biggest challenge is how we put them together.”

Secretary of State Blinken’s latest visit to the Middle East focused on laying the groundwork for that move by securing a hostage release deal that would create space for more ambitious diplomacy.

Sullivan said on Feb. 4 that the Biden administration is working to reach a deal that would result in the release of hostages, including Americans, as well as a pause in fighting to facilitate the delivery of aid to Gaza. “That’s a top priority for us,” Sullivan said of a potential hostage deal on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

All this comes as the US and its allies are launching military strikes against pro-Iranian forces aimed at preventing them from attacking US troops, blocking international trade in the Red Sea and disrupting Washington's diplomatic efforts.

Charles Lister of the Washington-based Middle East Institute said the February 2 strike was the largest US military action against Iranian proxies in Syria and Iraq since the Iraq War. “From the perspective of these proxies, they are engaged in a long-term war of attrition against the United States,” Lister said.

In short, the Biden administration’s calculation is that a combination of diplomacy and military might can give Washington leverage in a region that has often been resistant to US initiatives. “Will it work? It’s a pretty big challenge, but I give President Biden and his advisers full credit for trying to seize the opportunity and create a paradigm shift that will deliver strategic results. It will take a lot of cooperation from some previously uncoordinated actors,” concluded former US Ambassador to Israel Indyk.