Will Joe Biden be missed in the Middle East?

The US President's legacy will be tarnished by Israel's war in Gaza Strip, experts say

US President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from his presidential re-election race has drawn relief in some Middle Eastern countries after he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to take his place in the running.

The monumental decision has plunged the Democratic nomination into uncertainty only months before the November election against Donald Trump – a candidate about whom many countries in the Middle East are in two minds.

Both Mr Biden and Mr Trump have left a mixed legacy in the Middle East, with US support for Israel a constant across the two presidencies, despite some differing approaches.

Mr Biden took office trying to reverse some of Mr Trump's most controversial regional policies.

He resumed talks to revive the UN-backed nuclear deal with Iran, which Mr Trump walked away from in 2018. But efforts to revive a deal that involved lifting sanctions in exchange for regular UN inspections of Iranian nuclear sites made no progress.

He also restored hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the main UN Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, after cuts by Mr Trump. But he would later back a total cut of UNRWA funding, supporting Israeli claims that members of the organisation took part in the October 7 attacks led by Hamas.

Meanwhile, Mr Trump was accused of being too deferential to Israel, opening a US embassy in Jerusalem in 2018 and declaring it to be Israel's capital.

However, Mr Biden has been accused of giving Israel a free pass in its war on Gaza with nearly unlimited military aid despite more than 39,000 deaths in the enclave.

Biden's mixed record

Mr Biden's legacy in the Middle East will be seen as chequered, Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House, told The National.

“He will be remembered for the negative bookends of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, and October 7 and the war in Gaza, both of which left the US position in the region damaged,” Ms Vakil said.

Some Arab leaders had been “preparing for the return of Mr Trump to the White House. But Mr Biden's resignation requires them to continue to assess the US landscape and maintain ties with Democrats,” she said.

As for Ms Harris, she “has no real track record or relationship in the Middle East, she will continue the US’s steadfast support for Israel but could prove to be more sympathetic on the case of Palestine”.

For many Arab states, Mr Biden was “celebrated by many for having significant Middle East experience and someone who travelled to the region and was very active, even as vice president under the Obama administration", said Renad Mansour, a senior researcher at Chatham House.

Mr Mansour told The National what could have been an enduring legacy has been tarnished by the last nine months of highly destructive war in Gaza.

“Until October 7, his administration was celebrating its success in the region, then the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip began."

Eyeing November US election

For Jordan, a long-time ally of the West, the withdrawal of Mr Biden from the race translates as relief, because it could lessen the chances of a second Trump presidency, Hazem Ayyad, a veteran Jordanian political researcher, told The National.

No official reaction is expected from the Jordanian government.

“We still have four months of campaigning and Trump could still win. But at least now there is optimism in Jordan of a more competitive US presidential race,” Mr Ayyad said.

The last Trump presidency was seen in Amman as “trying to solve Israel’s internal crisis at the expense of Jordan”, Mr Ayyad said, adding the US administration had then regarded Jordan as playing purely a security role.

Improved ties under the Biden administration, however, have restored a traditional “room of manoeuvre” for Jordan in the region, and as an important player in efforts to solve the Israel-Palestine conflict, Mr Ayyad said.

Another source said a second Trump term is regarded in Jordan as a “would-be disaster”.

For Lebanon, Mr Biden’s withdrawal will not result in a “massive shift in politics” but rather a "continuation" of the current US politics in Lebanon, said Mohanad Hage Ali, deputy director for research at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Centre.

"The main change", if Trump wins, Mr Hage Ali said, will be "increased pressure and sanctions on Hezbollah".

"Mr Trump was more insistent on a strong sanctions regime, with voices inside his administration calling for a 'chemotherapy policy' in Lebanon, where the whole state is put under sanctions leading to an impact on Hezbollah," he said.

The only change that might come about with Ms Harris would be the diminished role of US special envoy Amos Hochstein's "personal leverage" on the Lebanese file, a western diplomat told The National.

Mr Hochstein, who is close to Mr Biden, has been a pivotal diplomatic mediator, notably brokering an Israel-Lebanon maritime boundary deal in 2022 after years of negotiations.

He is currently leading de-escalation talks to defuse tensions at the Lebanon-Israel border, which has seen daily shelling since October 8 between Hezbollah and Israel.

Nervous allies

In Turkey, diplomats and experts discussed the need for a reset with Washington, regardless of whomever takes the presidency.

“We have two expectations from the next administration, be it Democrat or Republican,” a Turkish diplomatic official told The National.

“Respect our expectations regarding Türkiye’s fight against terror – stop supporting the PKK and return FETO criminals – and remove the obstacles to co-operation in the field of defence industries.”

Although the US describes Turkey as a key ally – the State Department’s 2022 strategy described it as “a critical partner in achieving stability in the Middle East, bolstering Nato’s influence, and countering Russian and Iranian malign influence” – the two nations have a complex relationship.

A major point of contention in recent years has been Washington’s backing of Kurdish militias in north-eastern Syria. Its leaders have close ties to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a Kurdish separatist group that Ankara, the US and some other nations consider a terrorist organisation.

During his previous term in office, Mr Trump threatened a withdrawal of US ground-troop support to the Kurdish armed groups, who would likely collapse without US backing. The Democrats have not publicly weighed an exit of north-east Syria, where the Kurdish fighters guard thousands of ISIS suspects in desert prisons.

But the Biden administration's 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan raised fears among other US allies that anything would be possible.

Turkey, a Nato member which has maintained cordial ties with Russia since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, has also long expected the US to finalise delayed weapons sales.

This mainly includes a US government approved $23 billion sale of 40 new F-16 fighter jets to Turkey, plus modernisation kits for 79 jets in its current fleet, after Turkey approved Sweden’s accession to Nato. Turkey had stalled over the agreement because of perceived support of the PKK in the Scandinavian nation.

Mehmet Fatih Ceylan, a former Turkish ambassador to Nato, said "assuming Kamala Harris wins the majority of votes from Democrats in the upcoming nomination process and the Presidential election, the main thrust of the current state of affairs in bilateral ties between Türkiye and the US will by and large remain intact".

A divisive legacy

In North Africa, Mr Biden’s foreign policy has been described as a relatively positive shift from the stagnation and overwhelming tension during the era of his predecessor Mr Trump.

Mr Trump’s push for Morocco’s normalisation with Israel in 2020 in exchange for the US recognition of its territorial claim of the contested Western Sahara region has had a potentially destabilising effect on already-strained relations between Morocco and Algeria.

Algeria, which has been accused of backing the separatist Polisario Front movement in its quest for independence from Morocco, considered the Trump administration’s alignment with Moroccan interests a set back for its bilateral relations with the US.

However, observers noted a visible rapprochement between the two countries after Mr Biden took office, especially after a meeting between Algerian Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf and his US counterpart, Antony Blinken, in Washington last August.

Despite these positive changes in some North African countries, Mr Biden’s administration didn't succeed in boosting its diplomatic presence in resolving the crisis in Libya, which has seen fragmented international peace processes in the wake of its post-2011 civil war.

Political analyst Othman Ben Sassi told The National that Mr Biden’s foreign policy in Libya has not been any different from his predecessors Mr Trump and Barack Obama.

“Relations have been undergoing a status of total recession without any visible strong presence in important Libyan affairs and strategic matters,” Mr Ben Sassi said.

“The US department of state did not show any differences in policies from one president to the other.”

Khaled Yacoub Oweis reported from Amman, Nada Maucourant Atallah reported from Beirut, Lizzie Porter reported from Istanbul, and Ghaya Ben Mbarek reported from Tunis.