DAVID PRATT ON THE WORLD: America is back ... and Biden shows it’s not gun shy

Located in the northern semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of the country, the city is generally regarded as comparatively safe, even if things have become a bit more edgy there of late.

While arriving or departing, from the airport’s concourse it’s not unusual to see US Apache and Black Hawk helicopters take off or land at the American military base that sits adjacent to the airport and forms part of international efforts to combat the Islamic State (IS) group.

It was on this same base two weeks ago that rockets rained down, killing a Filipino contractor with the American-led military coalition and wounding six others, including a US soldier and four American contractors.

Those responsible for that attack, however, were not the Sunni jihadists of IS. Instead, an unknown group called Awliya al-Dam, or “Guardians of Blood”, believed to be close to Iranian-backed Shia factions in Iraq, claimed responsibility.

According to the online news outlet Middle East Eye, commanders of the “Guardians”, who subsequently contacted the media organisation, insisted the strike was aimed at “disciplining the Kurdish authorities” and not meant as a message to the United States.

Washington, however, appears not to have seen it that way with many US officials insisting that the “Guardians” are merely a front for one of the better-known and more powerful Shia militias like Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada.

It was late last Thursday that news broke of retaliatory US air strikes in eastern Syria against buildings belonging to what the Pentagon said were Iran-backed militias responsible for the attack against the US airbase in Erbil.

Washington’s decision to act in the way it did came as something of a surprise. More than one Middle East watcher commented on how, normally, the US might be expected to “outsource” such an air strike to Israel, which often undertakes operations against Iranian backed militias in Syria.

The very fact that US President Joe Biden chose not to “delegate” such action to Israel, and American warplanes undertook the attack instead, was very telling, noted military and diplomatic analysts.

It was only earlier this month, barely days after the Erbil attack, that Biden declared to the Munich Security Conference that “America is Back”. And as if to make sure the message was heard loud and clear the president repeated the line three times in his speech.

But if last Thursday’s US air strikes – the first use of military force under his presidency – are anything to go by, then Biden appears determined to make clear to Iran at least that America is once again prepared to go beyond words and engage in deeds as a military player in the Middle East.

“The operation sends an unambiguous message: President Biden will act to protect American and coalition personnel,” insisted Pentagon press secretary John Kirby, adding that the US had acted “in a deliberate manner that aims to de-escalate the overall situation in both eastern Syria and Iraq”.

Kirby also confirmed that the facilities targeted belonged to Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, and that the operation was in response to the attack on the US base in Erbil, clearly reinforcing Washington’s message that these groups were responsible despite claims by the new and until then unknown “Guardians” that they carried out the rocket attack.

Philip Smyth an expert at the Washington Institute think tank who has contacts with militias in the region, was quoted as saying the targeted groups were “unambiguously backed by Iranian forces”.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Smyth is also cited as saying that the Biden administration had targeted these Shia militias in Syria rather than Iraq to avoid significant collateral damage or stoke nationalist outrage in Iraq, which has previously voted to oust US troops from the country.

Whatever Washington’s thinking, it would be wrong to underestimate the significance of Biden’s decision to launch these air strikes in the Middle East, raising as it does questions over what the new president actually means when he says “America is back”.

On the face of it, some maintain that Biden’s declaration was merely announcing America’s intention of making good on alliances and treaties from which the Trump administration had withdrawn or reneged on. At the Munich Security Conference, Biden seemed determined to relay what was a humanitarian and optimistic message. He focused on shared global challenges like climate change, the coronavirus pandemic, and approaching conflict resolution through multilateralism. He also laid great emphasis on the role of diplomacy in ending wars and conflicts.

But despite these positive overtures, conjecture about the possible shape of Biden’s Middle East policy remains. Are we looking at him constituting a new vision to confront regional challenges or, as last Thursday’s air strikes might suggest, is Biden just talking nicely while carrying a big stick?

There’s no doubt that the Middle East was the region most directly affected by his predecessor. From Trump’s decision to abandon the nuclear deal Tehran signed with world powers to his unabashed pro-Israeli and pro-Saudi bias, his approach upset decades of more “conventional” diplomacy.

On the positive side already, there are signs that the Biden administration is keen to repair some of the damage Trump caused in the Middle East.

It has, for example, announced that it will re-establish relations with, and resume aid to, the Palestinians.

Under Biden, too, the US has frozen arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and vowed to end support for Saudi’s war in Yemen against the Houthis. But despite these early positive moves, some diplomatic analysts remain less than convinced about Washington’s

longer-term plans in the region.

The latest air strikes in Syria against Iranian-backed militias, they say, are a reminder of an all too familiar US foreign policy approach when it comes to the region, whatever claims Biden might make to the contrary.

Given such mixed views over Washington’s motives in the Middle East, reaction to Thursday’s air strikes has split commentators both in the US and beyond.

Among Biden supporters some seemed determined to draw a clear distinction between him and his predecessor Trump who, in response to attacks on coalition forces in Iraq, used “the most disproportionate force” by killing the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.

Such was the seriousness of that targeted assassination that for a time back in January 2020, in its aftermath, many feared a dramatic escalation of hostilities in the region, and the likelihood that US interests and personnel would be targeted by Tehran and its proxies.

Rocket attacks like that on the US base in Erbil by Iranian-backed militias are doubtless still part of that ongoing process of retaliation for Washington’s killing of Soleimani. But they are also an attempt by Iran to test the mettle of the new Biden administration in the Middle East and, especially, Iraq.

By contrast to the Trump administration’s targeting of Soleimani, current White House and Pentagon officials have been at pains to stress how much Thursday’s air strikes were a “proportionate” response to the attack on the US Erbil facility.

One US official, speaking on condition of anonymity to Reuters news agency, said the decision to carry out the strikes was meant to send a signal that, while the US wanted to punish the Iranian-backed militias, it did not want the situation to spiral into a bigger conflict. The official added that Biden was presented with a range of options and one of the most limited responses was chosen.

Tehran, of course, may well see things very differently and there’s no doubt the timing of recent events could not have come at a more precarious time, as both the US and Iran position themselves for negotiations about Iran’s nuclear programme, potentially complicating an already fragile process.

While it is widely recognised as unrealistic to expect the US and Iran

to stop competing for regional influence, both sides would probably do what

they can to keep those competing interests isolated from the nuclear

deal, or Comprehensive Plan of

Action (JCPOA), as it is officially known.

“I don’t think it closes the door to diplomacy,” Vali Nasr, a professor of Middle East studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), told Foreign Policy magazine.

“For both Tehran and Washington, the nuclear deal matters more than these tit-for-tats in Iraq and Syria. Iran needs sanctions relief, and the US still wants restrictions on Iran’s nuclear programme, so I don’t think regional issues supersede these concerns.”

Despite increasingly hardline statements from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, there are indications that Tehran’s moderates have been waiting for signs from Washington of some measure of relief for its sanctions-strangled economy after Trump pulled out of the pact in 2018 – especially when it comes to humanitarian aid.

Biden is unquestionably aware of this, having surrounded himself with Iran experts. His Secretary of State Antony Blinken and CIA head nominee Bill Burns are steeped in the original 2015 deal’s creation.

The biggest risk, some analysts say, is that the current US administration underestimates the extent of the damage to relations with Tehran done over the last four years under Donald Trump’s presidency.

Even if this doesn’t present a major problem, the diplomatic and political tightrope Biden’s walks, both at home and in the region, remains immense as reaction to Thursday’s air strikes starkly revealed.

“This makes President Biden the fifth consecutive US president to order strikes in the Middle East,” said Ro Khanna, a progressive Democratic congressman on the US House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“There is absolutely no justification for a president to authorise a military strike that is not in self-defence against an imminent threat without congressional authorisation.

“We need to extricate from the Middle East, not escalate,” Khanna insisted in a Tweet.

“The President should not be taking these actions without seeking explicit authorisation instead of relying on broad, outdated authorisation for

use of military force laws,” Khanna said.

“I spoke against endless war with Trump, and I will speak out against it when we have a Democratic President,” he was quoted by CNN as adding.

Khanna’s concerns will only endorse the views of those sceptics who suspect Biden’s foreign policy aims and motives are, in fact, nothing new and just a redressed version of the way Washington has always done things in the Middle East in the past.

Even as US warplanes were dropping their bombs on the Iranian-backed militias in Syria on Thursday, a newly-released poll by the renowned Pew Research Centre in Washington, was publishing its findings on what Americans think of Joe Biden’s ability to handle international affairs.

Some 60% of Americans trust Biden to “do the right thing” in foreign policy, up from 47% under former president Trump but down from former president Obama’s starting point of 74%.

Writing a few days ago in The New York Times, Stephen Wertheim a historian of American foreign policy and the director of grand strategy at the well-known think tank the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, was one of many commentators who has lately highlighted the marked contrast between Joe Biden and Donald Trump when it comes to foreign policy.

“Even the decency of his words marks a welcome change from the assaults of Mr Trump, who recast

the United States in his own bullying image ... the task for Mr Biden, and

a new generation, is not to restore American leadership of the world

but rather to lead America to a new place in the world,” observed Wertheim.

Repeatedly over past decades the vagaries and volatility of Middle East politics have made that easier said than done.

In every single major foreign policy speech Biden has given since taking office he has declared that “America is back”.

And in Syria last week that US return to the global stage and the Middle East specifically was announced quite literally with a bang.

In military terms, the seven 500-pound bombs dropped on a small cluster of buildings at an unofficial crossing at the Syria-Iraq border were relatively small, but on the geopolitical level, their impact is sure to resonate far and wide.

Joe Biden might very well believe that diplomacy should be first and foremost the way forward. But he has also let the world know that his administration is far from gun shy.