Even before the electoral votes indicated a possible victory for Joe Biden, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi made sure this week to set free hundreds of political prisoners who had been jailed since 2014. A certain Biden tweet from July – “No more blank checks for Trump’s ‘favorite dictator’” – was still ringing in Sissi’s ears.
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The tweet was precisely aimed: “Mohamed Amashah is finally home after 486 days in Egyptian prison for holding a protest sign. Arresting, torturing, and exiling activists like Sarah Hegazy and Mohamed Soltan or threatening their families is unacceptable.”
“My favorite dictator” is how Donald Trump has called Egypt’s president, with no hint of condemnation or disgust; Trump has shown a fondness for dictators. Sissi also hasn’t forgotten the former vice president’s advice to “get on the right side of history” during the Arab Spring and give President Hosni Mubarak a good push.
Sissi’s rise to power in 2013 presented Barack Obama with a difficult dilemma of whether to recognize the new regime. Appalled at the slaughter of hundreds of demonstrators, Muslim Brotherhood supporters, Obama said “we can’t return to business as usual.” He suspended U.S. military aid and hinted that the annual $1.3 billion economic aid, one of the clauses stabilizing the Israel-Egypt Camp David Accords for decades, could be reexamined.
The White House was at odds over balancing U.S. security interests with the values Obama had been elected for. Some of the president’s aides demanded that Sissi be forced to espouse human rights for the U.S. aid, but others, like Secretary of State John Kerry, persuaded Obama that a tight-fisted stance wouldn’t advance human rights in Egypt and would stymie a key ally against terror.
Obama eventually released the aid and authorized the planes and weapon systems that Egypt had asked for. But the bad blood continued to stain the two countries’ relations.
If elected president, Biden is expected to maintain the Democratic Party’s two-tiered policy of trying to uphold human rights while preserving U.S. interests, in contrast to Trump’s approach, which doesn’t recognize the term human rights. Biden is also far more experienced and aware of the limits on U.S. power against tyrannical regimes.
Sissi's sigh of relief
Sissi understood Obama’s rules of the game, but with human rights he was unfazed. The eruption of the Islamic State in the Middle East, opening a new terror front in Egypt, including in Sinai, granted Sissi the security foundation to wage an all-out war against his political opponents.
With Trump’s coronation, Sissi could heave a sigh of relief. The human rights pressure faded, and only in Congress were demands occasionally raised to pressure the Egyptian leader, without expecting any results.
Obama began his trip in the Middle East with his fiery speech at Cairo University in 2009, undertaking to open a new leaf in U.S. relations with the Arab and Muslim world. It was a real revolution compared to anything done by his predecessor, George W. Bush.
But Obama ended his term bearing the Arab mark of Cain, which he earned by helping seal the Iranian nuclear deal and by not attacking Bashar Assad’s army after it used chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war. Obama was hated in Israel for what was seen as his pro-Palestinian, anti-settlement stance, and for his great distaste for Benjamin Netanyahu.
Biden is not Obama. He’s a seasoned statesman and is familiar with the Middle East’s land mines. He hasn’t yet made declarations on a new strategy for Syria or the wider region, he has no “deal of the century” to solve the Palestinian conflict, rein in Turkey’s president or end the war in Yemen.
Over the last four years he has made random pronouncements, some of which may be attributed to the election campaign and some to principles he believes in, like the one aimed at Sissi. Biden’s most significant statement pertains to the big powers’ nuclear accord with Iran. He has reiterated that he plans to return to the agreement and make it a launching pad for broader negotiations on ballistic missiles and regional cooperation.
The question is whether he is partner to Israel and Trump’s view that Iran is the most dangerous threat in the Middle East.
Biden and the Saudis
In an interview with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in 2015, Obama said “the biggest threats that [Arab states] face may not be coming from Iran invading. It’s going to be from dissatisfaction inside their own countries.”
Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, said in October that Trump endangered the United States when he withdrew from the nuclear agreement. The withdrawal may be the main legacy of Trump’s foreign policy, so Biden may be determined to crush it.
Returning to the agreement could mend the wide rift in U.S.-European relations, but Biden is also well aware of Israel’s position. As Minister Tzachi Hanegbi once told Channel 12: “If Biden sticks to that policy it will lead to a violent confrontation between Israel and Iran.” Hanegbi apparently forgot that fears of an Israeli military strike on Iran were among the main reasons Obama felt the need to advance the nuclear deal.
Biden will be facing more than a confrontational Israeli stance on Iran if he starts to implement his policy. Iran hasn’t made clear if it would negotiate with the United States, how the Iranian presidential election in June would affect relations with Washington, or whether Iran would agree to resume the nuclear agreement as is or pose new conditions. No less important is the question of what government will be formed in Israel after the next election and who will head it.
This question also has direct bearing on Trump’s “deal of the century” and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Trump saw this plan as the core of his Middle East policy and even achieved a turnaround in Israel’s relations with Arab states. But this latter success couldn’t have been made without Saudi Arabia’s direct involvement. Trump announced that other Arab states are standing in line to shake Netanyahu’s hand, but without a clear American policy on Saudi Arabia, this move could freeze in its tracks.
Will Biden make up with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, back him as Trump did, forget about the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and ignore the war in Yemen, now run mainly by Riyadh, in exchange for a normalization between Israel, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states?
And will the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once again get the United States’ attention, or will Biden put it on the list of conflicts Washington can’t resolve and suffice with reopening America’s wallet for the Palestinian Authority?
The man from Scranton isn’t the only one who must answer these questions, and it would be a mistake, not for the first time, to think or hope that Biden is carrying a magic wand for achieving what generations of American presidents failed to do.
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