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After he leaves the office Trump may be missed in the Middle-East-the testing ground for Biden’s foreign policy

In the aftermath of the US capitol storming, Trump became the first President in the history of the US to be impeached twice after the House of Representatives accused him of inciting violence based on false claim of election fraud. Though his trial remains to be completed in Senate, he will be replaced by Joe Biden on January 20, after inauguration. In this backdrop, some regional players in the Middle-East would miss him or rather his transactional attitude to international relations. In contrast to other Presidents of US, his approach has been identified as Trumpism by many scholars, who identify it by it’s chaotic nature and unpredictable ways. Many a times, his team at the Press meets would be caught off guard during his announcements which would take the world of diplomacy by storm.

Developments in Middle-East

Since the year 2011, the Middle East had seen a resurgence of the Political Islam. Over the past four years, the US had withdrawn itself from the theatre in the Middle-East, driven by an inward looking & deal-making approach of Trump. Israel had tied up with most of the Arab world. It had opened diplomatic relations with the UAE through the Abraham Accords. The Egypt and the Gulf Arabs are trying to be done with the Political Islam, while Russia is trying to increase its influence in the region due to the relative withdrawal of the US from the role of a mediator. Abu Dhabi’s Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan had his own way in dealing with his rivals in the Middle-East. The Oil rich region of Marib in Yemen currently in the control of the Saudi-led coalition, is being looked on by the Houthis. The UAE has been pushing the Houthis from the South of Yemen. The civil war in Yemen has resulted in a hunger of catastrophic scale, but is providing leverage to Saudi-Arabia and the UAE, and with no interference from US, it stands to benefit the other regional players like UAE in terms of military stronghold.

Also Read: Link between Abraham Accords and Afghan Peace Process

Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey got rid of the Kurds, who had helped in the defeat of ISIS, but was dumped by US under Trump and Turkey. The only involvement of the US in the region has been with respect to provision of arms.

Weapon-deals & the case of Khashoggi

In 2017, a $ 110 billion deal was sealed between the Saudi-Arabia and the US by the involvement of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. As part of the Abraham Accords, the UAE had purchased $23 billion worth of advanced drones & F-35fighter jets from US. Apart from these, Trump had not allowed for justice efforts to investigate the death of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate at Istanbul.  That Khashoggi was opposed to and critical of the Saudi involvement in the Yemeni civil war is widely known. In November 2018, the CIA had concluded that the journalist was assassinated on the order of Mohammed Bin Salman, the King of Saudi Arabia. Even while, Turkey had criticized the attack on Khashoggi, Trump administration left the region in a chaos with each player including Turkey to fend for itself.

Other crises in the ME

The transactional nature of Trump has left Middle-east with new problems, with Russia, Turkey and UAE looking to increase influence over Africa. On a slightly brighter side, the Syrian Civil war came to an endpoint with a ceasefire deal between Turkey and Russia. But another impeding problem in the region is whether Lebanon or Iraq would go broke first.

In 2019, the public debt-to-gross domestic product of Lebanon was the third highest in the world and the unemployment stood at 25% with a nearly a third of the population living below the poverty line. In 2020, it was observed, that in Lebanon, the central bank was running a Ponzi scheme of sorts, by borrowing from the commercial banks at above the market interest rates in order to pay back its debt. Things have gone worse after the Beirut explosion. Oil & gas industry which was hugely hit by the pandemic forms an important source of Iraqi revenue. Currently, Iraq is finding it difficult to pay its bills or salaries. More problematic in the case of Iraq is that majority of its leaders are from the party backed by Iran, which had recently witnessed killing of its nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

Also Read: Iranian Nuclear scientist assassinated-changing of Iran’s equation with West

All of this would definitely place the new administration in US at discomfort, especially after the chaos and confusion left in the Middle East. The exclusively transactional nature of Trump’s Presidency, which has given the players in Middle-East arms, ammunitions, and drones, at the cost of peace, has thrown the region into a simmering disorder which would be a testing ground for the foreign policy of the incoming President-Joe Biden.

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How the killing of the Iranian nuclear scientist near Tehran affects Iran’s equations with west & Middle East

the Iranian nuclear scientist

A top nuclear scientist of Iran, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, known as the father of the Iranian nuclear programme was gunned down on the street in a town near Tehran. In the town of Absard, 70 kn east of Tehran, four attackers opened fire at the scientist after an explosion. The bodyguard of the scientist was also wounded. This attack by unknown assailants come around ten months after the killing of Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian Major General, near the Baghdad international airport, in a drone strike sanctioned by Trump administration.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, led Iran’s military nuclear programme, as alleged by Israel, which was ultimately dismantled in the early 2000s. Iranian Defence minister, Brigadier General Amir Hatami expressed over Twitter that the attack and the assassination display ‘the depth of the enemies’ hatred’ towards the Islamic republic of Iran. Keeping in mind his importance, no photo of him was published till April 2018. Secrecy and security around him was increased recently in order to shield him from Israel, with which Iran has historically sour relations. This was probably due to Israel following Begin doctrine which guides that any preventive strike can be taken to dismantle any efforts by any of Israel’s neighbours or extended neighbours to develop WMDs that can pose threat. An example of the implementation of Begin doctrine was Operation Opera, a bombing carried out in early June, 1981, southeast of Baghdad, Iraq over a nuclear site that was under construction.

Israel, having been earlier suspected of killing some Iranian Nuclear scientists around 10 years ago, has declined to comment on the killing of Fakhrizadeh. In a public presentation in 2018, Israeli PM, Benjamin Netayahu had identified the scientist as the director of Iran’s nuclear weapons project and he had asserted infront of the audience- to remember the name, pointing to Fakhrizadeh.

There are reports about confusion in the Iranian Media and on tension in the region that the secret service of Israel might have been given green signal to strike Iranian nuclear scientists before Trump steps down.  It must be noted that the scientist was on a US sanctions list and was known for his secrecy.  The Iranian Newspaper Kayhan had asserted that Iran should go for an aggressive retaliatory strike against Israel causing not only destruction of facilities, but also heavy human casualties.

Iran has been a problematic ground for US- led western world, as its structure and polity of using religion (Sharia law) to guide the national policy defies the notion of the Westphalian model of sovereignty. The west-Iran relation has got complicated after the withdrawal of the US from the Iranian Nuclear deal- the JCPOA, under Trump. This assassination comes at a moment when the incoming US president Biden has stated that, he wants the US to re-enter into the Iranian nuclear deal. This attack by unknown assailants killing the scientist can make the Middle Eastern theatre challenging for incoming Biden administration.

It has been observed that after the initial support to US against the Taliban, when the US-led forces invaded Afghanistan (after 9/11) under Taliban rule, gradually Iran had grown uncomfortable with the talks between the western powers and the Taliban. Iran has felt threatened by the Taliban on its eastern border. Iran at one point of time had supplied weapons to Taliban to make a statement to the west about its defiance.  Even, the Taliban had setup a command centre under the protection of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran, in Mashhad (Iran) for coordination of its military in western Afghanistan. IRGC had been known to provide financial and other support to the Taliban to the chagrin of the west. Soleimani who was killed earlier this year in a drone strike was the commander of Quds, one of the five wings of the IRGC. The current peace and diplomatic accords between Israel and UAE could also have been a discomfort for Iran, while the accord (Israel-UAE) along with the peace-process in Afghanistan were definitely factors of relief for the west, specifically the US.

This killing of the nuclear scientist in Iran looks like a step to disarm Iran and to make the region more volatile for any world power that wants to pursue a more or less stable Iran with the gradually settling down Afghanistan. This effectively increased the relative gains of Israel in the middle-east theatre vis-à-vis Iran. The assassination of Fakhrizadeh can complicate the relations between Iran and the western-aligned Middle East countries  & also pose a challenge to the incoming President in terms of Middle East policy.

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Beirut explosions-a brief reflection

Beirut witnessed two blasts at the city Centre in the evening of 4th August,2020. The second blast was so loud that it was heard in Cyprus almost 240km away. At least Twenty-five people were reportedly killed in the blasts and many more were injured. The Red cross teams in the capital have been proactively responding to the situation. Civil defense officials had arrived at the site to help in evacuating the injured people. An important point to note is that the blasts took place very near to the place where Rafik Hariri, a prominent leader of the Lebanese-‘Future movement’ and former prime minister of the country was assassinated in 2005. Rafic Hariri was a Sunni billionaire who made his fortune in the construction industry, mostly in Saudi Arabia. He led the country after its civil war of 1975-90. The site of the blasts is very near to the resident of another former prime minister and son of Rafic Hariri, Saad Hariri, who is currently an integral leader of the Future movement. This Future movement is an important part of the March 14 alliance, a group of liberal secular parties united in their pro Saudi and Anti Syrian stance established in 2005. Some of the notable opponents of the March 14 alliance and the Future movement are the parties under the association named March 8 alliance like the Shia Hezbollah and Free patriotic movement.

These blasts have refreshed the memories of the 2005 assassination of Rafic Hariri which had triggered the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon. The country sits at the crossroads of the middle east politics. It is at the junction of a fluid power balance between Shiite Iran along with its allies like Syria on one side and Sunni dominated Arab Gulf nations with USA on the other side. There are also known three sided tensions between the Future movement, March 8 alliance and Israel. Hence, the role of any outside party in the blasts cannot be ignored away given the tumultuous times the Lebanese polity is going through, which would provide a window of opportunity to any adversarial neighbor or group. This becomes all the more relevant since the role of firecrackers was refuted and involvement of confiscated high explosives is suspected. The blasts came at a time when the world was about to get the UN backed panel verdict decision on the 2005 Rafic Hariri assassination. Hence, some suspect that these blasts were targeted to exacerbate the already tense internal state of matters in Lebanon and trigger another civil war. It is concerning to see that it happened at a time when the unemployment in the country is increasing, the poverty rates has crossed 50% and currency has tanked. Jordan and USA had conveyed their concerns to Lebanon at the situation.