Saudis worry, Iran and Palestinians hope: What a Biden presidency could mean for the Middle East

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Joe Biden’s projected presidential election victory is set to usher in significant foreign policy changes, and above all, a dramatically different communication style when it comes to U.S. allies and adversaries. The world can likely prepare to see a return to standard official procedures under Biden, rather than the “decree-by-tweet” policy often seen during Donald Trump’s presidency. 

But while the projected Biden victory may have elicited collective sighs of relief for many leaders in Europe, with several experiencing fractious relations with Trump, the reaction in the Middle East is far less uniform.

That’s because while some countries benefited from Trump’s transactional, business-like approach to diplomacy that largely left issues like human rights alone — particularly for Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Israel — Trump’s hard line toward Iran and lack of support for the Palestinians also fostered heightened acrimony and tension in the region.

“Biden and his foreign policy team see the world completely differently than Trump does,” Hussein Ibish, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, told CNBC. “They want to return to the systematic, institutionalized, alliance-centered and rules-based international order the U.S. carefully built since the end of World War II. Trump doesn’t respect any of that.” 

At the same time, there will be areas of continuity. “Both Biden and Trump share the goal of reducing the U.S. footprint in terms of military presence in the Middle East and that includes reducing the funding and the manpower,” Kirsten Fontenrose, director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council, told CNBC’s “Capital Connection.”  

“Both are looking for ways to reduce the cost of being involved in the Middle East but not reduce the U.S.’s influence. And that will be the challenge.” 

A looming question mark is the Biden approach to Saudi Arabia, a partner of the United States since the 1940s.  

“It is no longer guaranteed that Riyadh will remain in Washington’s good graces,” analysts at political risk consultancy AKE Group wrote in an article late September. 

Indeed, during a Democratic primary debate in late 2019, Biden said that his administration would make Saudi Arabia “the pariah that they are.”

Officials working in the Saudi government have quietly expressed concern over less favorable policies than under Trump and what they anticipate will be a return to former president Barack Obama-era policies — particularly the Iranian nuclear deal known as the JCPOA — and the risk that could present to Gulf Arab states who see Tehran as their primary threat. 

U.S.-Saudi relations saw a dramatic cooling under Obama as the former president showed support for Arab Spring uprisings, oversaw rapprochement with Iran and was somewhat critical of the kingdom’s human rights record.

The U.S. election was followed closely in Iran, with some officials placing hope in a Biden administration’s possible willingness to revive the JCPOA and lift crushing economic sanctions in exchange for new deal parameters. But that is thus far uncertain, as it’s unclear how much Iran would be willing to compromise. 

Trump’s administration was widely perceived as giving the Saudi kingdom a pass over the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in late 2018. It also downplayed reported human rights abuses and inked massive weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates despite congressional opposition. 

But that doesn’t mean it was all rainbows for the past four years, says Michael Stephens, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. 

“Some of the more powerful Middle Eastern states prefer Trump, but they’ve been burned quite significantly by Trump being so unpredictable,” Stephens said. “With Biden I think they will get four years of a policy that they will understand and don’t really like, and will do a lot to undermine.” 

Biden is also likely to adopt a strategic framework that includes Europe, in a significant change from Trump’s unilateral approach, analysts say.  

“Arab states like Saudi Arabia will be seeking allies as their close relationship with the United States weakens,” said Ryan Bohl, Middle East and North Africa analyst at Stratfor. This is already evident in the UAE and Bahrain’s establishment of ties with Israel, something analysts expect a Biden administration to encourage, though perhaps not with the same intensity as under the direction of Trump advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner.   

“For the Biden administration, they will be looking at Saudi Arabia as the big prize on (Israeli) normalization,” Fontenrose said. 

Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris are longtime supporters of Israel, but some Israeli officials worry given the deterioration in U.S.-Israel relations under Obama. 

While Biden is unlikely to reverse any of Trump’s major Israel policy moves like moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, he’s voiced his aim of restoring support for Palestinians. That includes “immediate steps to restore economic and humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people, address the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, reopen the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem, and work to reopen the PLO mission in Washington,” Kamala Harris said in early November.  

And according to the Israel-UAE normalization deal, the former has pledged to freeze annexation efforts through 2024, the length of the next presidential term.  

More likely, however, the president-elect “will simply move away from Trump’s pro-annexation policies and return to the traditional U.S. theoretical endorsement of a two-state solution without doing much to advance it, because there’s nothing to work with on either side,” Ibish said.  

“Palestinian leaders are definitely counting on Biden … so that they can repair relations with Washington, which is really important to them.”