The Bankruptcy of the Iran Obsession

The anti-Iranian focus of the trip makes these visits even worse for the United States than they would be otherwise.

Paul Poast reviews Biden’s Middle East trip:

The reason both sets of criticisms are misplaced is because Biden’s trip, like the Trump-era diplomacy, wasn’t about the two countries he visited. It was about the regional power he didn’t visit: Iran. The purpose of the trip—to galvanize support against Iran—becomes clear when seen as a whole, rather than focusing solely on either of Biden’s two stops.

Poast is right that Iran was the real focus of Biden’s trip. I have said that organizing an anti-Iranian coalition was the only discernible purpose of his visits to Israel and Saudi Arabia, and that drives home just what a bad idea the trip was. The core problem with the visit was the direction that Biden is taking U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East: towards deeper entanglement and more conflict. The anti-Iranian focus of the trip makes these visits even worse for the United States than they would be otherwise. It is easy to see why the clients would like the U.S. to fight their battles for them, but it makes absolutely no sense in terms of our country’s interests for the U.S. to assume the burdens for their rivalries.