Biden avoids a further Mideast spiral as Israel and Iran show restraint. But for how long?

WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden can breathe easier, at least for now, as Israel and Iran appear to have stepped back from the brink of plunging the Middle East into all-out war.

Israel’s retaliatory attacks on Iran and Syria caused limited damage. The restrained move came after Biden urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to temper its response to Iran’s unprecedented direct attack on Israel last week and prevent an escalation of violence in the region. The Iranian barrage of drones and missiles caused little damage and followed a suspected Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus this month that killed two generals.

Iran’s public response to Friday’s Israeli attacks was also muted, raising hopes that tensions between Israel and Iran — long waged in the shadows with cyberattacks, assassinations and sabotage — will continue to simmer.

The situation remains a delicate one for Biden as he steps up his reelection efforts despite headwinds in the Middle East, Russia and the Indo-Pacific. They all test the proposal he made to voters during his 2020 campaign that a Biden White House would bring a degree of calm and renewed respect for the United States on the world stage.

Foreign policy matters are generally not the most important issue for American voters. This is expected to be no different in November, with the economy and border security more likely to resonate.

But public opinion polls show that foreign concerns could be more relevant to voters than in any U.S. election since 2006, when voter dissatisfaction with the Iraq war was a major factor in the loss of 30 seats in the House. House of Representatives and six seats in the Senate.

“We see this issue becoming increasingly important, and at the same time we see voters’ assessments of President Biden’s handling of foreign affairs being quite negative,” said Christopher Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion. “That combination is not great for Biden.”

Biden has deployed enormous political capital on his response to the war between Israel and Hamas and on his administration’s support for Ukraine in fending off a Russian invasion.

The apparent de-escalation of tensions between Israel and Iran also comes as Congress moves closer to approving $95 billion in war aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, a measure Biden has pushed for as Ukraine’s armed forces face a desperate shortage of have weapons.

After months of delays amid the threat of an ouster by his party’s right flank, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., advanced the package and final House approval was expected this weekend. That prospect — and a surge of weapons to the front lines — is giving the White House renewed hope that Ukraine can right the ship after months of setbacks in the war.

Biden has also made strengthening ties in the Indo-Pacific a central focus of his foreign policy agenda, as he looks to win allies and build ties as China becomes a more formidable economic and military competitor.

But Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, have an argument that Biden’s policies have helped the U.S. deal with numerous global dilemmas, said Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies think tank in Washington.

Republicans have criticized Biden’s failed efforts earlier in his term to revive a nuclear deal with Iran brokered by the Obama administration and abandoned by Trump. They said this would embolden Tehran. The deal had given Iran billions in sanctions relief in exchange for the country agreeing to roll back its nuclear program.

Republican Party critics have tried to link Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, and they blame the Obama administration for not providing a strong enough response to the seizure of Crimea by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2014.

“You can make an intellectual argument, a policy example of how we got from point A to B, from C to D, and ended up in a world on fire,” said Goldberg, a national security official in the Trump administration. They don’t care how we got here, but they do care that we are here.’

Polls show growing American concerns about foreign policy issues, and there are mixed signs that Biden’s position as a steady hand on foreign policy is resonating with voters.

About 4 in 10 American adults mentioned foreign policy topics in an open-ended question that asked people to share up to five issues the government could work on in 2024, according to the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public survey published in January Affairs Research. . That’s about twice as much as the topic was mentioned in an AP-NORC poll last year.

Further, about 47% of Americans said they believe Biden has damaged relations with other countries, according to an AP-NORC poll released this month. Likewise, 47% said the same about Trump.

Biden soared in the first six months of his presidency, with the American electorate largely approving of his performance and giving him high marks for his handling of the economy and the coronavirus pandemic. But the president saw his approval ratings decline in the wake of the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in August 2021, and they never fully recovered.

Now Biden faces the uncertainty of two wars. Both were able to follow him until election day.

With the war between Israel and Hamas, Republicans are shaming him for not supporting Israel enough, and the left wing of his party is sharply criticizing the president, who has shown displeasure with Netanyahu’s prosecution of the war, for not doing more to To force Israelis to protect Palestinian lives.

After Israel’s carefully calibrated attacks on Iran, tensions in the Middle East have entered a “gray area” that all sides must navigate carefully, said Aaron David Miller, an adviser on Middle East issues in the Republican and Democratic administrations.

“Has what happened in the last ten days strengthened the risk appetite of both parties or caused them to fall back from the brink and back into risk aversion?” said Molenaar. “Israel and Iran got away with attacking each other’s territory without any major escalation. What conclusions do they draw from this? Is the conclusion that we might be able to do this again? Or have we really dodged a bullet here and need to be extremely careful.”

Israel and Hamas appear far from an agreement on a temporary ceasefire that would facilitate the release of the remaining hostages in Hamas-controlled Gaza and help get aid to the area. It is an agreement that Biden sees as essential to finding an endgame to the war.

CIA Director William Burns expressed disappointment last week that Hamas has not yet accepted a proposal presented by Egyptian and Qatari negotiators this month. He accused the group of “standing in the way of innocent civilians in Gaza receiving the humanitarian aid they so desperately need.”

At the same time, the Biden administration has sought to demonstrate that it holds Israel accountable by imposing new penalties Friday on two entities accused of fundraising for extremist Israeli settlers already under sanctions, as well as on the founder of an organization whose members regularly attacks Palestinians.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and other government officials met Thursday with Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi. US officials, according to the White House, echoed Biden’s concerns about Israel’s plans to conduct an operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where some 1.5 million Palestinians have taken refuge.

Ross Baker, professor emeritus of political science at Rutgers University, said Biden may have temporarily benefited from Israeli-Iranian tensions that diverted attention from the hardships in Gaza.

“Sometimes redemption can come in unexpected ways,” Baker said. “But the path forward has no shortage of complications.”