Jew World Order

The new Joe Biden administration has begun issuing policy statements about the Middle East and the clear signs are that it will do nothing to try to revive the so-called peace process, and it’s not going to try all that hard on the Iran deal either. Biden obviously has a lot on his plate. But it appears he has told his State Department staff, I’m not spending any political capital to fight the Israel lobby, or the centrist branch of it that wields influence inside the Democratic Party.

On Wednesday, acting-US ambassador Richard Mills spoke to the United Nations Security Council and said Yes we’re all for the two-state solution (because it ensures “Israel’s future as a democratic and Jewish state, while upholding the Palestinian people’s legitimate aspirations”– whatever that means) but two states won’t happen any time soon so, We are for a managed conflict. No negotiations.

Unfortunately, as I think we’ve heard, the respective leaderships are far apart on final-status issues, Israeli and Palestinian politics are fraught, and trust between the two sides is at a nadir. However, these realities do not relieve Member States of the responsibility of trying to preserve the viability of a two-state solution.

That’s managed conflict, keeping the status quo on a back burner.

In this vein, the United States will urge Israel’s government and the Palestinian Authority to avoid unilateral steps that make a two-state solution more difficult, such as annexation of territory, settlement activity, demolitions, incitement to violence, and providing compensation for individuals imprisoned for acts of terrorism. 

The State Department is being purposely vague about settlements. And Mills promised that the U.S. would continue to defend Israel in international fora such as the U.N. and ICC.

At the centrist Israel lobby group Israel Policy Forum, Michael Koplow justly takes credit for the Biden approach (based on a paper he wrote with Ilan Goldenberg and Israel lobbyist Tamara Cofman Wittes) and notes the departure from even lip service to negotiations:

Nowhere in Mills’s comments did he say that the U.S. seeks to conduct or oversee talks between the two sides, nor did he call for the parties to return to the negotiating table… it marks a significant shift from the approach taken by the Trump, Obama, Bush, and Clinton administrations. It also does away with standard talking points on the conflict that everyone knows by heart as they have been at the center of presidential and Congressional statements for years.

The only win for Palestinians here is that the U.S. will work to reopen the U.S. Consulate-General in Jerusalem and the PLO mission in Washington.

Iran deal

The news on the Iran deal isn’t much better. Don’t hold your breath.

Biden has of course vowed to reenter the deal, and to his credit, he named Rob Malley as special Iran envoy. The right-wing Israel lobby is enraged. Malley served as a national security aide to Barack Obama, and the lobby thinks they have moved the goalposts under Trump, and the Iran deal is off limits. It tried to crush/discredit Malley’s appointment.

The left-center bloc in the Democratic Party — liberal Zionists and Realists — supported Malley in a strong letter. “Those who accuse Malley of sympathy for the Islamic Republic have no grasp of – or no interest in– true diplomacy, which requires a level-headed understanding of the other side’s motivations..”

They’re right, but it’s sad that this is even necessary. It shows how much political capital Biden will have to spend to get the Iran deal back. The signs from Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s first press conference yesterday are not all that encouraging. He put the onus on Iran. Even though the U.S. broke the deal in 2018, Blinken says we can’t trust the Iranians to comply with the deal.

[I]f Iran comes back into full compliance with its obligations under the JCPOA, the United States would do the same thing and then we would use that as a platform to build, with our allies and partners, what we called a longer and stronger agreement and to deal with a number of other issues that are deeply problematic in the relationship with Iran.

But we are a long ways from that point. Iran is out of compliance on a number of fronts. And it would take some time, should it make the decision to do so, for it to come back into compliance in time for us then to assess whether it was meeting its obligations. So we’re not – we’re not there yet to say the least.

Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, sought to correct Blinken on who needs to take first step.

Justin Logan at the Center for the Study of Statesmanship at Catholic University endorses the Iranian narrative here.

“This is dumb from Blinken. The reason Iran is out of compliance is because the US left the deal in May 2018. Iran slowly walked out of the deal, abjuring its obligations in January 2020 after the US assassinated an Iranian general…If you want to make an argument that the Trump administration’s moves won you leverage, which you now would like to use, make that argument. But Blinken issued pablum from his first press conference. Not encouraging.

My impression of Blinken’s remarks is that the right-wing Israel lobby is winning. They’ve said, You take on the Iran deal, we’re going to make life difficult for you. Sen. Robert Menendez made that clear at Blinken’s confirmation hearing. So did the Democratic Majority for Israel group, Don’t jump back into the deal.

Yes, J Street is doing great work to try to revive the deal, and telling Biden that Jews have your back. But Biden saw how much political capital Barack Obama had to spend to get the deal in the second term of his administration, and he can’t spend that right now.

Editor’s Note: This was an excerpt from this week’s edition of The Shift, sign up here: