Biden and US Policy in the Middle East

The US election numbers show that Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden will be the next US president. The question is: What are the implications of a Biden presidency on our country and the region?

For Saudi Arabia, I do not think there will be major changes, given the long-standing Saudi-US strategic relations that do not change with each change in president. It is true that these relations may improve a little with one or deteriorate a little with another, but in general they are well-established and stable relations, governed by the interests of both parties.

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America’s dealings with Saudi Arabia are governed by the fact that the latter is a balanced state in the region, whether at the religious, economic or geopolitical level, and therefore a change in president will not have significant impact. America is a state of well-established institutions, which is what determines its policy orientations that are always based on interests.

Read more: If US president, Biden likely to keep Trump’s pro-Israel decisions: Prince Turki

There are numerous changes that have taken place in the region and the world that the new president needs to take into account, and perhaps the most important of which for us is the US-Iran issue. During the past four years, it has become clear that the Islamic Republic is one of the key sources of instability in the region and the world, and the wager that it would redirect its resources to Iranian citizens at home was wishful thinking.

The top priority for Iran is expansion, exporting ideology, extending influence, and stirring up unrest to facilitate the implementation of its policy. Undoubtedly, this will be strongly present if the nuclear deal with Iran is revived.

We are well aware that Iran is a neighboring country, and its stability is in our interest, but the canceled deal did not enable Iran to reform its internal affairs, but rather emboldened it and its militias in the region, making it a major threat to stability in the region. The nuclear deal, if reinstated, must take these matters into consideration.

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The second point related to Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood, which view this favorably, assuming that the difficult times of the Arab Spring would return. And this, as I tweeted, is political deception par excellence. Add to that that the godfather of the Muslim Brotherhood, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has committed such egregious mistakes and fanatically driven moves that bringing him into check is an urgent global imperative, not only for us in the region, but for Europe, which awaits Biden to restore the European-American alliances to their previous state.

Moreover, the Europeans, and specifically France, have begun to realize the danger of “political Islam” to the whole world, not only to the Arab region. And if the proof is in the pudding, as they say, then recent events in France and Austria prove that the Brotherhood are the incubator for all these movements. Biden’s America must take these developments into account.

So Trump may go and Biden may come, but Saudi Arabia remains a balanced and influential country, and our strategic relations with the United States will not change.

This piece was originally published in, and translated from Saudi Arabian outlet al-Jazirah.