Biden not as committed to Abraham Accords as Trump - Ben Shabbat

• Published date: 30 September 2021
• Author: YONAH JEREMY BOB
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

"Biden says the right things, but does not seem as committed as the Trump administration was," Ben Shabbat said at a virtual INSS conference, but that "I think eventually the Biden administration will get more involved in the issue, even if it is moving slower than" the Trump administration did.

While the former NSC chief said these were his observations and did not explain the basis for his opinion, former Mossad Iran desk chief and current INSS fellow Sima Shine provided some of her own.

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Discussing recent visits by top US officials to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Shine said these visits came after a period of neglect and even tension between the Biden administration and these countries.

At the beginning of his term, Biden butted heads with the Saudis and Egypt over a variety of human rights issues.

However, once the Biden administration noted in May that it needed Egypt to assist with stability between Israel and Hamas and needed Saudi assistance on other issues, Shine suggested that the US has initiated stronger ties with those countries.

She noted the Biden administration has slow-walked the deal to sell F-35 aircraft to the UAE, which was part of the broader package that led to normalization. Reports have said that the Biden administration is concerned about UAE ties with China, and that the F-35 technology could be leaked to Beijing.

In contrast, Trump was known (and sometimes criticized in the US) for ignoring human rights violations by these countries, and pursuing normalization deals with a dogged single-mindedness.

Former IDF chief Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Gadi Eisenkot, an INSS fellow, spoke to the conference on the impact of the Abraham Accords on the Iranian issue.

Given that the Islamic Republic is rushing toward presenting an advanced nuclear threat, he said, "we need... standing against the Iranian threat and global [terror]organizations like ISIS, al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood" to be the central guiding principle.

"We need to strengthen the moderate Sunni camp… in the giant struggle to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon or regional hegemony," he said. "It will be a completely different region if Iran" achieves either of these goals.

Eisenkot discussed the importance of more people-to-people contact with Egypt and Jordan, so that their populations will buy into the peace deals that their governments have...