President Joe Biden completely ignored the Middle East — including the failing Iran nuclear deal, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — in his remarks to Congress in the State of the Union address on Tuesday night.
It was common for President Barack Obama to talk about the prospects of a nuclear agreement with Iran and the efforts to reach an Israeli-Palestinian Peace Deal in the past.
Under President Donald Trump, the focus shifted to fighting Iran’s malign activity in the region, and support for Israel — a stance that eventually fostered Israeli-Arab peace deals in the region under the Abraham Accords.
Biden however has been a downgraded advocate for the Middle East. He has also avoided Iran while his administration pursues a renewed nuclear accord. In his three speeches, he did not mention the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks.
This is likely to be good news for Israel supporters, who fear that the Biden administration will shift U.S. foreign policy to the same hostility as the Obama years and try to save the Iran deal. It may be bad news for Israel’s critics and opponents, and for a vocal anti-Israel caucus in the Democratic Party.
But it also suggests that the administration is keeping some of its more controversial foreign policies out of view, perhaps in deference to an electorate focused on domestic issues — or to shield its policies from scrutiny.
According to widely circulated reports, the Biden administration is pressuring Benjamin Netanyahu’s new Israeli government to relax its judiciary reforms and act responsibly against Palestinian terrorist attacks.
But Israel was not mentioned once in the entire speech — either in a positive way or in a negative fashion.
Even on China — which the White House was said to have inserted into the text in recent days, given the challenge of the surveillance balloon — was downplayed, both as a threat and as a focus of Biden’s policy.
Joel B. Pollak serves as Senior Editor at Large for Breitbart and hosts the show. Breitbart News SundaySirius XM Patriot, Sunday nights at 7 p.m. – 10 p.m. ET (from 4 p.m. until 7 p.m. PST). Rhoda is his new biography. ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. His most recent book, “Neither Free nor Fair”: 2020 U.S. Presidential Election is his. The 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship awarded him. Follow him at Twitter @joelpollak.
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