Although new US President Joe Biden is facing super-crises at home, such as the continued corona outbreak and a declining economy, he cannot ignore the interests of his country’s foreign policy in a strategic region such as middle-east, centered on Iraq. Thus, besides managing internal crises, it seeks to justify the US presence in Iraq and to pursue the long-term interests of the White House in the Middle East concurrently.
Given the series of events that have taken place in Iraq, since Joe Biden took office, it seems that the new president of the United States has a different outlook from Donald Trump (former president) and even from Barack Obama.
In any case, Biden was expected to make at least a brief reference to Iraq in his first speech on the unveiling of his foreign policy doctrine for the next four years, but contrary to expectations, the US President on February the 4th did not make the slightest point about his government’s policy for Iraq, as in the same speech he did not mention Iran, Borjam, the Tehran’s nuclear program, the long-standing Palestinian conflict, the Syrian war, and other current issues in the Middle East. He only preferred to give remarks about the end of the Yemeni war and trans-regional issues such as the Myanmar coup, the US challenges over the Russia-China relationship, and Washington’s refugee policy and considered it enough.
Undoubtedly, Biden’s reluctance to mention the Iraq case does not indicate a decrease in its importance to the United States but rather indicates the growing importance of this influential West Asian factor in US foreign policy for the Middle East. Incidentally, in the light of this, not mentioning Iraq in his speech makes sense. This is important because expressing Biden’s plan and strategy for Iraq could extend his hand to regional and trans-regional rivals, from Russia and China to Iran, and make them think about how to counter Washington’s strategy. At the same time, any change in Biden’s view of the Middle East and a key country such as Iraq, on the other hand, raises the sensitivities of other US allies, from Saudi Arabia and the UAE to Israel, which could put destructive pressure on Biden’s foreign policy subsequently, his diplomacy plan can likely fail.
Therefore, Biden has tried and continues to look at the West Asian region and Iraq without announcing his plan for Iraq and without turning off the lights, without worrying about friends and confrontation with rivals. In other words, Biden has a good understanding of the new situation in the Middle East, especially in Iraq, and that the current situation in this country is different from Obama’s rule. Iraq is more important in 2021 under Biden than when he was a vice president in 2008. Because the internal situation in Iraq has become more complicated after the assassination of Sardar Soleimani. “This is the Biden administration, not the Obama administration, and we are in 2021, not in 2013, when ISIS emerged,” Philip Crowley, a former US diplomat, told Al-Hurra. “History has changed, and Biden will base his policy on Iraq on where we are today and where we are going, not on where we were or the past.”
