Analysis-Biden to hand unfinished agenda to Trump for chaotic Mideast

By Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan described the Middle East in late September 2023 as "quieter" than it had been in two decades.

That assessment did not age well.

Just eight days later, Hamas launched a deadly surprise attack from Gaza into Israel, triggering a war that devastated the Palestinian enclave and spread turmoil across the region - a cascade of crises that has cast a cloud over Biden's foreign policy legacy as he prepares to leave office on Jan. 20.

Even with Biden aides having played a major role in securing a Gaza ceasefire deal for Hamas' release of hostages announced on Wednesday, Biden's Middle East record is likely to be remembered not so much for how conflicts ended on his watch but mainly for how they unfolded, seemingly beyond his ability to contain them, analysts say.

This also means there will be plenty of unfinished business to hand over to once-and-future president Donald Trump and his incoming administration.

Biden's record on the world stage is likely to be heavily defined by his handling of the 15-month war in Gaza, part of what Trump and his fellow Republicans have seized on as a "world on fire" during the Democratic president's tenure. They accuse Biden of weak resolve that encouraged foes to foment chaos throughout the region.

Biden's allies contend that he has had to confront a set of Middle East challenges not of his making and has handled them skillfully, weakening Iran and its regional proxies while working to limit civilian casualties in Gaza and Lebanon.

But Biden's steadfast support for Israel in a response that decimated Hamas but also killed tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza took a heavy toll on U.S. international credibility. It also divided his Democratic Party, one of many factors in Vice President Kamala Harris' defeat by Trump in the November election.

"The upside is Biden came to Israel's defense as a reliable ally," said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East adviser to Democratic and Republican administrations. "The downside is he had little success constraining (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu in Gaza, and that's done serious reputational damage to the U.S."

The Gaza ceasefire plan hammered out in the final days of Biden's term after months of on-off negotiations was based on proposals he announced in mid-2024 and required dogged persistence alongside Qatari and Egyptian mediators to get across the finish line.

But the last-minute diplomatic breakthrough in Doha was widely seen by regional players as more a result of Trump's warnings that there would be "hell to pay" if the hostages were not released by the time of his inauguration on Monday, a threat likened by a Middle East source close to the Gaza talks to a "sword" hanging over the negotiators.

Trump dispatched his incoming Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, to collaborate with Biden's chief negotiator, Brett McGurk, and an Israeli official said Witkoff's presence added momentum to the talks.

"Witkoff was able to pressure Netanyahu into accepting the deal and moving quickly," an official briefed on the talks said, referring to a meeting with the conservative leader who had forged a close relationship with Trump during his first term.

Netanyahu's cabinet will vote on the agreement on Thursday, with a majority of ministers expected to approve it, an Israel government official told Reuters.

Though Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday laid out a proposal for post-war Gaza, it will be up to the Trump administration to ensure full implementation of the ceasefire plan and decide how much of a role to play in the "Day After."

BIDEN DRAWS CREDIT AND CRITICISM

In his final year in office, Biden has been credited with forging an international coalition that helped shield Israel against Iranian missile attacks and for consenting to Israeli counterstrikes against Tehran's air defenses - though he had warned against hitting Iranian nuclear and oil sites.

Despite U.S. calls for restraint in Lebanon, Israel last year dealt one blow after another against Hezbollah militants, often with little or no advance notice to Washington. That was seen as the main impetus for the Iran-backed Islamist group's agreement to a U.S.-backed ceasefire in November.

The Biden administration was then caught off guard by a lightning rebel offensive that toppled Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, another major Iranian ally, in early December. It has been scrambling since to persuade the new Islamist rulers to form an inclusive government and prevent an Islamic State resurgence, tasks that Trump will now inherit.

"The greatest feat is Biden didn't get in the way of Israel, but he constantly counseled 'don't do this, don't do that'," said Elliott Abrams, who was Trump's special envoy on Iran during his first term and now rates Biden's Middle East record as "mediocre."

"I don't think he deserves much credit in Lebanon or Syria," he added.

Biden, in his farewell foreign policy speech at the State Department on Monday, defended his approach, insisting that the U.S. contributed significantly to Iran now being "weaker than it's been in decades."

Some experts have also commended him for helping avert an all-out regional war.

But Biden still leaves Trump with what most analysts see as his biggest Middle East challenge - an Iranian nuclear program that has advanced over the past four years and could race toward developing a nuclear weapon if it decides to do so.

It was Trump's decision to abandon the international nuclear deal with Iran in 2018 that critics say opened the way to its nuclear moves, and Blinken on Tuesday counted it as one of Biden's successes that Tehran has been deterred from obtaining a nuclear bomb.

Once back in office, Trump will have to decide whether to pursue a new nuclear pact with Iran or give Netanyahu the green light to hit Iranian nuclear facilities.

"The decision on how to approach Iran ultimately will drive much of Trump's decision-making related to the region as a whole," said Jonathan Panikoff, a former U.S. deputy national intelligence officer on the Middle East.

Trump will also have to respond to another Iran-aligned group, Yemen's Houthis, who for more than a year have fired missiles at Red Sea shipping and toward Israel. Military action ordered by Biden and coordinated with U.S. allies has failed to end the Houthi threat.

While acknowledging the Middle East remains "rife with risk," Blinken, in his final policy speech, cited accomplishments he said included helping the U.N. broker a ceasefire in Yemen's civil war, strengthening the international coalition against Islamic State and deepening regional integration.

SAUDI-ISRAEL NORMALIZATION EFFORT UPENDED

Sullivan was widely mocked by Biden's critics after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas rampage for his comments little more than a week earlier that the Middle East "is quieter today than it has been in two decades" - even as he acknowledged continuing challenges.

Though Sullivan later defended his remarks, telling NBC News they were in the context of regional developments in the past few years and the administration had not taken its "eye off the ball," the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict upended Biden's global agenda.

Shortly after the attack by Hamas gunmen - who killed 1,200 people in Israel and seized more than 250 hostages - Biden, a self-described "Zionist," became the first U.S. president to visit the country during wartime.

He then kept up a steady flow of weapons to Israel for its declared effort to destroy Iran-backed Hamas, despite frequent pushback from Netanyahu against U.S. demands to curb civilian casualties and ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Biden's resistance to using U.S. leverage as Israel's chief arms supplier alienated many Arab American voters and sent shockwaves through the U.S. diplomatic corps.

"Gaza will be the legacy," said Mike Casey, a former State Department official with 15 years as a foreign service officer who was among those who resigned in protest. "They're going to find bodies in rubble. People are going to continue to die from disease ... It's always going to come back to him."

The White House did not respond to a request for a response to criticism of its Gaza policy.

At the same time, the Gaza war derailed Biden's efforts to broker landmark normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia coupled with U.S. security guarantees for the kingdom.

Some Arab governments are now waiting to see whether Trump, who in his first term arranged diplomatic ties between Israel and several Arab states under the Abraham Accords, will revive normalization efforts and also take a tougher stand against Iran.

Within the Trump camp, there is a sense that an Israeli-Saudi deal is still possible, according to a source familiar with the matter.

But even though some Arab allies have had relatively cool relations with Biden, they remain wary of Trump, given his past unwillingness to pressure Netanyahu to agree on a pathway to Palestinian statehood, which has long been a Saudi condition for normalization with Israel.

"Biden hasn't been seen as the Arab world's best friend," said one Middle East diplomat in Washington. "But we still also don't know exactly what to expect from Trump 2.0."

(Reporting and writing by Matt Spetalnick; Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk, Steve Holland, Gram Slattery, Erin Banco, Nidal al-Mughrabi, James Mackenzie and Maayan Lubell; Editing by Don Durfee and Daniel Wallis)