Hamas’ terrorist attack this weekend took everyone by surprise, but it did not occur in a vacuum. How did we get here?
Here’s a brief annotated reader.
First, let’s look at the last major Gaza war, in 2021, which started, not coincidentally, shortly after Joe Biden took office:
As with the conflagration before that, in 2014, the strategic backdrop for the war was simple: the foreign policy pivot, initiated by Barack Obama and revived by Biden, to create a “realignment” in the Middle East by partnering with Iran. Four days before the rocket fire started, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, gave a triumphalist speech, declaring that “the balance of power has swung.” The Iranian framing of a new “balance of power” fits seamlessly with the U.S. administration’s declared priorities. As part of its regional realignment doctrine, the Biden administration has moved away from the Abraham Accords as fast as it can. As all the actors involved understood, the Abraham Accords represented the framework for a U.S.-led camp of regional allies to cooperate in the face of common challenges, specifically those posed by Iran. This security architecture is what Team Obama-Biden’s realignment doctrine fundamentally rejects. The point of realignment is to create the opposite regional order of that imagined by the Abraham Accords.
