[Politics] War in Israel tests Biden's foreign policy case for 2024

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War in Israel tests Biden's foreign policy case for 2024

Republican candidates hoping to unseat President Joe Biden quickly blamed him for the crisis.

WASHINGTON — Presidential races don’t normally hinge on crises in distant nations, but the armed conflict that broke out in Israel threatens to undercut Joe Biden’s argument that his foreign policy expertise is making the world more secure.

The attacks launched by Hamas fighters expose deficiencies in Israeli intelligence, experts said, while raising fresh questions about what the U.S. is getting in return for the time spent building surveillance capabilities and partnerships in the volatile Middle East.

“This is an enormous intelligence failure by the Israelis and the Americans,” said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and Middle East specialist. “I don’t see any reason to believe that either Washington or Jerusalem had any expectation this was coming.”

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As a sitting president who pledged to restore competence in the foreign policy arena, Biden now faces accusations from political opponents that global trouble spots are multiplying on his watch.

Polls show that Americans are turning against the Biden administration’s arms deliveries to Ukraine in its grinding war with Russia. A U.S. Air Force general predicted in a memo in January that the U.S. and China could be at war by 2025.

And a Biden administration initiative to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia is in danger of unraveling. If Israel’s war with Hamas results in the deaths of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, the Saudis may sour on the idea of improving ties to the Jewish state.

“The [Biden] administration has spent an enormous amount of effort to work on an Israeli-Saudi normalization agreement,” Riedel said. “That’s probably dead in the water now. Once there are pictures of hundreds of Palestinian casualties — including women and children — the Saudi po[CENSORED]tion is not going to be willing to accept a normalization agreement.”

Republican presidential candidates were quick to fault Biden after Hamas launched its attack. GOP frontrunner Donald Trump’s campaign put out a statement focusing on the $6 billion in Iranian oil revenues that the U.S. had frozen through sanctions. Iran has historically funded Hamas, with whom Israel is now at war. In exchange for releasing the money, Iran agreed to let five imprisoned Americans return home.

“One month ago, President Trump warned that Joe Biden’s weakness and $6 billion payout to Iran would ‘be used for terrorism all over the Middle East,’” the Trump campaign statement said. “That’s exactly what is happening now.”

There is no evidence that the $6 billion helped finance the attacks. The money can be used only for medicine, food and humanitarian purposes under the conditions placed on its release, U.S. officials said. Yet in an interview with NBC News, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said his government would decide how it would spend the $6 billion.

“These funds have absolutely nothing to do with the horrific attacks today and this is not the time to spread disinformation,” Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the White House’s National Security Council, said in a social media post.

Biden’s approach to Iran figures to get more attention as the hostilities with Hamas unfold. He has faced demands from Arab countries and Israel to toughen his posture toward Iran as he tries to revive a nuclear deal reached when he was Barack Obama’s vice president. In 2018, Trump pulled out of the deal, which was meant to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

In a video released Saturday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, another presidential candidate, said that Biden’s policies “have gone easy on Iran and helped fill their coffers.”

“We are going to stand with Israel as they root out Hamas and we need to stand up to Iran,” DeSantis said.

Facing one of the most perilous foreign policy crises of his term, Biden spoke directly to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Saturday morning. Later in the day, he gave a brief television address from the White House, saying that America’s support for Israel is ironclad while warning Israel’s enemies not to “exploit these attacks.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/war-israel-tests-bidens-foreign-policy-case-2024-rcna119349