So far, the Biden administration has earned a B for its Middle East regional policy. It has continued some aspects of the last administration’s policy, and changed others, notably to seek return to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
But the seismic impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine requires the United States to reconsider its role not just in Europe, but in that perennial graveyard of foreign policy, the Middle East. While the bar for success in the region is low, the Biden team has made no irretrievable mistakes, responded well to its one crisis (the 2021 Hamas-Israel outbreak), and embraced Trump’s biggest success (the Abraham Accords). It has withdrawn troops where it should have, from Afghanistan, however messy the execution, and kept them where needed: Iraq, Syria and in the Gulf States.
