Understandably, climate change and the pandemic have dominated the attention given to President Joe Biden’s efforts to ‘undo’ President Donald Trump’s legacy in those two key areas of US and global concerns.

Less attention has been given to his Secretary of State Antony Blinken's review of the secretive peace and withdrawal deal struck with the Taliban in Doha in February 2020, that is part of the US strategic pledge to withdraw its troops from both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The US retreat from the Middle East military conflicts in Syria, Libya, and elsewhere has left an important power vacuum that Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Russian have competed to fill. Unfortunately, it will be impossible to ‘undo’ these changes as swiftly as it is to return to the Paris Accords.

Israel has engaged in an open confrontation with Iranian forces on Syrian soil, in an attempt to avoid being targeted by the type of Iranian stealth missiles and drones that successfully damaged Saudi Arabian oil fields in Eastern Arabia in September 2019. The scale of this open confrontation is unprecedented and has proportionally increased with the US withdrawal from the Syrian conflict. In 2017 Israel changed its policy of ambiguity about its military strikes when it admitted to more than 100 airstrikes in the previous six years. This number has since been multiplied many times. The deadliest attack so far occurred on January 12, 2021 when an arms depot in Deir Ezzor was destroyed and 57 people were killed.

With Russia being Syria’s most powerful ally, Israel has embraced Russia diplomatically in order to ensure its security from Iranian weapons. As the United States ceased to have a role inside Syria, it is limited to the provision of military and diplomatic support to its Israeli ally. With respect to future peace talks with Palestinians and, potentially, Iran, the US has decimated all its leverage that it may have had over Israel in the past.

In effect, with respect to the US, Israel has obtained all its objectives without giving in to any regional or international demands. The US embassy was moved to Jerusalem in May 2018, a US-supported peace plan recognised Israel’s claims over large parts of the occupied territories, and the US supported and pressured its allies in Bahrain, the UAE, and Morocco to sign separate peace treaties.

Even if Israel’s regional relations may appear much stronger with Arab states ready to normalise their relations with Israel, its military exposure to Iranian forces is also much greater than ever. For Palestinians wishing to change the tide of history in their favour, this also presents an opportunity, one that President Mahmoud Abbas seized when he called for new elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council and Presidency in May and July 2021 respectively.

Should a new round of peace negotiations take place, it would allow Israel to make concessions from a position of strength. After all, it has already obtained the normalisation of its relations with those Arab countries that count most at present. In turn, painful Palestinian concessions with respect to the right of return and Jerusalem could become a realistic outcome. It has been on these issues that negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians stalled.

Demonstrators burn pictures depicting Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, US President Donald Trump, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during a protest in Gaza in September 2020. Photo: AFP

The reason for this diplomatic movement is that US can legitimately be seen as not having any real leverage over the Israeli state. Therefore, it is advisable for Palestinians to accept new proposals as the future will, much more clearly than ever, only yield less for Palestinians. For Israel, it should view its exposure to Iran along its North-Eastern border as such a threat that the ongoing Palestinian conflict is seen for what it is: a never-ending diplomatic and security liability.

In this sense, the most blatant denial of Palestinian rights put forward by Trump’s 2019 Peace Plan can yield some unexpected outcomes. In fact, it can serve as a blueprint of what would not work and as a plan against which any Israeli concessions can be viewed as a victory for Palestinians.

In the Gulf, military confrontations between the Arab monarchies and Iran, and the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal, have complicated matters even further. It is difficult to see how the Biden administration re-enters the deal without any added security demands given that Iran has already started to produce enriched uranium beyond the levels that the deal has authorised. In turn, with US forces increasingly being withdrawn and classic hard power being exchanged with assassinations of the type that led to the killing of Iran’s general Qasem Suleimani in January 2020, it is also difficult to see how the US will leverage its declining position to renew the nuclear deal.

In fact, the US faces a much more self-confident Iran that has successfully used similar operations to pressure the US out of its zone of influence in Iraq. Iran has successfully used Iraq as a forward operating base to attack US and Gulf positions. Russian missile technology, including sophisticated air defence systems, have further limited the US ability to project its military might.

This means that the US may redefine its role to that of a secondary player, looking out for its more narrowly defined commercial interests. With the short to medium-term future of the Gulf region being threatened by low oil prices and a global interest in turning to alternative sources of energy, the hydrocarbon dependent players may soon be bearing the brunt of US disengagement.

Consequently, Gulf states may turn their attention to changes in their own dysfunctional state-society relations. Economic and social reforms of the type spearheaded by the Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, as well as redefining social and cultural norms in the United Arab Emirates, may be indicative of such trends.

The incoming Biden administration, including the many veterans of US Middle East policy, will need to look at both key areas of conflicts with fresh eyes, without any nostalgia for the pre-Trump era.

James N. Sater, Ph.D. is head of the department of International Relations at the University of Malta. His most recent publication (together with Roel Meijer and Zahra Babar) is Routledge Handbook of Citizenship in North Africa and the Middle East. (Abingdon and New York, Routledge, 2021).