Diplomacy and geopolitics tend to expose the deep fault lines that plague ostensibly stable relationships. Take the new US President Joe Biden and Israel’s longest-serving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for example. The two are generally reported to have shared a close relationship since the 1980s. As such their relationship is said to go beyond official engagement. But they seem to be falling apart over geopolitical differences.
At the core of the Biden-Netanyahu fallout is the Iran nuclear deal. Biden is desperate to rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, 2015- a brainchild of his former boss, Barack Obama. But Netanyahu finds any plan to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal abominable. Obama hated Netanyahu, due to the latter’s objections about the Iran nuclear deal. Biden doesn’t seem to love the Israeli PM either. And Netanyahu himself hates both of them over their inclination to engage Tehran.
The cracks in the relationship between Biden and Netanyahu started emerging when Obama initiated the Iran nuclear deal. Back then, Biden was the Vice President of the US. But this time around, things are different. Biden is in charge of affairs, yet he seems rather nonchalant about Israel’s security interests in the Middle East region.
As such Netanyahu and Obama had every reason to hate each other. Obama messed up Israel’s two main geopolitical interests- reigning in Iran and pro-Palestine sentiment. For Obama, promoting the two-State solution by instigating pro-Palestine sentiment and initiating the Iran nuclear deal was a political and ideological compulsion. And for Israel’s Prime Minister, Obama’s policies were simply exceptionable.
Netanyahu reportedly went as far as lecturing Obama on Middle East politics at the White House in 2011. A year earlier, Biden had visited Israel and during that visit the Jewish nation had announced a new settlement building in East Jerusalem- a decision that was dubbed ‘insulting’ by the then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
But what was Biden doing? He was the Vice President in the Obama administration and more importantly believed to be a decades-old friend of Netanyahu. Yet, it seems that Biden had refused to help out the Israeli PM. In 2014, Biden bluntly told Netanyahu,
“Bibi, I don’t agree with a damn thing you say, but I love you.” In short, Biden implied that he won’t help Netanyahu in his friction with Obama.
Yet, US-Israel relationship matured with Trump’s accession to power. Trump was one of the most pro-Israel Presidents in a long time. Netanyahu and Trump got along really well. And Netanyahu realised how Trump resolved the two biggest issues facing Israel by withdrawing the US from the Iran nuclear deal and thereafter by burying the Palestine sentiment by brokering Abraham Accords between the Arabs and Israel.
The problems with the Biden administration and the Obama administration aren’t dissimilar. Biden endorses the two-state solution as the only path forward in the Israel-Palestine conflict. And we already know how desperately Biden is trying to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal.
Netanyahu has himself shown the will to criticise Biden’s attempts to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal. Within the Netanyahu government, there is a growing sentiment about how things were better off with Trump at the helm of affairs.
In fact, Netanyahu and Biden haven’t got off to a very good start. Biden might not hate Netanyahu, unlike Obama. But at least the sitting President doesn’t love the Israeli PM, as against what media houses have to say. Yet, Israel’s PM hates both Obama and Biden equally.