Photo: Saeed Jaras/Middle East Images//AFP/Getty Images
On stage last night during the presidential debate, as the war on Gaza grinds on, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump battled over who had the most pro-Israel and anti-Iran credentials. After a brief moment of hope that Harris might offer something different to American voters, this seemed to confirm a grim status quo: No matter who is elected president, the U.S. will remain deeply invested in structures of violence and repression across the Middle East.
On Israel, Harris spent time during the debate stating her commitment to helping Israel “defend itself,” which is Harris-speak for a continued blank check of U.S. military support for Israel. This oft-repeated Harris position, now enshrined on her campaign website, undermines the hope that many Democratic voters might have had for a future Harris administration that would prioritize an end to Israel’s war in Gaza
Trump tried to outflank Harris from the right by claiming that Harris “hates Israel” and that she would destroy the country. In one of Trump’s many ridiculous statements of the night, he argued, “If she’s president, I believe that Israel will not exist within two years.” Harris responded by doubling down on her pro-Israel bona fides: “I have my entire career and life supported Israel and the Israeli people.”
Harris did mouth words of sympathy for Palestinians in Gaza, declaring once again that “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.” She went on to say, “This war must end, it must end immediately and the way it will end is we need a ceasefire deal and we need the hostages out.”
But such statements won’t amount to much if Harris’ underlying policy is to maintain U.S. military support for Israel. So long as Harris is committed to arming Israel, she has no leverage with which to end Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.
U.S. military hegemony in the Middle East rests upon three relationships: the alliance with Israel, alliances with the oil monarchies of the Gulf, and hostility toward Iran. These three relationships reinforce each other and keep the U.S. locked into permanent military involvement across the region. That’s why Israel in particular often pushes for U.S. conflict with Iran. Without U.S.–Iran hostilities, more Americans might question whether the U.S. needs an alliance with Israel.
In their debate last night, both Harris and Trump also underlined their shared determination to use U.S. military power against Iran.
Harris stated, “I will always give Israel the ability to defend itself in particular as it relates to Iran and any threat that Iran and its proxies pose to Israel.” Trump again attacked from the right, blaming President Joe Biden and Harris for being weak with regards to Iran, declaring, “Iran was broke under Donald Trump … now they’re a rich nation,” despite the fact that the Biden administration has not significantly changed the sanctions imposed on Iran after Trump backed out from the Obama-era nuclear deal. Trump, then, went a step further and tried to argue, against the evidence, that Hamas attacks on Israel and the actions of Yemen’s Houthis were the result of Biden and Harris coddling Iran.
But the U.S. alliance with the petromonarchies of the Gulf went entirely unmentioned. This marks a dramatic shift from the politics of 2020, when Biden felt the need to call Saudi Arabia’s government a “pariah.” Biden’s long-since-discarded hostility to Saudi Arabia originally occurred in the aftermath of the kingdom’s killing of dissident Jamal Khashoggi and the Trump administration’s naked wheeling and dealing with Middle Eastern autocrats.
What the silence on this topic means today is that the Trump and Harris campaigns are likely in agreement on maintaining close U.S. alliances with Saudi Arabia and the other oil monarchies of the region, a policy that has been almost as destructive to human life as the U.S.–Israel alliance. During the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations, Saudi Arabia and the UAE often used U.S. weapons as they killed thousands of Yemeni civilians in their war with Houthi rebels. And both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have repeatedly intervened against the possibility of democracy across the region.
At the heart of this reality is an ugly fact that many Democrats don’t want to acknowledge. The Biden–Harris administration has implemented and worked to expand upon a core Trump foreign policy: the Abraham Accords. These agreements marginalized Palestinians by securing diplomatic recognition between Israel and several of the monarchies in the region, like the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco.
Biden’s push to expand upon Trump’s Abraham Accords by securing formal Saudi recognition of Israel would amount to the final nail in the coffin for Arab governments’ solidarity with Palestinians. This was likely a key factor in Hamas’s foolish and ugly decision to attack Israel on October 7.
Biden’s effort to secure a mutual recognition agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel represents the ultimate Washington consensus. Saudi–Israel mutual recognition is a key plank in the conservative movement’s Project 2025 agenda. Last night’s presidential debate ultimately revealed, despite all their differences on domestic policy, just how similar both candidates are on policies that maintain U.S. military dominance over the Middle East and perpetuate the bloody status quo.