Shortly after his election in 2020, Joe Biden promised his allies that America would change its face, after four years of Trumpian diplomacy as impulsive as it was erratic. Yet his first decisions – chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan; formation of the Aukus alliance between the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia – had raised doubts about the intentions of the 46th American president. Since then, the war in Ukraine and the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel have turned the world upside down. With a major consequence: the forced return of Uncle Sam to the forefront, once again becoming the leader of a West mistreated by autocrats and Islamists.
Faced with European divisions and the incurable immobility of the UN, “Commander in Chief” Joe Biden – who will celebrate his 81st birthday at the end of the month – had no choice. One year before the next American election, the man who would undoubtedly have preferred to concentrate on domestic economic and political issues, boarded the presidential plane Air Force One not only to reassure the Israeli ally, whom he has been seeing for a half a century, but also to make the sound of the American voice heard by regional protagonists. At the same time forgetting the unfortunate statement of his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, who, a week before the attack on October 7, explained that “the Middle East had never been so calm in two decades.” Now, with the launch of the Israeli ground offensive on Gaza, the threat of a regional explosion has never been greater, largely fueled by the henchmen of the Iranian regime.
The Hamas attack of October 7? With its share of atrocities, it not only highlighted to the eyes of the whole world the weaknesses of the Hebrew State, the sworn enemy of Tehran, but also made the response of the IDF obligatory with the effect of the return of the Palestinian cause to the heart of global concerns. Above all, it caused the freezing, if not the burial, of agreements already concluded or currently being negotiated between Israel and the Arab countries, agreements which risked isolating Iran. Finally, these images of massive destruction in Gaza accompanied by an ever-longer list of bombing victims only fuel the anger of the Arab street, destabilizing regimes little known for their democratic practices and hostile to Tehran. “Iran appears so far to be the big winner in this showdown, but it is moving forward on a ridge, because it perhaps did not expect the Americans to push their military cursor so far and so quickly”, warns David Rigoulet-Roze, editor-in-chief of the magazine Strategic Orients.
By dispatching two aircraft carriers and an armada of warships to the Eastern Mediterranean, by mobilizing its regional military bases, by providing technological and operational support to the Israelis, but also by bombing positions in Syria, the United States is launching a very clear warning to the Iranians. If Tehran wants to continue playing arsonist, the United States will respond: the world policeman is back.