Why President Biden Should Embrace the Abraham Accords

Originally published by The National Interest

2021 Outlook Assessment

The Biden administration has the opportunity to build on the successes of recent shifts in the Middle East, including improved Arab-Israeli relations and the Gulf ‘solidarity pact.’ 

On January 15, the U.S. Defense Department announced that it would include Israel in its Central Command (Centcom) for the first time, signaling the recent rapprochement brokered by President Donald Trump between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The Pentagon referred to moving Israel from the European Command to Centcom as a “sign of the changing political environment in the Middle East.” The move will contribute to greater cooperation against Iran, which the United States, Israel, and Arab countries view as the region’s leading security threat.

Centcom, one of the eleven unified combatant commands under the U.S. Defense Department, oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East and Southwest Asia. Since its founding in 1983, Israel has remained under the European Command due to regional tensions between the Jewish state and its neighbors. At the time of Centcom’s conception, Arab states did not recognize Israel as a sovereign entity. This arrangement allowed the United States to conduct multilateral exercises and operations without inter-member conflict.

The Pentagon’s decision to move Israel under Centom reflects the Jewish state’s increasingly normalized relations with its Arab neighbors brought about by the Abraham Accords. The series of historic peace deals brokered by the Trump administration in September 2020 normalized Israeli relations with the UAE (United Arab Emirates), Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. “The easing of tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbors subsequent to the Abraham Accords has provided a strategic opportunity for the United States to align key partners against shared threats in the Middle East,” the Pentagon said in a statement.

While economic integration and regional peace were key tenants of the Abraham Accords, shared fears of Iran were certainly the foundation. President Joe Biden has pledged to return the United States to the Obama administration’s 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, but following the Arab-Israeli normalization, this approach cannot be viewed as the best course of action.