A British analyst warns the Biden administration against undermining “Trump’s” in the Middle East

Outgoing US President Donald Trump has faced much criticism, both internally and externally, since taking office so far, for a large number of his positions and policies in the Middle East, notably the decision to withdraw from Iran's nuclear deal in 2018.

But British political analyst and researcher Kun Koglin, a senior fellow at the US Institute of Gitston, and the Defense Analyst at Britain’s Daily Telegraph, has another view, praising Trump’s accomplishments in the Middle East.

In a report published by Gitston Institute, Coglin says that the coming elected US president administration clarified that one of its most important priorities is adopting a new attitude in Washington's dealings with the Middle East . In particular, it wants to revive the nuclear deal with Iran as well as restart a dialog with the Palestinian leadership, which has imposed a three-year boycott on Trump's administration.

Coglin believes that, while members of the new Joe Biden team, most of whom are figures who worked with the Obama administration, are keen to set out a new policy agenda for the region, they also need to bear in mind that, as they do, they should not waste what Trump did in the region. Claiming that when Trump took office, the region was still recovering from the fallout of former President Barack Obama’s incompetent and naive treatment of the region. Considering that Iran was spending tens of billions of dollars on expanding its evil influence all over the Middle East as a result of signing the nuclear agreement. It allegedly supported Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, Hezbollah’s organization in Lebanon, and the pro-Iranian Shia militias in Iraq and Yemen’s Houthis, who are attacking Saudi Arabia, a key US ally.

He also claimed that attempts to revive the Israeli-Arab peace process had failed because of the Obama administration's hostile attitude toward Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, as well as its commitment to establishing more positive relations with the Palestinian leadership.

Obama’s hesitation in the war in Syria was criticized as having impeded US forces’ attempts to eliminate elements of the Islamic State, ISIS, which succeeded in capturing large swathes of northern Iraq and Syria.

The writer considered that Trump deserves thanks for the change of US attitude in the region, considering that withdrawal from the nuclear agreement and reimposing sanctions against Tehran, the Iranian economy diminished.

Trump’s greatest achievement was to break the deadlock in the Israeli-Arab peace process by a group of Arab countries – the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco – establishing diplomatic relations with Israel under the so-called “Abraham agreements,” because he reshaped the landscape of the region.

The challenge for Biden’s future administration is to see how it can pursue a different foreign policy agenda without undermining what he called “the achievements of Trump’s tenure.”