Deep into President Joe Biden’s final year, Bob Woodward’s new book reveals, he continually made this assertion as he tried to nudge the Israeli prime minister toward a ceasefire in Gaza: “He’s a f—ing liar.” As Israel intensifies its bombardment of Palestinian areas, a new essay provides context for Woodward’s insider account by analyzing recurrent patterns in US support for Israel and the folly of militarizing foreign intervention.
This review essay, and all articles in the Spring 2025 issue of Middle East Policy, are free to read, even without a subscription, through the end of May.
If journalism is the first draft of history, Woodward’s books often feel like streams of raw data scrawled across cocktail napkins and the backs of envelopes. But the veteran journalist serves up evidence that top officials in the Biden administration were consistently thwarted by Netanyahu. Secretary of State Antony Blinken came to realize that the Israeli leader was bent on continuing the conflict. “It doesn’t matter how many Palestinians die,” he said, according to Woodward. “It doesn’t matter how many Israelis die.”
However, the book shows, Biden would only go so far to end the conflict. While the president cursed Netanyahu and tried to corral him into accepting a hostage deal, or at least not starving a population of innocent people, Woodward shows that Biden categorically rejected any actions, especially cutting off military aid, that could force Israel to bend to US preferences. The administration pressed the Israelis rhetorically to wind down the campaign and protect civilians, but they had no intention of doing so—and Washington had no intention of asserting its power.
Steven Simon’s memoir of his time in Washington demonstrates that this inaction is a motif of the last 50 years of American policy. In the early 1980s, President Ronald Reagan did force Israel to halt its siege of Beirut. But Simon shows this is a rare move, and he laments that justifiable early support for Israel has continued without question and produced unintended consequences. “Until Reagan’s presidency, the source and justification for U.S. support for Israel was a moral commitment to a liberal peace-seeking democracy and national home for a people savagely persecuted during World War II,” Simon writes. “But the shift in its basis from shared values to strategic justification facilitated an Israeli policy shift to the right, especially [regarding] the Palestinians.”
Simon concludes, in looking back not just on support for Israel but on the entirety of the policy, “A net assessment suggests that the United States would have been better off today had it not been so eager to intervene in the Middle East.” A third book, by political scientist Alexander B. Downes, uses impressive, big-data analysis to explain the problem with these interventions. Downes shows that even before the 9/11 attacks, “the United States was already the most frequent perpetrator of regime change.”
But his findings indicate the folly of the approach. “Regime change substantially increases the likelihood that a target state experiences a civil war in the ensuing decade,” the author asserts. While he finds that such a strategy does not necessarily increase the likelihood of “militarized interstate disputes,” the leaders who are installed by foreign intervenors typically have short tenures.
President Donald Trump may be taking a different approach, and it will be years before we can sort through the results. While he says he is making progress in a deal with Iran, and he has lifted sanctions on Syria, it is not clear whether his administration is trying to help reach a ceasefire in Gaza. The three books in this review essay, taken as a whole, suggest Trump will not likely shift the longstanding course of US policy.
All articles in the Spring 2025 Middle East Policy are still free to read, even for those without a subscription.
The new issue features 10 original articles and three book reviews, anchored by coverage of post-Assad Syria, taking down myths that have erupted since the rebel victory and analyzing Turkey’s ascendance in the wake of the shocking ouster. Given the murky prospects for ending the Gaza campaign, the issue then explores Iran’s and Saudi Arabia’s confusing approaches to the war and whether China has fundamentally shifted its relationship with Israel.
The journal next takes a deep dive into Saudi Arabia’s potential security deal with the United States, including Israel’s reaction to Riyadh’s proposed nuclear capability, the China factor that motivates Washington’s pursuit of an accord, and whether the region could become a WMD-free zone. And we analyze peace building in postwar Yemen, demographic change and social cohesion in Iraq after the war against ISIS, and Pakistan’s security challenges since the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan.
Readers can find the Winter 2024 issue through this link, featuring M.T. Samuel’s analysis of the Gaza war and Palestinian dispossession. The journal’s special releases on the post-October 7 conflicts, Israel’s Wars and The Gaza War, remain vital sources.
Middle East Policy, Spring 2025—all articles free through May 1!
SYRIA, GAZA, AND STIRRINGS OF A NEW ORDER
Myth Busting in a Post-Assad Syria
Rob Geist Pinfold
Turkey’s Long Game in Syria: Moving beyond Ascendance
Şaban Kardaş
Saudi Arabia and Iran: Spoilers or Enablers of Conflict?
Banafsheh Keynoush
Out of Proportion: Israel’s Paradox in China’s Middle Eastern Policy
Yitzhak Shichor
THE US-SAUDI PACT AND NUCLEAR SECURITY
How to Address the Saudi Nuclear Program? An Israeli Dilemma
Niv Farago
The China Factor in US-Saudi Talks for a Defense Pact
Ghulam Ali, Peng Nian
Negotiating the Impossible? A WMD-Free Zone in the Middle East
Robert Mason
CIVIL WARS AND THEIR AFTERSHOCKS
Local Participatory Development Models for Postwar Reconstruction in Yemen
Asher Orkaby, Afrah Al-Ahmadi
Demographic Change and Social Cohesion in Post-Islamic State Iraq
Omran Omer Ali, Nazar Ameen Mohammed, Aurélie Broeckerhoff
The Taliban-TTP Nexus and Pakistan’s Rising Security Challenges
Shahid Ali, Raj Verma
BOOK REVIEWS
Florian Weigand, Waiting for Dignity: Legitimacy and Authority in Afghanistan
Reviewed by Sajjad Ahmed
Karel Černý, Instability in the Middle East: Structural Changes and Uneven Modernisation 1950–2015
Reviewed by Alper Çakır
Biden’s Gaza Failure, the Syrian Revolution, and the Folly of US Middle East Policy
Review essay by A.R. Joyce