President Biden’s Middle East Trip

As President Biden is about to make his maiden presidential voyage to the region, what can we realistically expect him to walk away with? What are the expectations in Israel regarding this trip? What are the ramifications of the President’s visit on the status of the Palestinians? What is Israel’s perspective on the sort of peace they have with Egypt and Jordan, as opposed to the sort of peace with members of the Abraham Accords – the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain – as well as with Morocco and Sudan? Does Israel believe it is possible to have normal relations with Saudi Arabia?

Now that negotiations with Iran have apparently been exhausted through the last 16 months, including eight rounds of negotiations in Vienna and one in Doha, will the president be able to make greater security commitments to the state of Israel and to the Gulf states? Do they feel a war with Iran is inevitable? Will this be President Biden’s moment of truth?

Dr. Jonathan Schanzer recently returned from an extensive trip to Israel, where he kept his eyes and ears close to the ground. Come hear what one of America’s leading Middle East experts has to tell us regarding these, as well as other burning issues, as the president embarks on his first trip to the region.

About the speaker: Dr. Jonathan Schanzer is senior vice president for research at FDD, where he oversees the work of the organization’s experts and scholars. He is also on the leadership team of FDD’s Center on Economic and Financial Power, a project on the use of financial and economic power as a tool of statecraft.

Jonathan previously worked as a terrorism finance analyst at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where he played an integral role in the designation of numerous terrorist financiers. He has held previous think tank research positions at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the Middle East Forum.

Jonathan has written hundreds of articles on the Middle East, along with more than a dozen monographs and chapters for edited volumes. His new book, Gaza Conflict 2021: Hamas, Israel and Eleven Days of War (FDD Press 2021), challenges and corrects the some of the wildly inaccurate news reported during the conflict. It is the first book published on the war. His three other books have made unique contributions to the field. State of Failure: Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Unmaking of the Palestinian State (Palgrave Macmillan 2013) argues the main roadblock to Palestinian statehood is the Palestinian Authority’s political dysfunction and mismanagement. Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine (Palgrave Macmillan 2008) is still the only book on the market that analyzes the ongoing Palestinian civil war. Al-Qaeda’s Armies: Middle East Affiliate Groups and the Next Generation of Terror (Washington Institute for Near East Policy 2004) was the first to explore the al-Qaeda franchises of the Middle East.

Jonathan testifies often before Congress and publishes widely in the American and international media. He has appeared on American television channels such as Fox News and CNN, and Arabic language television channels such as Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera.