President Joe Biden will start in two days for a trip to Israel and Palestine on July 13. The trip includes a stop in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on July 15, and attendance at a summit meeting in Jeddah of the Gulf Cooperation Council plus Iraq, Egypt and Jordan.
In Israel, Biden should expect to hear demands from the Israeli side for a beefed up U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf aimed at Iran. Israeli Likud MK Yuval Steinitz, a former strategic affairs and intelligence minister under former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, says that there’s no containing Iran’s nuclear bomb ambitions unless the U.S. credibly threatens to destroy its nuclear program with military force. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Steinitz argued that Tehran has advanced its nuclear program significantly further than ever before in the past year because it no longer felt threatened by the U.S., and that Washington-backed air defense coordination between Israel and Gulf States is no replacement.
