JOE Biden is making his first trip to the Middle East as United States president this week. It will very likely be his last. If the polls back home are anything to go by, Biden has all the makings of a one-term president.
Expect the Palestinians to wish him good riddance. He has done nothing to help create a state for them to call home. Not as vice-president when he first visited the region nor now as president for 18 months. There are only two items on Biden's agenda: Israel and oil, as confirmed by his first and last destinations.
True, he will make a brief visit to the West Bank, but that is just to tell the Palestinians that the US has other priorities. Not unlike what their fellow Arabs are beginning to tell them publicly.
The US and the Arabs have abandoned them to the cruelties of the Zionist regime. Israel gets what Israel wants even if that means at the expense of some American reluctance.
Consider the illegal Israeli settlements. Biden's administration appears to want Israel to put an end to them. Tel Aviv has refused to do so. Washington's compromise is a request for a halt, at least for the duration of Biden's visit.
The US is willing to do anything for Israel, even if it means pawning its principles. Iran, too, is a victim of a similar Tel Aviv-Washington geopolitical game.
Teheran was trying hard to conclude the oddly-named nuclear deal, Joint Comprehensive Programme of Action (JCPOA), but a compliant Washington did the bidding of Tel Aviv in not signing it. Never mind if Teheran wasn't the one which defaulted on the first JCPOA.
Never mind, too, if Tel Aviv has a stack of nuclear weapons — thanks to France which helped build it — and Teheran none. To Israel and the US, Iran is a rogue state, but history tells a different tale. The US became the first rogue state when it dropped the first two nuclear bombs on Japan.
It remains so. Bizarrely, none call the US such, not even the United Nations. As they say, victors write the "history". And so has the US written it for the longest time. Today, it is the Zionist regime in Tel Aviv that is seeking to rewrite history, with a little help from a friend from afar, the US.
Now for oil as an agenda. However much Biden may say that his trip to the Middle East isn't about oil, Saudi Arabia is the last leg of his visit for that reason. Biden's analysis is that the pump prices in the US are pushing his job-rating to a new low. He can't be more wrong.
According to a poll conducted by The New York Times/Sienna College, voters nationwide have soured on his leadership. Their rating? A meagre 33 per cent. Not a good midterm story to write home about. Here is worse. Some 64 per cent of Democrats want a new standard bearer in 2024.
In the language of the NYT, a pervasive sense of pessimism spans every corner of the country, every age range and racial group, cities, suburbs and rural areas, as well as both political parties.
Yet, this oldest president in the history of America wants to stand for re-election. Biden is not only reading the US wrong. He is reading the Middle East terribly wrong.