Biden wins points in the Middle East, but inflation is what will move voters

AFTER concluding his trip to the Middle East last week, United States president Joe Biden has left America’s allies in the region with a sense that the US is back in business there.

The US “will not walk away from the Middle East”, Biden declared as he addressed a summit of Arab leaders in Saudi Arabia on Saturday, insisting that his administration would “not leave a vacuum to be filled by China, Russia and Iran”.

In the aftermath of the costly invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the perception in the Middle East was that the US was disengaging from the region, as it was pivoting to East Asia and has more recently been preoccupied with the war in Ukraine.