Biden, Trump, and Gaza

Akbar Shahid Ahmed & Rosemary Kelanic on why Washington keeps repeating itself in the Middle East

Today, large swaths of the Washington establishment—including advisors to presidents Biden and Trump—agree that the United States has made many mistakes in its approach to the Middle East. But course correction is easier said than done. Through a series of misguided choices, the Biden administration enabled atrocities in Gaza, journalist Akbar Shahid Ahmed details in his new book Crossing the Red Line. And today, President Trump, who campaigned on pro-peace platform, is at war with Iran. 

In this episode, the Institute for Global Affairs’ Jonathan Guyer is joined by Akbar diplomatic correspondent for The Washington Sun, and Rosemary Kelanic, Middle East program director at Defense Priorities. Together they discuss the continuity of Gaza policy from Biden to Trump, the lack of accountability for moral and strategic foreign policy failures, contradictions in the US relationship with Saudi Arabia, and much more.

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Akbar Shahid Ahmed is a diplomatic correspondent for The Washington Sun. He was previously the senior diplomatic correspondent for HuffPost. He won the 2025 Writers Guild Award for Outstanding Writing and a 2025 New York Press Club Award. He regularly provides expert commentary for MS NOW, NPR and Democracy Now! and has also appeared on CNN, BBC, PBS, Al Jazeera English and Arabic, CTV News, WNYC and other outlets. He is the author of Crossing the Red Line: Biden, His Advisors, and Israel’s War in Gaza (W. W. Norton, 2026).

Rosemary Kelanic is the director of the Middle East program at Defense Priorities. She is an expert on energy security, great power politics, and US grand strategy in the Middle East. Her work has appeared in outlets ranging from Foreign Affairs and Security Studies to The New York Times and The Washington Post. She is the author of Black Gold and Blackmail: Oil and Great Power Politics (Cornell University Press, 2020) and co-editor of Crude Strategy: Rethinking the U.S. Military Commitment to Defend Persian Gulf Oil (Georgetown University Press, 2016). 

Find Akbar on X: https://x.com/AkbarSAhmed  

Find Rosemary on X: https://x.com/RKelanic