What a Kamala Harris Middle East policy team could look like

Kamala Harris has been tight-lipped about how she would approach US foreign policy challenges in the Middle East. Her interview on CNN last week, intended to be a media debut, touched on the only crisis in the region that can’t be ignored.

“I’m unequivocal and unwavering in my commitment to Israel’s defence and its ability to defend itself,” Harris said when asked about Israel’s war in Gaza, before adding that “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed”.

While Harris isn’t talking much about the Middle East, campaign insiders and Biden administration officials are already circling in the wings, whispering names that could fill out positions handling Middle East files in a Harris administration.

Ironically, despite Harris’s guarded position on the Middle East, one thread that unites many insiders who could make her potential administration is their previous work on the failed 2013-2014 Israeli-Palestine peace talks.

“For the Middle East, think John Kerry 2.0 and people who made their bones during the Israel-Palestine peace negotiations,” a former senior member of the Obama administration told Middle East Eye, referring to the US secretary of state from 2013-2017.

The views of Harris’s likely national security adviser, Phil Gordon, have already been well documented in profiles that reveal a sceptic of the US’s ability to change regimes in the Middle East.

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