As a candidate, Joe Biden promised to end wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East. Now, more than three years into his term, Biden has seen a mixed result. He spearheaded the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan — but following renewed regional tensions after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks on Israel, the U.S. remains deeply involved in a Middle East crisis. 

After the August 2021 downfall of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan and a chaotic exodus by U.S.-aligned Afghan forces, the war in Afghanistan concluded.

"The Biden administration can rightfully claim that it's out of Afghanistan," said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a retired U.S. Marine colonel. "There's no residual presence or even activity."

The same can't be said for Yemen, the other country in the region that Biden specifically mentioned in his promise. For a time during Biden's tenure, it seemed as if Yemen's civil war was dying down. But after Hamas' attack, regional alliances kicked in, with U.S. forces at risk of attack from the Iranian-backed Yemeni rebels known as Houthis. 

In 2014, Houthi rebels entered Sanaa, Yemen's capital, demanding a new government. Negotiations failed, and in January 2015, the rebels seized the presidential palace. Several Gulf nations, led by Saudi Arabia, diplomatically isolated the Houthis and waged airstrikes against them, backed by U.S. logistics and intelligence.

Since then, the fighting has continued intermittently, with substantial civilian suffering. Diplomacy brought a six-month truce, and while that pause has now expired, fighting between Houthis and the Saudi-backed coalition "has largely subsided," according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

What has not subsided, however, are Houthi attacks on U.S. targets of interest. They have spiked since the Oct. 7 attacks. Like the Houthis, Hamas is backed by Iran, and the Houthi attacks on U.S. and other western targets are considered one lever for Iran to wield its influence in the region.

The Houthis have attacked shipping in the Red Sea, and the U.S. has responded with multiple rounds of airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen as well as the downing of Houthi-fired drones. 

"Responding to piracy is something the U.S. does given its global role and naval position," said Michael A. Allen, a Boise State University political scientist and author of "Beyond the Wire: US Military Deployments and Host Country Public Opinion."

Also, the U.S. "sent two carrier battle groups to the eastern Mediterranean at the beginning of the Gaza conflict to deter" military activity by groups aligned with Iran, said F. Gregory Gause III, an international affairs professor at Texas A&M University's Bush School of Government and Public Service.

Cancian said the current "shooting war" with the Houthis and other Iranian proxies in Syria and Iraq "will continue for some time, though at lower levels when some sort of peace settles on Gaza. On the other hand, the U.S. casualties are much lower than in Iraq and Afghanistan, so it is not a war in the same sense that they were wars."

Biden has been criticized for how chaotically the withdrawal from Afghanistan played out, but the result of his actions — which is what we focus on with the Biden Promise Tracker — is a definitive end to U.S. involvement. 

However, the second part of that promise — to "end the forever wars … in the Middle East" — remains unfulfilled. Biden cannot singlehandedly stop conflict in the Middle East; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict long predated his presidency. Still, before Oct. 7, 2023, it was possible to envision a future of diminished tensions in the region. Hamas' attacks and Israel's military response has put that out of reach for now, and Yemen's Houthis are targeting U.S. and western interests in the region.

Biden "should get some credit" for fulfilling his promise on Afghanistan, Gause said, but said the administration "has not ended the wars in the Middle East" more generally.

We will continue to watch events in the region unfold, and our rating could change if they do. For now, however, we see that Biden has accomplished substantially less than his original promise but his Afghanistan withdrawal represents significant accomplishment consistent with the goal of his original promise. That's our definition of a Compromise.