In this cartoon from the March 18 edition of Saudi newspaper Al-Watan, Iranian leader Khamenei is shooting at Syrian Sunnis and Iraqi Sunnis from under an American umbrella. Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni Arab states are watching in horror as the U.S. increasingly openly switches sides from supporting them to supporting their (and our) worst enemy in the region. (The cartoon comes courtesy of MEMRI.)
I have argued many times for NR that the Sunnis of the Middle East may be ISIS’s base, but they are also its principal victims. The overriding object of U.S. policy in the Middle East must be to protect and ally with the Sunnis — particularly by building a coalition of moderate Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq, or rather, re-building the one that Obama threw away when he withdrew all U.S. forces in 2011.
Obama’s rapprochement with Iran is so wrong at so many levels it’s hard to know where to begin. But to put it in historical perspective, it’s as if, in 1989, the U.S. has led a massive assistance package and diplomatic effort to extend the life of Soviet Communism, and its subjugation of Eastern Europe, for another 30 years.
When Obama got to the White House, the Islamic Revolution of Iran was entering its fourth decade without having succeeded anywhere outside Iran except for Lebanon, in the form of the Hezbollah. (The essential bridge between Iran and Hezbollah was Syria, a majority Sunni country whose dictators are Allawite Baathist, not part of the Islamic Revolution at all). Its economy was starting to suffer the catastrophic effects of sanctions. The U.S. was the dominant stabilizing force in Iraq, underwriting the risks of a coalition of moderate Sunnis and moderate Shiites, who were openly allied with the U.S. and openly opposed to the extremists in both camps.
Now Iranian soldiers can march virtually all the way across Iraq into Syria and Lebanon not just unimpeded, but under American air cover! Obama has apparently decided to let Iran keep numerous elements of a nuclear-weapons program and sanctions relief to the tune of billions of dollars per month. His hands-tied-behind-our-backs battle against ISIS is totally ignoring the main enemy in the Middle East, which is not al-Qaeda or ISIS, but Iran. (A point former general David Petraeus explained in a recent Washington Post interview.)
We are witnessing one of the most spectacular implosions in the history of American foreign policy, with lasting damage to the whole U.S. position in the Middle East and to our whole system of regional alliances. The next president will have no choice but to climb out of this disastrous hole somehow, and yet Obama is digging it as fast as he can.
As French journalist Nicolas Henin said in an interview recently, responding to criticism of the Iraq War, “It’s the way the Americans have reacted. They make a mistake. And then when they realize they’ve made a mistake, they make very strongly the opposite mistake, hoping that it will counter-balance.”
We can debate whether it was a mistake or not to invade Iraq in the first place. But, having invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam, there was no avoiding the need for a long-term U.S. military presence in that country, to fill the vacuum and cement a coalition of moderate Sunnis and Shiites capable of resisting both Iran and the Sunni extremists. Obama could pull the troops out, but he couldn’t eliminate the strategic necessity for them to stay. Having joined the fight against ISIS as a de facto subordinate ally of Iran, the U.S. has created a vortex the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Communists overran Indochina in the 1970s, in a part of the world that was far less vital for U.S. interests.
As the Middle East unravels and the Islamic Revolution of Iran gets a new lease on life, the need for a renewed dominant U.S. presence in Iraq — the key to all our vital interests in the region — will only grow more dire, as will the consequences of ignoring it.