Walter Russel Mead
WSJ, Dec. 23, 2024
“Ironically, Team Biden ended up serving as pallbearers at the funeral of a Middle East policy it hoped to save.”
The consequences of Bashar al-Assad’s fall from power in Syria will reverberate for years across the Middle East, but one great fact is already clear. The Obama era in Middle Eastern history has, thankfully, come to an end.
Barack Obama’s misguided diplomacy made Iran the de facto master of Syria and Lebanon and massively reinforced Russian power and prestige. Almost every significant authority in the region loathed Mr. Obama’s Middle East order. Israelis detested what they saw as appeasement of a genocidal regime in Tehran. Sunni Arabs abhorred the “Shia Crescent” from Iran to Lebanon that Mr. Obama’s vision was ready to accept.
The Gulf Arabs feared Mr. Obama’s Middle East so much that they brushed Palestinian objections aside to form strategic partnerships with Israel. Turkey, which saw the American president deliver Syria and Lebanon on a silver platter to Iran even as he supported Kurdish groups aligned with domestic terrorists, was equally horrified by the world Mr. Obama tried to make.
Turkey and Israel, with a boost from Ukraine, succeeded in killing Mr. Obama’s dream. Benjamin Netanyahu, using American weapons but wisely ignoring Team Biden’s muddled strategic advice, broke Iran’s military power through a succession of attacks on Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan steadily helped anti-Assad forces with roots in extremist Sunni Arab organizations like al Qaeda survive and thrive until the Assad regime was vulnerable. With Iranian power tamed and Russia preoccupied in Ukraine, Assad was exposed, and the Turkish-backed Arab forces moved in for the kill. … [To read the full article, click here]