Bull in a china shop: Obama and the Middle East

President Obama’s lack of a strategy and acquiescence in Iranian hegemonism are undermining state-based order in the Middle East.  Iran’s proxy warfare, al-Qaeda (AQ) and ISIS’s rise, in the midst of tribal, ethnic and sectarian warfare, pose acute threats.  Events threaten to spiral out of control, leaving ineradicable terrorism.

Saudi columnist Hisham Melhem writes, “States and non-state actors, sects and tribes, as well as armies, marauding killers, … proxies and millenarians waving swords while hallucinating about the end of time, are locked in a dizzying free fall.”  

{mosads}Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger cautions breakdowns in order, failed states and ungoverned areas fuel terrorism.  Retired Ambassador James Jeffries warns the region is “in free fall, with the UN labeling it an “international terrorist finishing school.”

Obama cannot micro-manage the region, but ill-conceived U.S. strategy contributed to these threats.  Churchill said of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that he was the only bull he knew of “who carries his china shop with him.” This is also true of Obama, who left the region littered with smashed china.

In Libya, 2011 airstrikes toppled Ghaddafi.  US allies did not stabilize the country, which now has a jihadist regime in Tripoli and a rival one in Tobruk, which Obama failed to embrace.  This chaos empowered AQ-linked Ansar al-Sharia and ISIS.  ISIS has expanded beyond Derna to Benghazi, Sirte, Nawfaliya, Tripoli, and elsewhere.  Obama walked away, creating a second Somalia in North Africa.

In Syria, Obama failed to provide arms or air cover to the Free Syrian Army (FSA). .Inaction left the rebellion in the hands of AQ and ISIS.  ISIS and AQ affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra (JN)-led rebels control half of Syria.  ISIS has reached Damascus’s periphery, with its “caliphate” in Raqqa.  JN’s seizure of Idlib may lead it to declare a rival emirate.  JN-led rebels aim to grab the Golan heights.

Obama is slow walking his initiative to train and equip a new moderate rebel force, but is no more willing to give them air cover than he was FSA.  He is dooming any such rebels, who will find themselves engaged in what Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (S.C.) mockingly calls a modern-day, suicidal “Pickett’s charge.”

Syria is disintegrating, options narrowing to Assad and Islamic terrorists.  Assad surrendered power to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force (IRGC-QF), Lebanese Hezbollah, and pro-Iran Shiite militias.  The army is in free fall.  Iran stands between Assad and defeat.  This bleakness is highlighted by government barbarity rivaling ISIS’s.  Assad uses TNT barrel, napalm-like, and chlorine gas bombs, as well as starvation, torture, and execution. Yet, Obama still refuses to enforce any red line.

In Iraq, Obama withdrew troops in 2011, creating a vacuum that Iran and ISIS rushed to fill.   ISIS occupied Mosul and reached Baghdad’s gates by mid-2014.  The Kurds and pro-Iran Shiite militias were the firewall, fighting back. Obama played catch-up with low op-tempo air strikes, while Shiite militias eclipsed the shattered Iraqi army.  The US believed it won a victory when Prime Minister al-Abadi conceded pro-Iran militias could not take Tikrit, without US airstrikes.

This was premature.  Al-Abadi did not rein in militias, which engaged in looting, destruction, and executions in Tikrit. The pro-Iran, Shiite-led government resists US pleas to arm anti-ISIS Sunni tribes.  Most Shiite fighters belong to pro-Iran militias.  The US is delusional to believe it can sideline “bad” ones.  Anti-ISIS offensives in Anbar or Mosul without Sunni — and in the latter case, Kurdish — participation will face backlashes.  Obama is unlikely to foster a second Sunni Awakening.

Unless Obama revamps strategy, Iraq faces ceaseless sectarianism.  The US has made some gains since bombing began, but ISIS retains 60 percent of Anbar, including Ramadi, Fallujah, Hit, and parts of Haditha.  ISIS controls much of Nineveh and parts of Salahuddin province.  Kurds remain under siege. 

This broken china extends all the way to Yemen.  In January, Iran-backed Houthis overthrew President Hadi, ending Obama’s “model of success.”  The US was caught flat-footed, closing the embassy and withdrawing CIA and Special Forces personnel spearheading drone attacks on al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).  Despite Saudi airstrikes, Houthis stormed Aden, AQAP was resurgent, and ISIS planted its flag.

A Saudi pundit accuses Obama of throwing Sunni Arabs and Israel “under the bus,” in favor of a “grand bargain” with Iran.  Believing that Obama is acquiescing in Iran’s drive for hegemony and a “bomb,” Saudi Arabia doubtlessly will race Iran to the bomb.  Sunni powers will escalate intervention in strife-torn countries, aggravating a regional Sunni-Shiite civil war that may lead to a sectarian free-for-all and make anti-US terrorism ineradicable.

Davis is a retired intelligence analyst, who worked with the Army Special Operations Command, the Defense Intelligence Agency, Office of National Drug Control Policy and CIA.