Seventy Years of U.S. Middle East Policy, Overturned
لي اسميت ” LEE SMITH” Obama cedes power to Putin.
استاندارد 15 سپتامبر 2015
3:50 PM, SEP 15, 2015 • BY LEE SMITH
Presumably, White House officials are telling themselves that Syria will be Putin’s Vietnam, or his Afghanistan, or some manner of “quagmire” from which he will be unable to extricate himself. It’s useful to recall that the administration thought the same regarding Iran. Syria, in Obama’s words, was “bleeding [the Iranians] because they're having to send in billions of dollars.”
Indeed, Syria might well have become an Iranian sinkhole except for the fact that the White House continued to bail out the Islamic Republic’s Mr. Fix It, IRGC-Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani, by providing him air cover in Iraq, coordinating with his allies in Lebanon, and in Syria leaving his friends alone and targeting some of his enemies. President Obama is a very smart man but it’s become increasingly clear that there are significant gaps in his knowledge. As the Cold War shows, it is very difficult to bleed an adversary unless you are willing to back its opponents. Obama, to the contrary, has endowed Iran with billions of dollars that will flow to it with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Russia’s hand is now similarly strengthened with its incursion into Syria. This is not a pile of rocks like Afghanistan that will serve as the tombstone of the Soviet empire, but rather a valuable piece of real estate on the Mediterranean through which Putin means to collect rent and project power. If Obama and John Kerry thought the Russians might be willing to abandon Bashar al-Assad, American gullibility has given the Russians a punchline. “Rumors of Rus-US-Saudi ‘secret talks on ousting Assad’ groundless,” the Russian ambassador to London tweeted Tuesday. “Moscow is not in the regime change business.”
Certainly not. After all, it’s propping up Assad that has made Putin the main interlocutor on all things Syrian, so there’s no reason to forfeit that card. Whether the Saudis or Turks want to discuss terms for their Syrian proxies, the Europeans a ceasefire or the refugee crisis, or the Israelis Iranian arms shipments to Hezbollah, the world needs to come to Moscow or Sochi to get satisfaction.
Indeed, even Tehran is now indebted to Putin for helping rescue a vital Iranian interest. Without the Assad regime, Iran would have a much harder time resupplying Hezbollah, the clerical regime’s most useful deterrent force against Israel. Yes, Iranian and Russian interests in Syria are more or less aligned, but it’s no longer exactly an equal partnership—if you’re the one asking for help, you’re the junior partner, a reality that Suleimani’s July trip to see Putin underscores. (A pro-Assad pro-Hezbollah newspaper in Beirut reported Tuesday that Suleimani made a second trip to Russia.)
In short, Putin’s move was plenty smart. As a recent Wall Street Journal editorial explains: “For 70 years American Presidents from both parties have sought to thwart Russian influence in the Middle East.” And now Putin is in. It’s true the Cold War ended more than two decades ago and the United States no longer depends as much on Persian Gulf oil as it did in the 1970s, but Putin’s military incursion into Syria still constitutes a strategic threat to American interests.
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