The Obama Administration's Middle East Disaster: A Brief Summary

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
17 May '10

Every day I wake up hoping to have good news to report about U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. There are some positive things—regarding U.S.-Israel bilateral relations—but other than that it is hard to find anything but failure and incompetence.

We are now one-third of the way through the Obama Administration and, regrettably, it has not learned very much at all about understanding the world situation and correcting its mistakes. The time for wishful thinking is over: if it hasn't made major corrections by now, the Obama Administration is very unlikely to get any better during the rest of its term.

I hope you, dear readers, don’t get tired of this theme because this is indeed both the most important thing that’s happening and it’s happening on many fronts. The Israel-Palestinian one is the least problematic compared to the others.

Here are nine huge problems going on right now that are not being addressed by the U.S. government and are barely comprehended by the U.S. debate and large portions of the mass media. I defy anyone to show that any of these points is inaccurate. You can claim they are exaggerated, but not by much. You can claim that the U.S. government lacks options, but it is not even trying to find or develop them, nor is it telling the public the truth about these issues.

1. Iran again outmaneuvers the United States, undercutting sanctions. It’s now the second half of May, do you know where your sanctions are? The problem isn’t just that Tehran now has a new plan to ship out half its enriched uranium (only leaving it with the other 50 percent for building bombs!) but that this scheme was engineered by two countries the Obama Administration has extolled as friends: Turkey and Brazil. Despite constant assurances to the public (illusions it also believed and which misled its policy), the Obama Administration cannot depend on Russia or China to support sanctions. What is going on is a diplomatic battle between Iran and the United States to see which can have more influence on the positions taken by other countries on the Iran nuclear issue. Here's what's really amazing: Outside of Western and Central Europe, Iran is winning this competition.

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