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Middle East Mayhem

by PRESIDENTIAL POLICY: DOES IT MAKE THE GRADE?, JAMES JAY CARAFANO, PHD November 16, 2011
 
No foreign policy frontier has plagued the Obama administration more than the Middle East. Last week, even as the President headed to Hawaii to the Asian economic summit the top item on the international agenda came from the other side of the world.
 
Without question, the top issue last week was a blockbuster report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirming suspicions that Iran continues to have an active nuclear weapons program. As Heritage Middle East expert Jim Phillips observed “[t]he IAEA report is sure to reopen the debate over the controversial 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weaponization efforts in 2003.” Phillips recalled, [t]he Heritage Foundation lambasted the NIE at the time and has continued to point out the NIE’s weaknesses in light of Iran’s continued nuclear efforts.” The Obama administration had long relied on the IAEA report as an excuse for a go-soft approach with the regime in Tehran.
 
The IAEA report amounts to a smoking gun revealing that two years of a White House policy aimed at negotiating with Tehran and a half-hearted effort at implementing sanctions have done nothing to slow down the regime’s nuclear ambitions.
 
What is most troubling is not the IAEA’s belated confirmation of what’s up with the Iran nuclear weapons program, it’s how the world has changed since Tehran started its bomb-building quest. The prospect of Iran joining the nuclear club is far more terrifying today. Many analysts agree that nuclear-armed Tehran will spark an arms race in the region as countries seek to counter the regime’s advantage.  The problem is that after they arm themselves, the nuclear camps won’t cleanly line up into two sides. Atomic competition in the Middle East will look “like a soccer game with a half dozen teams on the field, each trying to score their own goals.”
 
It is hard not to conclude that the administration’s mishandling of foreign affairs over the last two years has done anything but make “this nightmare scenario more likely, not less. It has done too little to slow Tehran’s nuclear program. It has been aloof from the Iranian democracy movement and a bystander in Egypt’s Arab Spring. It has botched relations with Iraq. It has calmly watched Turkey’s drift and taken the U.S.-Israeli alliance for granted. It’s much ballyhooed “reset” with Russia has accomplished nothing other than to make Moscow a more dominant nuclear power.”  For that reason, President Obama’s grade for the week has to be “F” for failing to keep up with events in the Middle East.
 
 
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor James Jay Carafano, Ph.D., is a leading expert in defense affairs, intelligence, and strategy, military operations and homeland security at the Heritage Foundation.
 

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