How Obama Lit the Middle East on Fire
Former U.S. President Barack Obama's foreign policies in the Middle East are one of the reasons why the region is currently inflamed — and on the verge of a greater war.
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Two-term U.S. President Barack Obama’s tenure was marked by numerous foreign policy challenges, one of which was the complex relationship between the United States and Israel.
Despite initial optimism and public displays of cooperation, the Obama administration’s relationship with Israel was fraught with tension and misunderstanding.
The Early Years
When Barack Obama was elected in 2008, there was considerable optimism about the potential for a fresh start in U.S.-Israel relations. Obama’s message of hope and change resonated globally, and many expected a new era of cooperation between the two nations.
Early in his presidency, Obama emphasized his commitment to Israel’s security and the importance of the U.S.-Israel alliance. He signed off on helping to fund the Iron Dome project, which has saved many thousand Israeli lives.
But in 2009, Obama gave a speech in Cairo aimed at resetting U.S. relations with the “Muslim world.” He insisted that members of the Muslim Brotherhood (of which Hamas is an offshoot) be provided seats at the event — even though the Brotherhood was a banned organization in Egypt at the time — prompting then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to cancel his attendance (probably fearing for his life).
Only a few months earlier, the Holy Land Foundation (a quasi-nonprofit organization designed to money-launder more to terrorists organization like the Muslim Brotherhood) was found, via trial, to be behind a Muslim Brotherhood plot to sabotage the U.S. while promoting Hamas’ mission to destroy Israel.
Still, in this Cairo speech, President Obama falsely claimed that the ability of Muslims to contribute to charity had been impeded by U.S. legal restrictions. There are no legal impediments to charitable giving that single out Muslims. Instead, there are laws that prohibit material support to terrorism. These laws, which apply to terrorism committed by any group, are applied most often to Muslims — because most anti-American terrorism is carried out by Islamists.
And the device most often used to route support to terrorist organizations is the charitable front: outfits such as the Holy Land Foundation that are ostensibly charities but actually serve as piggy banks for jihadists.
Despite preaching about democracy and freedom in this speech, a few weeks later Obama refused to support the Iranian Green Movement (which demanded democratic voting rights) and effectively sided with Iran’s deeply oppressive Islamist regime.
Obama-administration officials went on to airbrush the Muslim Brotherhood, portraying fundamentalist radicals who seek to vanquish the West as “largely secular” “moderates” with whom the U.S. government should be working cooperatively.
What’s more, there has been no “Muslim world” since the demise of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. The caliphate was dissolved; Kemal Ataturk refashioned Turkey as a secular republic; and the European powers, particularly Great Britain and France, carved up the Ottomans’ former territories into nation-states like Lebanon, Syria, Transjordan, and Iraq.
While Middle Easterners have complained for more than 80 years that these borders were imposed on them by the Europeans, the fact is that the region’s rulers — if not always their subjects — are happy with their holdings.
These regimes fulfill almost none of the functions of a genuine nation-state, such as providing for the welfare of their citizens, but their centralized authority has generally satisfied European and U.S. officials. The stock and trade of our bilateral relations — diplomacy, commerce, and war — are less efficient instruments when transacted with tribal confederations, which, as we now know, thanks to our adventure in Iraq, is the basis of Middle East politics.
Since there is no “Muslim world,” only the chaos of competing clan systems exists, which is why preserving the quasi-nation-state system of the Middle East is a vital Western interest. The only challenge to these regimes is from Islamists and other so-called non-state actors (like Hamas), as well as the states that stands behind them: the Islamic Republic of Iran and Qatar.
In effect, Obama’s speech to the “Muslim world” served to erase the national borders of the West’s Middle Eastern allies (including Israel). And however questionable those allies are, their borders serve Western interests, and erasing them serves Iranian and Qatari ends.
The Over-Hyped Settlements
One of the earliest and most significant points of contention between Obama and Israel was the issue of Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria (also known as the West Bank).
The Obama administration adopted a firm stance against settlement expansion, propagating it as a major obstacle to peace. Thus, “the Israeli settlements” became a defining issue in the saga that is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, even though Israel proven time and again that it is willing to dismantle settlements in exchange for peace, like it did in the Gaza Strip and North Samaria in 2005, and like it was ready to do in 2000 in a deal brokered by then-U.S. President Bill Clinton.
Do you know how that deal ended? The Palestinians backed out of it and instead chose to inflict the Second Intifada, killing more than 1,000 Israeli civilians, including women and children.
And following the 1967 Six-Day War that Israel won after being attacked by Arab countries, Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan and wanted to return it to the Jordanians, but the latter refused, effectively saying: “We don’t want that problem anymore. You can have it.”
Still, the U.S. State Department (America’s version of a foreign ministry) under Obama and continuing into Biden’s first presidential term, has become increasingly anti-Israel — not because the Jewish state is some rogue pariah nation that must be forcefully dealt with, but because Israel is considered a “White oppressor colonialist racist” entity by many folks who work in the State Department.
For example, much of the information that the State Department cites comes from a single, ostensibly impartial source whose words carry weight in Washington in part because of his rank: Lieutenant General Michael R. Fenzel, a three-star general who currently serves as the U.S. security coordinator to Israel and the Palestinian Authority (USSC).
The USSC is well-known for its regular, sometimes daily briefings and reports about “extremist” Israeli settlers, which it provides to members of Congress, policymakers, Israel-related advocacy groups, and foreign countries’ forces in Israel.
According to sources in and out of the U.S. government familiar with Fenzel’s reports and advocacy, the USSC has developed a reputation for repeating the same numbers provided by Palestinian and radical leftist organizations, without independent verification, attribution, or contextualization.
To add insult to injury, dozens of U.S. State Department employees reportedly signed onto “dissent cables” to Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the fall, and at least two officials have resigned in protest of Biden’s support for Israel.
What stood out to some department employees at recent listening sessions was senior leaders’ unwillingness to defend Biden’s support for Israel’s security, particularly in response to a chorus of employees seeking a harsher stance toward the Jewish state.
One senior foreign service officer described a “failure of leadership in the U.S. Department of State right now to reinforce internally what the policy is and why the president has taken it, to put into context what Israel is dealing with, whether it’s Hamas’ tactics on the ground, or the fact that it’s actually a two-front war, with Iran lurking in the background.”1
The Iran Nuclear Deal
Arguably, the most significant and contentious issue between Obama and Israel was the Iran nuclear deal. Obama viewed the deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as a historic achievement that would prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons through diplomacy rather than military action.
Israel, on the other hand, saw the deal as a grave threat to the Jewish state’s security, arguing that it provided Iran with a pathway to nuclear capabilities and emboldened its regional, hegemonic aggression.
Indeed, this is true, since JCPOA did not permanently halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Instead it only delayed them. The deal imposes limits on Iran’s nuclear activities for 10 to 15 years, after which key restrictions on uranium enrichment and other activities began to expire.
From Israel’s perspective, this is particularly troubling given Iran’s history of clandestine nuclear activities and its failure to fully disclose past military dimensions of its nuclear program. The sunset clauses in the JCPOA mean that, even if Iran complies fully with the deal, it will be free to expand its nuclear program significantly in the not-so-distant future.
The lifting of economic sanctions as part of the JCPOA provided Iran with significant financial resources. Rather than using this newfound economic freedom to improve the lives of its citizens, the Iranian regime has funneled funds to its regional proxies and allies, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Assad regime in Syria, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, and various militias in Iraq and Yemen.
Iran’s increased financial capability has also enabled it to enhance its conventional military capabilities, further tilting the regional balance of power in its favor. For Israel, this means facing a more assertive and better-armed adversary on multiple fronts, increasing the likelihood of conflicts and instability in the region.
With sanctions lifted and its economy improving, Iran has adopted a more aggressive posture. This includes increased support for terrorist organizations, expanded influence in war-torn Syria (on Israel’s northeast border), and more frequent and direct confrontations with Israeli forces.
The perception that the international community, particularly the United States under the Obama administration, was willing to accommodate Iran’s interests has emboldened hardliners within the Iranian regime. This has led to a more belligerent foreign policy, which poses a direct threat to Israel’s security.
More Performative Than Productive
Publicly, Obama maintained that the U.S.-Israel relationship was as strong as ever, emphasizing the shared values and strategic interests that bound the two nations together. He repeatedly affirmed America’s commitment to Israel’s security, including the continuation of military aid and cooperation.
In 2016, the U.S. and Israel signed a record-breaking $38 billion military aid package, signaling ongoing support. However, what most people do not realize is that this deal has proven to be a disastrous point of American leverage against Israel, and it has significantly downgraded Israeli military technology, manufacturing, and the amount of local jobs in the sector.
To add insult to injury, Obama even got behind Hamas’ right to exist and keep its arsenal intact during another war that the terror group provoked with Israel back in 2014.2
More curiously, he subsequently sent his Secretary of State, John Kerry, off to cavort with the Qatari and Turkish foreign ministers in Paris — which incensed Israeli ministers, the Egyptians, and the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the time.
And the Obama administration pressed for the Qatari government to remain a chief broker in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process despite the country’s longstanding financial support for Hamas and even ISIS.3
As Obama’s presidency came to a close, his detrimental foreign policy decisions in the Middle East started to show, the effects of which we are seeing on full display during this Israel-Hamas war.
“Inside the State Department’s anti-Israel listening sessions.” Jewish Insider.
“Obama: Intervening to Save Hamas?” Commentary.
“Obama Admin Wants Hamas Ally Qatar to Remain Chief Broker in Peace Process.” The Washington Free Beacon.
My husband's reaction when Obama was elected to his first term was: "How could the Americans put a HUSSEIN in the White House after 9/11???" I looked at him and said, "American blacks voted for him because he's black. The rest were mostly white liberal women who were fascinated by his good looks, fancy words and with patting themselves on the back for voting in a black man. None of these voters bothered to look at the truth about Obama. That he's an Islamo/Marxist activist and a good actor."
This was all part of Obama's intended goal of transforming the US from a constitutional republic into a European style socialist state and jettisoning anyone in the Democratic Party that supported Israel