The eight years of Barack Obama's presidency were a strategic nightmare for Israel and the Middle East in general. The former US president left the region a far more dangerous place than it had been when he first entered office. The US's loyalty to its friends, and its ability to make good on its promises, were all put in question.
Obama's tenure ended with the US taking a highly unusual step of abstaining on a harsh resolution condemning the settlements and enabling the submission of lawsuits to the International Criminal Court as well as the imposition of sanctions on Israel at a December 2016 meeting of the UN Security Council. Ahead of the vote, Egypt, which submitted the resolution, had agreed to rescind. But the Obama administration insisted it move forward, a move that earned the US president praise from Hamas but also Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas as well as its late chief negotiator Saeb Erakat, both of Fatah. "A day of victory," was how they described the move. In Israel, the reaction was one of shock that the US would break with decades of US policy and abandon Israel at the UN. Israel's then-UN Ambassador Danny Danon said the resolution sent a message to the Palestinians that they need to continue on the path of incitement and terror.
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In Egypt, the Arab Spring protests led to the removal of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011, after he earned more than the equivalent of a cold shoulder from Obama, who sent an unequivocal message to the leader in Cairo he wanted him out immediately. In a speech in February of that year, the US president called for the beginning of the end of Mubarak's 30-year rule.
After having loyally supported cooperation with the US for three decades, Mubarak was replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood, which strove to establish a tyrannical regime based on rigid interpretation of Sharia law. As a result, terrorist organizations significantly bolstered their standing in the Sinai Peninsula, swearing loyalty to the Islamic State group. They bombed the pipeline in the northern Sinai that delivers natural gas from Israel to Egypt 14 times, cutting off some 40% of the gas supply. A veritable highway for Hamas to sneak in weapons to the Gaza Strip had been created, which peaked with the use of thousands of smuggling tunnels connecting the Sinai to Gaza. For Israel, the Arab Spring had turned into a most difficult Islamist winter.
Obama was the one who promised to take action if Syrian President Bashar Assad were to cross the red line of using chemical weapons against civilians. In August of 2013, Obama's Foreign Secretary John Kerry said that the administration had all the necessary proof that the Assad regime had used chemical weapons against it own people. "With our own eyes, we have seen the thousands of reports from 11 separate sites in the Damascus suburbs. All of them show and report victims with breathing difficulties, people twitching with spasms, coughing, rapid heartbeats, foaming at the mouth, unconsciousness, and death … This is the indiscriminate, inconceivable horror of chemical weapons."
And so, while Obama publicly committed to honoring a set of universal values to prevent a crime against humanity, he ultimately decided not to honor that commitment.
And against this backdrop, there were course efforts, led by Obama himself, to forge a deal aimed at preventing Tehran from procuring nuclear weapons. Within a decade of signing of the accord, Iran could legally, and with the support of Western states, move to produce its own nuclear weapon.
Iran, whose leaders have sworn up and down that they will destroy the nation-state of the Jewish people, became a Middle East empire with Obama's stamp of approval. The US's traditional partners – Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates – were shocked to see Iran's standing bolstered at their expense. They could not understand how it was possible for regional stability to dissolve under Obama's leadership, leadership that led to the establishment of the Shiite crescent that runs from Iran through Iraq, Syria, and all the way to Lebanon's Golan Heights border with Israel. Nor could they understand how Russia was able to tighten its grip, including on military ports and air bases, in the Middle East and become a central player in the region.
Obama, the Democratic president, left a deeply bitter and frustrated Middle East in his wake.
In two months' time, US President Donald Trump's tenure as president will come to an end, and that of Obama's Vice President Joe Biden will begin. With eyes wide open, we pray that Biden will read the Middle Eastern map and prevent Iran, the world's chief state sponsor of terrorism, from having any kind of access to nuclear weapons, and that he is able to navigate the continued path of peace between Israel and Middle East states.
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