Obama’s Fateful Indecision
With Israel and Saudi Arabia siding with the Islamic State and
Al-Qaeda versus Iran and its allies, President Obama faces a
critical decision – whether to repudiate those old allies and
cooperate with Iran or watch as Sunni terrorist groups possibly take
control of a major country in the Mideast.
By Robert Parry
April 07, 2015 "ICH"
- "Consortium
News" - The foreign policy quandary facing
President Barack Obama is that America’s traditional allies in the
Middle East – Israel and Saudi Arabia – along with Official
Washington’s powerful neocons have effectively sided with Al-Qaeda
and the Islamic State out of a belief that Iran represents a greater
threat to Israeli and Saudi interests.But
what that means for U.S. interests is potentially catastrophic. If
the Islamic State continues its penetration toward Damascus in
league with Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front and topples the Syrian
government, the resulting slaughter of Christians, Shiites and other
religious minorities – as well as the risk of a major new terrorist
base in the heart of the Middle East – could force the United States
into a hopeless new war that could drain the U.S. Treasury and drive
the nation into a chaotic and dangerous decline.
To avoid this calamity, Obama would have to throw
U.S. support fully behind the embattled regime of Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad, precipitate a break with Israel and Saudi Arabia,
and withstand a chorus of condemnations from influential neocon
pundits, Republican politicians and hawkish Democrats. Influenced by
Israeli propaganda, all have pushed for ousting Assad in a “regime
change.”
But the world has already had a grim peek at what
an Islamic State/Al-Qaeda victory would look like. The Islamic State
has reveled in its ability to provoke Western outrage through acts
of shocking brutality, such as beheadings, incinerations, stonings,
burning of ancient books and destruction of religious sites that the
group deems offensive to its fundamentalist version of Islam.
Over the Easter holiday, there were reports of the
Islamic State destroying a Christian Church in northeastern Syria
and taking scores of Christians as prisoners. An Islamic State
victory in Syria would likely mean atrocities on a massive scale.
And, there are signs that Al-Qaeda might bring the Islamic State
back into the fold if it achieves this success, which would let
Al-Qaeda resume its plotting for its own outrages through terrorist
attacks on European and U.S. targets.
Though Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front and the Islamic
State have been estranged in recent months, the groups were said to
be collaborating in an assault on the Palestinian refugee camp of
Yarmouk, south of Damascus.
The Associated Press reported
that “Palestinian officials and Syrian activists say the Islamic
State militants fighting in Yarmouk were working with rivals from
the al-Qaida affiliate in Syria, the Nusra Front. The two groups
have fought bloody battles against each other in other parts of
Syria, but appear to be cooperating in the attack on Yarmouk.”
United Nations spokesman Chris Gunness
told
the AP, “The situation in the camp is beyond inhumane.”
In late March, the Saudis, working with Turkish
intelligence, supported Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front and other jihadist
forces in capturing the Syrian city of Idlib, the New York Times
reported.
Syria has become a frontline in the sectarian
conflict between Sunni and Shiite Islam, with Saudi Arabia a
longtime funder of the Sunni fundamentalist Wahhabism, which gave
rise to Al-Qaeda under the direction of Saudi Osama bin Laden.
Fifteen of the 19 hijackers in the 9/11 attacks were Saudi
nationals, and elements of the Saudi royal family and other Persian
Gulf sheikdoms have been identified as Al-Qaeda’s financiers. [See
Consortiumnews.com’s “The
Secret Saudi Ties to Terrorism.”]
The Israeli-Saudi Alliance
In seeking “regime change” in Syria, Saudi Arabia
has been joined by Israel whose leaders have cited Syria as the
“keystone” in the pro-Iranian Shiite “strategic arc” from Tehran
through Damascus to Beirut. In making that point in September 2013,
Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren
told the
Jerusalem Post that Israel favored the Sunni extremists over Assad
and the Shiites.
“We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always
preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys
who were backed by Iran.” He said this was the case even if the “bad
guys” were affiliated with Al-Qaeda.
In June 2014, Oren expanded on this Israeli
position. Then, speaking as a former ambassador, Oren
said Israel
would even prefer a victory by the Islamic State. “From Israel’s
perspective, if there’s got to be an evil that’s got to prevail, let
the Sunni evil prevail,” Oren said.
On March 3, in the speech to a cheering U.S.
Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also argued that
the danger from Iran was much greater than from the Islamic State
(or ISIS). Netanyahu dismissed ISIS as a relatively minor annoyance
with its “butcher knives, captured weapons and YouTube” when
compared to Iran, which he accused of “gobbling up the nations” of
the Middle East.
He claimed “Iran now dominates four Arab capitals,
Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Sanaa. And if Iran’s aggression is
left unchecked, more will surely follow. … We must all stand
together to stop Iran’s march of conquest, subjugation and terror.”
Netanyahu’s rhetoric was clearly hyperbole –
Iran’s troops have not invaded any country for centuries; Iran
did come to the aid of the Shiite-dominated government of Iraq in
its fight with the Islamic State, but the “regime change” in Baghdad
was implemented not by Iran but by President George W. Bush and the
U.S. military; and it’s preposterous to say that Iran “dominates”
Damascus, Beirut and Sanaa – though Iran is allied with elements in
Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.
But hyperbole or not, Netanyahu’s claims became
marching orders for the American neocons, the Republican Party and
much of the Democratic Party. Republicans and some Democrats
denounced President Obama’s support for international negotiations
with Iran over its nuclear program while some prominent neocons were
granted space on the op-ed pages of the Washington Post and New York
Times to advocate bombing Iran. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “NYT
Publishes Call to Bomb Iran.”]
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia – with U.S. logistical and
intelligence help – began bombing the Houthi rebels in Yemen who
have been fighting a long civil war and had captured several major
cities. The Houthis, who practice an offshoot of Shiite Islam called
Zaydism, deny that they are proxies of Iran although some analysts
say the Iranians have given some money and possibly some weapons to
the Houthis.
However, by attacking the Houthis, the Saudis have
helped Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula regain its footing,
including creating an opportunity to free scores of Al-Qaeda
militants in
a prison break
and expanding Al-Qaeda’s territory in the east.
Obama’s Choice
Increasingly, the choice facing Obama is whether
to protect the old alliances with Israel and Saudi Arabia – and risk
victories by Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State – or expand on the
diplomatic opening from the framework agreement on Iran’s nuclear
program to side with Shiite forces as the primary bulwark against
Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
For such a seismic shift in U.S. foreign policy,
President Obama could use the help of Russian President Vladimir
Putin, who assisted in brokering agreements in 2013 in which Assad
surrendered Syria’s chemical weapons and in which Iranian leaders
signed an interim agreement on their nuclear program that laid the
groundwork for the April 2 framework deal.
In 2013, those moves by Putin infuriated Official
Washington’s neoconservatives who were quick to identify Ukraine as
a possible flashpoint between the United States and Russia. With
Putin and Obama both distracted by other responsibilities, neocon
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland
teamed up with neocon National Endowment for Democracy President
Carl Gershman and neocon Sen. John McCain to help fund and
coordinate the Feb. 22, 2014 coup that ousted elected President
Viktor Yanukovych. The resulting civil war and Russian intervention
in Crimea drove a deep wedge between Obama and Putin.
The mainstream U.S. news media got fully behind
the demonization of Putin, making a rapprochement over Ukraine
nearly impossible. Though German Chancellor Angela Merkel sought to
broker a settlement of the conflict in February – known as Minsk-2 –
the right-wing government in charge in Kiev, reflecting Nuland’s
hard-line position, sabotaged the deal by inserting a poison pill
that effectively required the ethnic Russian rebels in eastern
Ukraine to surrender before Kiev would conduct elections under
its control. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine’s
Poison Pill for Peace Talks.”]
The Kiev regime is also incorporating some of its
neo-Nazi militias into the regular army while putting neo-Nazi
extremists into key military advisory positions. Though the U.S.
media has put on blinders so as not to notice the Swastikas and SS
symbols festooning the Azov and other battalions, the reality has
been that the neo-Nazis and other far-right extremists have been the
fiercest fighters in killing ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.
[See Consortiumnews.com’s “Wretched
US Journalism on Ukraine.”]
On Saturday, German Economic News
reported that
the Ukrainian army appointed right-wing extremist Dimitri Jarosch as
an official adviser to the army leadership as the Kiev regime – now
bolstered by U.S. military equipment and training and receiving
billions of dollars in Western aid – prepares for renewed fighting
with eastern Ukraine.
The problem with Obama has been that – although he
himself may be a “closet realist” willing to work with adversarial
countries like Iran and Russia – he has not consistently challenged
the neocons and their junior partners, the liberal interventionists.
The liberals are particularly susceptible to propaganda campaigns
involving non-governmental organizations that claim to
promote “human rights” or “democracy” but have their salaries paid
by the congressionally financed and neocon-run National Endowment
for Democracy or by self-interested billionaires like financier
George Soros.
The effectiveness of these NGOs in using social
media and other forums to demonize targeted governments, as happened
in Ukraine during the winter of 2013-14, makes it hard for honest
journalists and serious analysts to put these crises in perspective
without endangering their careers and reputations. Over the past
year, anyone who questioned the demonization of Putin was denounced
as a “Putin apologist” or a “Putin bootlicker.” Thus, many people
not wanting to face such slurs either went along with the
propagandistic “group think” or kept quiet.
Obama is one person who knows better but hasn’t
been willing to contest Official Washington’s narratives
portraying Putin or Assad or the Iranians or the Houthis as the
devils incarnate. Obama has generally gone with the flow, joining
the condemnations, but then resisting at key moments and refusing to
implement some of the most extreme neocon ideas – such as bombing
the Syrian army or shipping lethal weapons to Ukraine’s right-wing
regime or forsaking negotiations and bombing Iran.
Pandering to Israel and Saudi Arabia
In other words, Obama has invested huge amounts of
time and energy in trying to maintain positive relations with
Netanyahu and the Saudi royals while not fully joining in their
regional war against Iran and other Shiite-related governments and
movements. Obama understands the enormous risk of allowing Al-Qaeda
or the Islamic State to gain firm control of a major Middle Eastern
country.
Of course, if that happens in, say, Syria, Obama
would be blamed for not overthrowing the Assad regime earlier, as if
there actually was a “moderate opposition” that could have withstood
the pressure of the Sunni extremists. Though the neocons and liberal
interventionists have pretended that this “moderate” force existed,
it was always marginal when it came to applying real power.
Whether one likes it or not, the only real force
that can stop an Al-Qaeda or Islamic State victory is the Syrian
army and the Assad regime. But Obama chose to play the game of
demanding that “Assad must go” – to appease the neocons and liberal
interventionists – while recognizing that the notion of a “moderate”
alternative was never realistic.
As Obama told the New York Times Thomas L.
Friedman in August 2014, the idea that the U.S. arming the
“moderate” rebels would have made a difference has “always been a
fantasy.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Behind
Obama’s Chaotic Foreign Policy.”]
But Obama may be running out of time in his
halfway strategy of half-heartedly addressing the real danger that
lies ahead if the Islamic State and/or Al-Qaeda ride the support of
Saudi Arabia and Israel to a victory in Syria or Iraq or Yemen.
If the United States has to recommit a major
military force in the Middle East, the war would have little hope of
succeeding but it would drain American resources – and eviscerate
what’s left of the constitutional principles that founded the
American Republic.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra
stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His
latest book,
Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was
written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat. His two previous books
are
Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to
Iraq and
Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth'.