Three Mideast options, all bad
The abrupt Obama administration pre-election pullout from Iraq in 2011, along with the administration’s failed reset with Russia and the Iran deal, created a three-headed hydra in the Middle East.
What makes the Middle East monster deadly is the interplay between the Iranian terrorist regime and its surrogates Hezbollah and the Assad regime; Russian President Vladimir Putin’s deployment of bombers into Syria and Iraq after a 40-year Russian hiatus in the region; and the medieval beheaders of the Islamic State.
Add into the brew anti-Americanism, genocide, millions of refugees, global terrorism and nuclear weapons. ISIS is simultaneously at war against the Assad regime, Iran and Iranian surrogates such as Hezbollah and Russian expeditionary forces. ISIS also seeks to energize terrorist attacks in the United States and Europe. Stranger still, ISIS almost surely is receiving stealth support from Sunni nations in the Middle East, some ostensibly U.S. allies.
This matrix gets even crazier. The authors of reset policy during the Obama administration are now furious at President Trump for even talking about what they tried for years: reaching out to Putin. Yet in the Middle East, Russia is doing us a favor by attacking ISIS, even as it does no favors in saving the genocidal Assad regime that has murdered tens of thousands of innocents and ISIS terrorists.
Iran is the sworn enemy of the United States, yet its foreign proxies attack our shared enemy, ISIS. The very troops who once blew up Americans in Iraq with shaped charges are for now de facto allies on the Syrian and Iraqi battlefields.
Given that there is now no political support for surging thousands more U.S. troops into Iraq to reverse the disastrous Obama administration pullout, there are three strategic choices in dealing with the Middle East hydra, all of them bad:
One, hold our nose, and for now ally with Russia and Iran to destroy ISIS first. Then deal with the other rivalries later on. Two, work with the least awful of the three, which is probably Russia.
Three, simply keep out of the mess and let them all diminish each other, despite the collateral damage to the innocent. (The model is the savage Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988 that weakened U.S. enemies Saddam Hussein and the Iranian theocracy but resulted in some 800,000 deaths.)
In the short-term, option three is ostensibly the least costly — at least to the U.S. But 2 million Syrian and Iraqi refugees have swarmed Europe, coinciding with an uptick in radical Islamic terrorism. Which of the other options is the least objectionable?
After 2014, we quietly pursued option one by fighting in parallel fashion with Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and the Assad government against ISIS, the more dreadful enemy. Apparently, the Obama rationale was that when ISIS was destroyed, the U.S. could then come to terms with an energized and empowered Iran rather than with Russia. The jury is out.
The second option so far seems to be President Trump’s preference: a new detente with Putin in hopes he will back off from his support of Iran and Hezbollah as we jointly fight ISIS. Would Putin really be willing to write off a half-century of Russian support for Syria? Or can Putin see the U.S. has mutual interests with Russia in opposing all Islamic extremism — ISIS and Putin’s Iranian clients? Would Putin work with moderate Sunni regimes, Israel and the U.S. to provide regional stability? Can Trump persuade Putin that having Iran as yet another nuclear power near the borders of the old Soviet Union (in addition to Pakistan, India, North Korea, China and NATO forces) is not in Russia’s interest?
Would overlooking Putin’s autocracy be any worse than the Obama administration’s negotiations with a murderous Iran, the world’s chief sponsor of terrorism? What would be Putin’s steep price to abandon Assad, to ensure that Iran stays nonnuclear, and to finish the destruction of ISIS?
Overlooking Russian autocracy? Keeping mum should Putin threaten autonomous nations on his border?
These are bad choices.
Trump, a political outsider, did not create the monster. Rather, he inherited from past U.S. leaders the three-headed hydra of the Middle East.