Trump pulls an Obama?

Who’d have thought President Donald Trump would be so eager to imitate one of President Barack Obama’s worst mistakes in the Middle East?

In 2011, Obama nearly snatched defeat out of the jaws of U.S. military victory over al-Qaida in Iraq—by pulling the last 10,000 U.S. troops out of that country too soon. The terror group resurfaced as ISIS, seizing massive chunks of Iraq and Syria, and threatening the West.

Now Trump wants to pull an Obama in Syria. “I want to get out. It’s time,” the president said last Tuesday, speaking of withdrawing the 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria that are helping our Kurdish allies eliminate the last pockets of ISIS. Even as he spoke, Gen. Joseph Votel, head of U.S. military operations in the Mideast, was telling a conference in Washington that the U.S. presence in Syria was still needed to consolidate gains.

A slight White House walk-back of Trump’s remarks on Wednesday barely hid his eagerness to exit Syria prematurely. Does he not realize the beneficiaries would be Iran and Russia—and ISIS, which is trying to regroup and could still threaten the West?

What was so astonishing about the president’s Syria blurt was that it ignored all the advice from his military, security advisers and Middle East allies. Apparently, none were alerted before he started signaling at a political rally last week that he would be “making a [Syria] decision very quickly.”

The biggest beneficiary of a U.S. pullout—besides Islamist jihadis—would be Tehran, whose hold over Syria is deepening. A U.S. exit would make it easier for Iran to solidify a land bridge through Syria to Lebanon to send men and weapons to Hezbollah fighters. This would increase the growing likelihood of a war between Iran and Israel over Iran’s role in Syria.

One must ask: Why on Earth is Trump so eager for a move that would benefit Tehran?

That question is key, given that every senior Trump security adviser has opposed a hasty Syria exit. That includes Defense Secretary James Mattis, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and outgoing national security adviser H.R. McMaster. The latter duo’s replacements, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, are hawks on Russia and Iran, and aren’t likely to approve of handing Moscow and Tehran—not to mention ISIS—a free gift.

Trump damned Obama for that mistake in Iraq. But in Syria, he appears bent on doing the same thing.

Trudy Rubin is a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.