Say what you may about Donald Trump, the world was more stable and safer place with him in charge than the present regime or for that matter, the Obama administration. If you don’t want to give credit to Trump, then at least credit his foreign policy team including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Trump administrations was a respite from Obama disastrous foreign policy including his attempt to normalize relations with Iran, one of the world leading terrorist states, and even elevate Iran as part of an integrated Middle East. At least Trump was smart to realize this was a stupid idea. Biden continued the Obama policy toward Iran and abandoned essentially the Trump policy of producing an alliance between the Sunni States and Israel via the Abraham Accord.
The recent Hamas attack on Israel may have expanded as it is being reported that Iranian backed Hezbollah are attacking from the North. The pincer movement if true shows Iran making a bold mood to attack Israel while sending a message to the Sunni states the price they pay if they work with Israel, directly or indirectly. What is obvious is that Obama/Biden strategy of an integrated Middle East with Iran as a centerpiece has been a disaster and one of the most ill-conceived foreign policy mistakes, period. World is more unstable today it was under Trump, and it is getting worse. What we are witnessing the complete failure of Obama/Biden worldview.
This disaster had its roots in the Obama Administration. The Obama view was ascendant Iran would be a counterbalance to Israel and like previous administration, view the Middle East problems through the prism of Palestinian-Israeli conflict plus this move toward Iran was also supposed to counter our allies just as the Saudi’s. A balance of power existing among the powers of the region and this balance of power would force Israel hand in dealing with the Palestinians and reduce America’s footprint in the Middle East.
This regional restructuring was Obama’s version of realism, but it was not that. As Ashley Rindsberg noted in UnHerd, “But it was never realism. It was a contorted idealism rooted in Obama’s rejection of American exceptionalism, including the notion that Western liberal democratic values deserved any primacy in any part of the world. The hands-off approach would allow regional dynamics to establish local equilibrium without what, in Obama’s view, was the destructive influence of American intervention…With this motivation in play, Obama supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. He courted Turkey’s theocrat Recep Tayyip Erdogan as “a strong Turkey that would step in and take on the role of a strong power in the Middle East that would allow the U.S. to step back,” a Turkey expert told Politico in 2016. He left Iraq in the hands of Iranian puppet masters. And most infamously of all, he ceded the Syrian battlefield to, of all people, Vladimir Putin.”
This policy was based on many faulty premises beginning with the idea that Iran was going to collaborate in an integrated Middle East in a benign fashion since it is Iran Mullahs goal was to eliminate the Jewish state, drive the United States out of the Middle East and institute its version of a jihadist regime. It is still a revolutionary regime. If you want to reduce your presence in the Region it would help to have energy independent policy but both Obama and Biden went green which depends upon minerals produced by China.
What unfolding before our eyes is the Obama policy failures and Hamas and Hezbollah are mere extension of Iran and as Ms. Rindsberg observed, “Today we are seeing the outcome not of mere policy failure, but catastrophe. The result will not be a carefully calibrated set of cantilevers pulling the Middle East into peace-like tension but war, suffering and internal conflict. Obama always fancied himself a great agent of change, a figure upon whom the presidency was virtually bestowed, who would master the world’s greatest problems with his intellect alone, and collect all the rich rewards, prizes, praise and of course the wild jubilation he knew he deserved.” Obama proved to nothing more than failed intellectual, unable to grasp the reality of the world and man praised by the media as transformation intellectual President but in reality, a second-rate thinker with outdated leftist ideas to draw from
Joe Biden on the other hand is an 80-year-old plus man whose cognitive skills have declined but then at his peak, he was mothing more than mediocrity. Biden own contribution to this disaster was refunding the Palestinians and then pursuing Iranian deal while giving Iran billions of dollars “for humanitarian uses” as if Iranians were not going to find a way to turn those billions into arms for their allies.
Robert Greenway, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense contrasted Trump’s approach to Biden’s approach. Presently he is the executive director the Abraham Accords Peace Institute and help develop the accord during the Trump Administration and concluded that Trump administration ran out of time in executing their game plan against Iran. Greenway noted, “I think if we had more time to do it, we could have brought about something approaching an economic collapse or at least economic paralysis. We probably started too late, so this may be a different discussion.” The Biden administration undid the progress made by the Trump’s foreign policy team, first beginning by not enforcing the sanctions and Greenway noted, that Iran had foreign policy exchange of 50 to 60 billion dollars but when Trump left office, it was down to six billion dollars on the par with Haiti.
Since Biden’s took over, they have increased their oil export and now exceeded their foreign exchange from end of the Obama administration.
Biden approach to Iran and the Middle East is a continuation of the disastrous policy of the Obama administration and it can no longer be denied that Biden foreign policy is proving to ben even worse than Bidennomics and Biden energy policy.
Biden foreign policy has led to a war in Central Europe, a disastrous retreat from Afghanistan in which billions of dollars’ worth of weapons were left behind for the Taliban to use and possibly distribute out to other terrorist or proxy armies like Hamas, and China more aggressive behavior toward Taiwan. Just consider the alternative from the Trump years, Russia did not move against Ukraine, and this is a fact that can’t be denied. While combat continued in the Middle East and chaos reigned, the Trump administration did eliminate the ISIS threat that began under the Obama administration. Iran suffered economically due to the Trump economic pressure but now they have been enriched and on the march. Biden Foreign policy is a complete failure.
The Donelson Files 