President Obama has had two bad years in the Middle East. Unfortunately, that means that America's friends and allies have also had two bad years, with every prospect that the next two will be as bad or worse. Across the region's range of troubles, Obama's inexperience, naiveté and strategic incompetence have all cost the United States dearly. Consider just a few key issues. 1. Relations between Israel and the Palestinians are now at their lowest point in two years, largely because of Obama's utterly failed effort to pressure Israel into making substantive concessions. By trying to force Israeli adherence to Mahmoud Abbas's precondition for negotiation, namely halting all Israeli settlement construction on the West Bank, and failing, Obama has the worst of all worlds. He failed to deliver up Israel, but he did undercut Abbas by raising expectations and then failing to achieve Abbas's objectives. Accordingly, we have a Palestinian Authority with no authority, no legitimacy from free and fair elections, and no hope except the vain idea that the United Nations will declare Palestinian “statehood.” Good luck with that option. Obama has taken a complex, confused, and dangerous environment, and made it worse. Doing nothing -- benign neglect -- would have been more conducive to progress between the PA and Israel's Netanyahu government. Now, ironically, Hamas radicalism, and its links to the Moslem Brotherhood and other extremists threaten more instability in Arab lands than in Israel. 2. Similarly, Obama has allowed Iran's nuclear weapons threat to become more serious. His incredibly naïve belief that Tehran could be talked out of its nuclear program has cost the United States and its friends in the region -- Israeli and Arab alike -- precious time and opportunities. During the past two years, Iran continued to make progress toward its twenty-year-long objective of obtaining deliverable nuclear weapons, and suffered only minimally effective economic sanctions as a result. The Obama Administration's fallback position is apparently that a nuclear Iran can be contained and deterred, analogously to the Cold War nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union. But this is almost certainly wrong, since Iran's fanatic leaders do not see human life in the same way that Moscow's atheists did. Moreover, even if Iran could be deterred, the nuclear threat would not end there, since Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and others will almost certainly seek nuclear weapons once Iran possesses them. The Middle East could thus see, in short order, half a dozen or more countries with nuclear arsenals, a prescription for nuclear Armageddon in the region. 3. Moreover, the Obama Administration has done essentially nothing to restrain Iran's support for terrorism in the region and globally, for many of the same reasons. The President seems unwilling to criticize Iran's leaders for fear of being seen as anti-Moslem. This is very curious, since Iran's leading critics are found in its Moslem neighbors. Read the State Department reporting cables released by WikiLeaks if you have any doubts on that score. Obama's inaction, however, has allowed Iran to fully rearm and resupply Hezbollah in Lebanon, and continue to arm and finance Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Iran aids terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan whose principle aim is to kill Americans, and the Obama Administration seems unwilling to do anything. Very shortly, the UN's Hariri assassination prosecutor will begin to issue indictments against those who murdered the former Lebanese Prime Minister, almost surely naming senior Syrian and Hezbollah officials. Those indictments might well precipitate a renewal of the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, perhaps this time also involving Syria. President Obama is simply absent without leave on this issue. 4. On Iraq and Afghanistan, the Administration seems determined to withdraw American and coalition forces according to rigid timetables. By ignoring the actual strategic situations, these withdrawals will almost certainly lead to greater instability in both countries. This will enhance Iran's influence and the risk that Taliban and al Qaeda will resume power in Afghanistan and threaten Pakistan's democratic government. And if Pakistan, and its substantial supply of nuclear weapons, falls into the hands of radicals, the risk of nuclear terrorism in the Middle East and around the world will rise exponentially. Those in the Middle East who longed for Obama's election, and the end of U.S. “arrogance” and “imperialism,” should now reconsider. They may discover that what is truly provocative in the world is not American power, but American weakness. Weakness inspires our adversaries, and dispirits our friends, invariably to our collective disadvantage. And in that sense, Barack Obama is truly one of the most provocative Presidents in American history. John R. Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of "Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations."
