There are some mistakes for which the world never seems to stop paying.
When the United States chose to let Syria slide into chaos while simultaneously seeking to end the isolation of Iran with a nuclear deal, President Barack Obama thought he was avoiding trouble and giving Iran a chance to “get right with the world.”
But it turns out those blunders are still paying dividends for Iran, creating new dangers in the Middle East and threatening the hopes of the Trump administration. That was made clear this week when Yehya al-Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, announced in Gaza that the terror group had reconciled with Iran.
Prior to the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, Iran was Hamas’ main source of money and weapons and helped the terror group transform Gaza into a fortress bristling with rockets and missiles that rained terror on Israeli towns and cities.
But the alliance between the two broke up during the Syrian war as Iran backed the Assad regime and Hamas backed Sunni rebels.
Experts told us that the split was an inevitable result of the differences between the Sunnis of Hamas and Iranian Shiites. But while that may be a common divide in the Muslim world, it took a US president with the vanity to believe his illusions were more important than the facts on the ground — Obama — to bring them back together.
Though Obama repeatedly called for Bashar al-Assad’s ouster, he did nothing to aid those trying to make it a reality, especially when a little help would have gone a long way. He ultimately stood by as Russia and Iran intervened to save Assad.
By backing down on his “red line” warning on the use of chemical weapons and then punting responsibility for that issue to Russia (which allowed Assad to continue using them), Obama also ensured that Syria would become a land bridge between Tehran and its Hezbollah auxiliaries in Lebanon.
Obama thought intervention would have been an obstacle to his hopes for a rapprochement with Tehran. Nor did he let Iran’s refusal to give up its nuclear program stop his push for a deal that vastly enriched the regime while only delaying its quest for a nuclear weapon. READ MORE
