Obama’s Middle East Mess

During a press conference after the Nuclear Security Summit earlier this month, President Obama criticized Donald Trump’s knowledge of foreign policy — implying a President Trump could put our and our allies’ security at risk.

But President Obama was in Saudi Arabia earlier this week doing damage control and making excuses to America’s Gulf allies for his own legacy of foreign policy failure.

Obama spent hours in private discussion with King Salman on Wednesday, and Thursday attended a summit with the leaders of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, where among other things he likely tried to offer explanation as to why he referred to the Gulf states as “free riders” who are unwilling “to put any skin in the game” against ISIS.

Relations with the Saudis and other Gulf states have become so strained under Obama that when he arrived in Riyadh King Salman was not there to greet him — his presence is usually customary with the Kingdom’s close, respected allies. Instead, Salman sent the governor of Mecca to meet Obama.

“I give Mr. Obama D for his handling of U.S. GCC relationship and hold him fully responsible for the current chill in the strategic partnership,” tweeted Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a United Arab Emirates political science professor.

U.S. relations with the Gulf states have become greatly strained under the Obama administration — largely due to Obama’s courting of the Iranian regime. Indeed, Obama’s attempts to soften tensions between the U.S. and Iran, done for domestic political reasons, was fundamentally short-sighted given the political realities of the region.

While Obama’s outreach to Iran may have been welcomed by some Americans, it was viewed with concern by the Sunni, oil-producing Gulf states and Israel — both highly distrustful of the radical Shia Iranian regime. Indeed, the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran is both the Saudis’ and Israelis’ worst nightmare.

“Our Islamic education taught us good manners, but the lesson from the King’s cold shoulder is one: If you decide to become a Shia slave, you should be taught a lesson,” tweeted a Saudi citizen named Doheim.

Straining our Gulf alliances at the expense of courting Iran is just the top of Obama’s litany of failures in the Middle East. The Obama administration’s poor foreign policy decisions have left a wake of devastation in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and of course Syria. The damage done to the U.S.-Saudi alliance may be irreparable.

“The U.S. will stay a friend, a strategic ally. But it won’t be the only one,” Ibrahim al-Marie, a Saudi security analyst, told The Wall Street Journal. “We can’t put our national security in their hands.”

It’s hardly surprising then that King Salman felt Obama’s arrival didn’t warrant a royal reception. Indeed, images of a lonely Obama landing in countries in which he is not particularly welcome may be his foreign policy’s greatest legacy.

King Salman’s snub came roughly a month Raul Castro’s refusal to welcome Obama in Cuba, and was followed the next day by Obama’s ignominious arrival in London, in the dead of night, to no official welcome whatsoever.