Obama’s statements that the deaf Arabs must hear

For those who still have not understood that the US is an unreliable ally that cannot be trusted, I refer them to the long report published by the American magazine The Atlantic last week. The report was written by Jeffery Goldberg and is titled “The Obama Doctrine” on the topic of foreign policy. It is based on a number of discussions and interviews between Goldberg and President Barack Obama, as well as a number of his staff and national security affairs advisors, as well as senior officials in countries allied with the US, such as Britain and France.

In this report, we find a shocking level of frankness in Obama’s statements, as well as the statements of his aides, which, at the very least, can be described as provocative, if not offensive, when talking about America’s closest Arab “allies”, particular Saudi Arabia and about asking them to “share the region” with Iran. Obama does not only stop at this request, he also justifies the crime of annihilating the Syrian people at the hands of their regime and its Russian and Iranian allies and supporters with the excuse that the US cannot stop this without putting large troops on the ground. Of course, Obama does not mention here that it is his administration that continues to “veto” the regional forces’ efforts in the region to arm the Syrian rebels with qualitative weapons, specifically ground-air missiles in order to confront the regime’s warplanes’ attacks that impart death and destruction on the Syrians, even before Russia intervened with its barbaric airstrikes reminiscent of its attack on the Chechen capital city of Grozny in the 1990s.

In the report, Obama blames the intensified “Muslim fury”, as he calls it, on friends of the US, specifically Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states. The report quotes a recent conversation between Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and Obama in which the latter says that Saudi Arabia and Gulf countries funnelled money, and large numbers of imams and teachers, into Indonesia in the 1990s and heavily funded Wahhabist madrassas, seminaries that teach the fundamentalist version of Islam favoured by the Saudi ruling family. At that point, Turnball asked: “Aren’t the Saudis your friends?” and Obama replied, “It’s complicated.” The report also quotes White House officials saying that Obama’s advisors have repeatedly reminded visitors in the National Security Council that the large majority of 9/11 hijackers were not Iranian, but Saudi and criticise the version of Islam adopted by Saudi Arabia.

In this context, Obama also makes sure to show “superiority” over the Arabs and Muslims when he decides that Islam must reconcile itself to modernity and undergo some of the reforms that changed Christianity. While I admit that there are structural problems in the approaches of many to Islam, jurisprudentially, doctrinally, intellectually and socially nowadays, this should not push us to overlook the fact that this is only one part of a complicated problem. Although the greatness and urgent need to address this flaw is apparent, it is fuelled by the oppression and authoritarian backwardness in the “Islamic world” as well as feeding on the foreign aggression against it.

Referring to the approach of some Arab countries, which built their defence strategy on the trust of the American ally and their obligations towards it, in this report Obama made statements that make even the hardest of hearing hear that counting on this is more of a delusion than fact. He notes that he has reached a number of conclusions regarding the region, which are as follows: first, the Middle East is no longer very important for the American interests. Secondly, although there is some importance to the Middle East for America, there is very little that the American president can do to make it a better place. Thirdly, any American effort to resolve the problems in the Middle East will inevitably lead to wars that will lead to the death of the Americans and to weakening the credibility and strength of America. Based on this, his fourth conclusion is that the world cannot bear a decline in America’s power.

Due to the fact that the Middle East is no longer that important, or it is no longer a pressing American priority, Obama calls on the Saudis and Arabs to agree to share the region with Iran. He says: “The competition between the Saudis and the Iranians – which has helped to feed proxy wars and chaos in Syria and Iraq and Yemen – requires us to say to our friends as well as to the Iranians that they need to find an effective way to share the neighbourhood and institute some sort of cold peace.” This call to “share” the Middle East with Iran must sound warning bells in all of the Arab capitals, because Obama is not simply talking about Iran’s right to naturally exist within its regional surroundings and to respect its interests and size. Instead, he believes, based on his statements, that Syria, Iraq, Yemen and of course Lebanon are all pieces of the “cake” that must be shared with Iran. In other words, according to Obama’s logic, we Arabs must accept Iran as a partner that will compete with us over our regional geography and strategic depth.

In order for Obama to stress the previous statement that America’s Arab “allies” are mistaken in relying on it, he says, in all clarity: “An approach that said to our friends ‘You are right, Iran is the source of all problems, and we will support you in dealing with Iran’ would essentially mean that as these sectarian conflicts continue to rage and our Gulf partners, our traditional friends, do not have the ability to put out the flames on their own or decisively win on their own, and would mean that we have to start coming in and using our military power to settle scores. And that would be in the interest neither of the United States nor of the Middle East.”

Has the message sunk in? To begin with, it seems that the Saudis have received the message and their response was made through Prince Turki Al-Faisal, the former ambassador to the US, in an article in the Saudi English newspaper Arab News. In his article, Al-Faisal stressed that Saudi Arabia is not a burden on the US and reminded Obama of the historical America-Saud partnership, as well as the services his country provided to the US. This response is not enough and it will not be able to revive the bilateral “allied” relations between the two sides. The real Saudi response should be greater than this and on a larger scale, especially since Saudi Arabia has been under great American pressure for about a year, not only since Obama made his recent remarks about “sharing” power with Iran in the Arab world. The American demands made to Riyadh to stop “Operation Decisive Storm” in Yemen and accept the Houthis, who are an Iranian arm, are a key part of the political equation, and the pressure to continue providing aid to the Lebanese state and army, which are under the authority of Hezbollah are further proof of this. The same can be said about the American efforts to resolve the conflict in Syria by means of a deal with Russia and Iran and by neutralising the US’s traditional allies, specifically Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Some may argue that Obama’s approaches will go with him and that those he once called “our so-called allies in the Middle East” will regain their status as allies in light of a new administration, especially if it is a republican administration. However these are wishes that will remain pending hopes, and we must not deal with matters of such magnitude and danger with such laxity. The republicans and democrats do not differ in their fierceness regarding their view of the Arabs, especially their view of Saudi Arabians. It is enough here to refer to the left-wing electoral programme of Bermie Sanders, the democratic candidate who hopes to represent his party in the presidential elections at the end of the year.

Relying on the US is “like a mirage in the desert, which the thirsty supposes to be water – until, when he approaches it, he finds that it was nothing” (Surat Al-Nur- verse 39). Will the Arabs acknowledge this and launch a campaign for internal interests amongst themselves and try to rebuild a joint Arab security system before the Zionist and Iranian giants eat up the region? It is clear that the logic of the balance of power that the Americans want to adopt in our region between the rivalling forces is based on keeping the reins of power and control in their hands, even given their relative distance from the region, and it does not involve us Arabs or the Turks, the president of which, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Obama describes in the report as “a failure and authoritarian”.

Translated from Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, 18 March 2016.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.