By Charles Krauthammer
f
you’re going to engage in a foreign policy capitulation, might as well do it
when everyone is getting tanked and otherwise occupied. Say, around New Year’s
Eve.
Here’s the story. In
October, Iran test-fires a nuclear-capable ballistic missile in brazen
violation of a Security Council resolution explicitly
prohibiting such launches. President Obama does nothing. One month later, Iran does it again. The administration makes a
few gestures at the U.N. Then nothing. Then finally, on Dec. 30, the White
House announces a few sanctions.
They
are weak, aimed mostly at individuals and designed essentially for show.
Amazingly, even that proves too much. By 10 p.m. that night, the administration caves. The White House
sends out an email saying that sanctions are off — and the Iranian president orders the military to
expedite the missile program.
Is there any red line
left? First, the Syrian chemical weapons. Then the administration
insistence that there would be no nuclear deal unless Iran accounted for its
past nuclear activities. (It didn’t.) And unless Iran permitted inspection of
its Parchin nuclear testing facility.
(It was allowed self-inspection and declared itself clean.) And now, illegal
ballistic missiles.
The premise of the
nuclear deal was that it would constrain Iranian actions. It’s had precisely
the opposite effect. It has deterred us from offering even the mildest pushback
to any Iranian violations lest Iran walk away and leave Obama legacy-less.
Just two weeks ago, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards
conducted live-fire exercises near the Strait of Hormuz. It gave nearby U.S.
vessels exactly 23 seconds of warning. One rocket was launched 1,500 yards
from the USS Harry S. Truman.
Obama’s response?
None.
The Gulf Arabs —
rich, weak and, since FDR, dependent on America for security — are bewildered.
They’re still reeling from the nuclear deal, which Obama declared would be
unaffected by Iranian misbehavior elsewhere. The result was to assure Tehran
that it would pay no price for its aggression in Syria and Yemen, subversion in
Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, and support for terrorism.
Obama
seems not to understand that disconnecting the nuclear issue gave the mullahs
license to hunt in the region. For the Saudis, however, it’s not just
blundering but betrayal. From the very beginning, they’ve seen Obama tilting toward Tehran as
he fancies himself Nixon in China, turning Iran into a strategic partner in
managing the Middle East.
This is even scarier
because it is delusional. If anything, Obama’s openhanded appeasement has
encouraged Iran’s regional adventurism and intense anti-Americanism.
The Saudis, sensing
abandonment, are near panic. Hence the reckless execution of
the firebrand Shiite insurrectionist, Sheik Nimr Baqr al-Nimr, that has brought
the region to a boil. Iranians torched the Saudi Embassy. The Saudis led other
Sunni states in breaking relations with Tehran.
The Saudis feel
surrounded, and it’s not paranoia. To their north, Iran dominates a Shiite
crescent stretching from Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to the Mediterranean. To the
Saudi south, Iran has been arming Yemen’s Houthi rebels since at least 2009. The fighting has spilled
over the border into Saudi Arabia.
The danger is rising.
For years, Iran has been supporting anti-regime agitation among Saudi Arabia’s
minority Shiites. The Persian Gulf is Iran’s ultimate prize. The fall of the
House of Saud would make Iran the undisputed regional hegemon and an emerging
global power.
For the United
States, that would be the greatest geopolitical setback since China fell to
communism in 1949. Yet Obama seems oblivious. Worse, he appears inert in the
face of the three great challenges to the post-Cold War American order. Iran is
only the most glaring. China is challenging the status quo in the South China
Sea, just last week landing its first aircraft on
an artificial island hundreds of miles beyond the Chinese coast. We deny
China’s claim and declare these to be international waters, yet last month we meekly apologized when
a B-52 overflew one of the islands. We said it was inadvertent.
The
world sees and takes note. As it does our response to the other great U.S.
adversary — Russia. What’s happened to Obama’s vaunted “isolation” of Russia
for its annexation of Crimea and assault on the post-Cold War European
settlement? Gone. Evaporated. John Kerry plays lapdog to Sergei Lavrov. Obama meets openly with Vladimir Putin in Turkey, then
in Paris. And is now practically begging him to join our side in Syria.
There is no price for
defying Pax Americana — not even trivial sanctions on Iranian missile-enablers.
Our enemies know it. Our allies see it — and sense they’re on their own, and
may not survive.
