In his report on US President Barack Obama, Jeffrey Goldberg refers to the testimonies of Obama’s assistants who quote him as saying that Daesh is like the character of joker in the movie Batman. In one scene of the movie, a group of men living in the city, are shown angry at the joker villain who threatens to burn the city down; so they decide to fight him.
Does the president mean that the belligerent people in Syria are the group of men defending the city or is it the whole world that has realized the danger posed by Daesh, be it Americans, Russians, Iranians and Gulf leaders? The approach is, however, correct as Daesh is the joker, which has come to destroy and has no other intentions.
However, what Obama failed to notice, and is missing in the movie analogy, is that Daesh roots go back to Iraq during the days of the US occupation. Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi led it and most of his men came to Iraq during the occupation through Syria, controlled by Iran’s ally, the Assad regime. Under the name of the Iraqi “resistance” and Al-Qaeda, they were involved in the killing of more than 4,000 Americans.
We can argue long about the genesis of Daesh but the organization is nothing but the natural product of the chaos and proxy wars that have swamped the region. Obama made a huge mistake in the beginning when he considered that Daesh was only a regional problem. However, when its danger expanded outside the region, Obama discovered that it indeed posed a global threat.
The world cannot fight against Daesh, whether it is led by Russia, the US or Europe, without paying attention to the need to control the chaos in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya.
A state of stability in the four countries cannot be reached without acknowledging the source of trouble, which is Iran. When Obama told The Atlantic magazine that the Saudis should learn how to share the region with Iran; he did not explain what he meant. It is not a bad idea if participation means agreement or cooperation. Saudi Arabia and its GCC with Jordan, Egypt and Morocco don’t have a military or expansionist approach. However, Iran has always exported chaos, backing armed groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. There are 16 similar militias in Iraq that are backed by Tehran.
The country that has to stop the violence is Iran. The US can encourage Iran to engage in a healthy regional competition through trade, investment and political cooperation. However, if Obama meant the division of the map of influence in the region into Iranian and Saudi camps, it would be a recipe for a long and serious strife.
When speaking about Libya, the president admitted how his European allies disappointed him when Gaddafi’s regime was toppled and that they are not qualified to lead any war. Whatever his vision was to them, Libya should not be a place through which the US would want to prove the failure of the Europeans. Libya was a problem for the US in the years of Gaddafi’s rule, as it was for Europe.
Washington made a mistake when it turned its back on Libya. The properties of the Libyan crisis are similar to what is happening in Syria; however it would be easier to impose a new political regime in Libya because there is no regime like Assad and there is no major international conflict there yet.
Finally, the state of disgust expressed by Obama regarding the Middle East is not mere politics. We can see that the Russians, who have dreamt since the Tsars time to gain access to warm water, are now swimming in it. All senior leaders in the region have been forced to go to Kremlin during the past two years because of the deliberate absence of the Americans.
