Obama comes face to face with his Middle East muddle

American Interest:

President Obama met with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah on Friday to discuss U.S. and Saudi policy towards Syria and Iran. It’s hard to know exactly what was said and done in the room where the 90 year old Saudi monarch, using an oxygen tube, spoke to a U.S. president whose foreign policy lately has seemed to be on life support. But based on the reports we’ve gotten about the meeting so far a few key things do seem to be happening. WSJ:

U.S. officials said after the meeting that the administration was willing to increase the level of assistance it supplies to Syrian rebels, a main request of the Saudis, who have place a high priority on ousting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad

We’ve speculated in the past that the U.S. and Saudis have been dancing around each otheron Syria. The Saudis appeared willing to more carefully control where their aid to Syria rebel groups went. In return, the U.S. offered modest increases in our own backing for Assad’s enemies. That now seems to be underway, and we will be watching closely to see whether anything changes as a result in that tragic, stalemated war.

But it’s not a simple pivot for Obama to make. As the Journal notes in quoting political analyst Khaled Al Dekhayel:

“I think [Obama] is using Syria as a bargaining chip with the Iranians,” he said. “But at the same time he has to satisfy the Saudis and other allies in Turkey and Jordan.

That’s the rub. The Obama administration appears to be retreating from the position that it can carry out nuclear negotiations with Iran independent of the geopolitical facts on the ground. Specifically, the question of Syria can’t be excluded from American negotiations with Iran. Obama wants a nuclear agreement with Iran. And in that country, a nuclear agreement with the U.S. that allows Iran to control Syria might appeal to otherwise skeptical hard liners.

Unfortunately for Obama, a deal like that would look like the ultimate U.S. betrayal to both the Israelis and the Saudis. One or even both of these countries might go to war before letting that happen. Certainly the Saudis would dump all the weapons they could buy into the hands of any Islamic groups ready to fight the hated Shia heretics and Persian invaders.

But if Iran can neither keep its nuclear program nor maintain Assad in power, it will have to give up both the dream of becoming a nuclear power and the dream of becoming the dominant regional power in the Middle East. A lot of U.S. administration policy looks like an attempt to avoid a final choice among these scenarios: Obama wants to build a relationship with Iran without losing current U.S. allies in the region.
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Obama is not very good at playing conventional chess, much less a three dimensional variety.   He is trying to get something that Iran has not been willing to part with in both the nuclear negotiations and the deal with Syria.  This is at a time when Iran may have a new ally in Russia which is joining it in  rogue conduct.  Obama just not look that smart these days.