course from his predecessor, George W. Bush. Unfortunately, that course was based on an ill-advised retreat from America’s leadership role in a world where anti-American and anti-Western threats were intensifying. There were certainly lessons to be learned from the foreign policy mistakes of Mr. Bush. Tragically, Mr. Obama and his team learned the wrong ones. Much of the country was rightly dissatisfied with the state of the country as George W. Bush ended his tenure and Mr. Obama offered the promise of “hope and change.” But as President Obama approached the end of his second term, “hope and change” had dissolved into the ugly remnants of a sluggish and overindebted economy; record levels of inner city black-on-black violence and minority unemployment; a profoundly weakened American presence abroad; and direct threats to America and its allies from radical Islamic terrorists As disturbing as were the domestic policy failures of the Obama years, the foreign policy failures were potentially catastrophic.
The world grew far more dangerous in the years after the financial crisis than at any time since the end of the Cold War. This situation was exacerbated by a lack of resolute American leadership to counter rising threats from Iran, ISIS, Russia, and China. By late 2015, Iran was closer to achieving nuclear capability than ever before while solidifying its control over much of the Middle East after signing a one-sided (in its favor) nuclear deal with the Obama administration that was opposed by a majority of Congress and the American people. Russia occupied Ukraine and was threatening all of Eastern Europe while establishing a military presence in the Middle East for the first time to bolster Iran and Syria. China was asserting itself aggressively across the South China Sea. And ISIS was breeding home-grown terrorism throughout the West while carving a swathe of antediluvian horror across the Mideast. Make no mistake – these are not only geopolitical risks but economic and market risks.
Even those who were unhappy with the aggressive foreign policy of George W. Bush must conclude that things went from bad to worse under Mr. Obama. To some of us, Mr. Obama’s belief that mullahs in Iran, jihadists in the Mideast, and Russian and Chinese leaders would succumb to his charms was dangerously naïve and completely delusional. But in our wildest dreams, even Mr. Obama’s sharpest critic could not have imagined that this president would inflict as much damage on American interests as he has done during his time in the White House.
As his administration advanced, Mr. Obama managed foreign policy based on the assumption that what he regards as his superior intellect, knowledge, and judgment (for which, by the way, there is not a scintilla of objective evidence) superseded irrefutable and mounting evidence that his policies were producing results at odds with his own statements and the best interests of the American people. The worse the evidence became, the more he pursued the same damaging policies (an approach he shared with the nation’s central bankers). We need only look at the facts on the ground to see the ruins of Mr. Obama’s arrogant misconceptions.
Iran
In what will likely serve as his gravest foreign policy failure (unfortunately it is difficult to choose among so many disasters), the Obama administration entered a deal that will provide Iran with the opportunity to gain fast-track nuclear capability while freeing the country from crippling economic sanctions. The National Military Strategy of the United States is a report issued by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Secretary of Defense every year outlining the strategic aims of the armed services. The 2015 report, which was delivered in June 2015, described Iran as follows: “[Iran] is pursuing nuclear and missile delivery technologies despite repeated United Nations Security Council resolutions demanding that it cease such efforts. It is a state-sponsor of terrorism that has undermined stability in many nations, including Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Iran’s actions have destabilized the region and brought misery to countless people while denying the Iranian people the prospect of a prosperous future.”34 Despite this warning from its highest ranking military official, the Obama administration agreed to a nuclear deal that gives the country a largely free path to nuclear capability after 15 years without limiting its support of terrorism or threats against Israel and the U.S.
The administration’s desperation for a deal despite Iran’s continued support for global terrorism and aggression in the Middle East would lead one to believe that the United States rather than Iran was in the weaker negotiating position. Yet as Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment, wrote during the negotiations: “Iran is the one hemorrhaging hundreds of billions of dollars due to sanctions, tens of billions because of fallen oil prices and billions sustaining the Assad regime in Syria…And it’s Ali Khamenei [Iran’s Supreme Leader], not [U.S. Secretary of State] John Kerry, who presides over a population desperate to see sanctions relief.”35 With the Iranian currency plunging, inflation skyrocketing and the economy shrinking under the pressure of international sanctions, and with a bipartisan Congress pushing to further tighten the sanctions to increase the pressure on Iran in early 2015, Mr. Obama loosened the sanctions and injected billions of dollars into the Iranian economy while conceding in advance Iran’s right to enrich uranium.
Then, as the June 30, 2015, deadline approached (and passed), Mr. Obama and Mr. Kerry dismissed as “rhetoric” repeated incendiary statements by Mr. Khamenei and a vote by the Iranian Parliament rejecting demands that any agreement provide for inspections of Iran’s military facilities and immediate sanctions relief. In other words, while Iran was publicly stating that it had no intention of complying with any agreement (interspersed with calls of “Death to America” and for the destruction of Israel), Mr. Obama and Mr. Kerry continued to negotiate in good faith. Two weeks later, when a final agreement was reached, it allowed Iran to produce as much nuclear fuel as it wishes after 15 years, to limit inspections of its military facilities, to retain a significant number of its centrifuges, and to inspect its own Parchin nuclear site through a secret side deal with the International Atomic Energy Agency that was not disclosed to Congress (in violation of the law).
The agreement did not prevent Iran from entering new weapons deals with Russia, which it did before the ink was even dry on the agreement, or stop supporting terrorism. Iran was granted roughly $150 billion of sanctions relief that even the Obama administration admitted would be used in part to support Iran’s proxies Hamas and Hezbollah in their attacks against Israel. Reports indicated that Hezbollah had 120,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israel at the time the Iran deal was going to be signed by Mr. Obama, but that was apparently an insufficient threat to dissuade the president from moving forward from funding a group sworn to wipe America’s ally and the only democracy in the Middle East off the face of the earth.
The Iran deal was opposed by large majorities of both the Senate and the House of Representatives. While the Obama administration blocked any formal vote in the Senate (an act of epic moral and political cowardice), only 42 of 100 senators supported the deal. On September 11, 2015, the House of Representatives held a formal vote to approve the deal that was defeated by an overwhelming 269–162 majority. Numerous public opinion polls showed that an overwhelming majority of the American people objected to the deal. Nonetheless, Mr. Obama decided he knew better and moved ahead. It is impossible to recall another time in American history when a president so openly flouted the opinions of a majority of Congress, the country’s citizens, and its closest allies to appease a sworn enemy.
As Congress was registering its disapproval of the deal, Iran’s Supreme Leader was telling the world that Israel would not exist in 25 years, another in a series of inflammatory speeches repudiating any claims by the Obama administration that the nuclear deal would create a rapprochement between Iran and the West. Mr. Obama, of course, claimed that he was too sophisticated to believe such threats. The world also learned the same week that Congress rejected the deal that Russia had been secretly mounting a major military build-up in Syria to back the Iranian puppet regime of Bashar al-Assad, leaving the Obama administration scrambling to explain away another foreign policy debacle of its own making. And when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued its final report on Iran’s nuclear program as part of the deal in late 2015, it reported that Iran had not cooperated and had withheld key information required by the agreement.
The National Military Strategy of the United States, June 2015, 2.
Thomas Friedman, “A Good Bad Deal,”
