President Trump received a hero’s welcome first in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, his inaugural stop on his first foreign tour, and then in Israel, where he became the first sitting United States president to visit the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site. Before he uttered his first word, Trump’s visit was already a success by sheer virtue of him not being President Barack Obama.
It may be hard for U.S.-based partisans and critics of Trump to understand, but Obama’s greatest legacy in the Middle East is the sheer hatred which he engenders among traditional U.S. allies. The reasons largely revolve around Iran and Islamism.
First, Iran: When faced with complaints about Iranian malfeasance on everything from human rights to terrorism to support for regional insurgencies, Obama and his surrogates repeatedly shrugged, explained that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was a limited goal, and that to attempt a grand bargain would have undercut the possibility of agreement. They insisted that the U.S. continued to pressure Iran about its misbehavior, and so Arab allies and Israel had no basis to complain.
Both Arabs and Israelis know better. According to Arab security officials, under Obama, the U.S. Navy curtailed its interdiction efforts—even when Arab states or Israel provided specific, actionable intelligence—because to intercept Iranian arm supplies to the Houthi rebels in Yemen might undercut Obama’s desire for a deal. In effect, while negotiations were ongoing, Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry allowed Iranian leaders to act with impunity. Throw into the mix the massive infusion of cash which the deal provided the Iranian military, and regional states say Obama subsidized the aggression they now face.
As for the deal itself, no one outside Washington and New York believes the hype: Rather than constrain Iran’s nuclear program, it kneecapped counter-proliferation. Not only did the agreement dilute the standard to which the International Atomic Energy Agency held South Africa and Libya when they abandoned their nuclear weapons programs, but it allowed Iran to maintain more centrifuges than Pakistan operated when that state built its nuclear arsenal. As for the much-vaunted inspections? Not only do they seldom occur, but whatever work Iran wants to keep secret it can simply conduct in North Korea.
As great a thorn as the Iranian nuclear deal has been, Obama’s approach to political Islamism has been just as much a grievance: After years of demanding Arab states crack down on terror groups and terror finance, many governments in the region did so by targeting the Muslim Brotherhood. Not only did states like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates receive no support for their actions, but they feel Obama purposely sought to undercut them by continuing to deal with groups which might whisper pleasantries in English into Kerry’s ear, all the while inciting their supporters to violence.
Indeed, few in the region have forgotten that, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry acted as a messenger boy for Hamas when he delivered their communications to the U.S. State Department. It got worse: As secretary of state, Kerry went so far as to incorporate complaints levelled against friendly regimes in the annual human rights report even though the supporting materials originated with an organization founded by an Al Qaeda financier.
Together, the chief complaint regional leaders have is not that Obama and Kerry would negotiate with Tehran or engage with Islamists but rather that they would ignore the advice and concerns of partners while doing so. There is no need for Wikileaks to reveal secrets—regional leaders openly complain to U.S. visitors regardless of a political party about the arrogance, naiveté, and tone deafness of Obama, Kerry, and former National Security Advisor Susan Rice.
What does this mean for Trump? His trip may be a triumph, but he shouldn’t confuse pageantry with promise. Few marriages fall apart on their wedding night; it’s what comes next that matters. But while the warm embrace of world leaders may leave Trump feeling high, he should recognize the celebrations are less about who he is than who he is not.
The problem then becomes the next step: Multibillion dollars arms sales are no substitute for strategy. Nor is he original for having lofty rhetoric about an Arab version of NATO. Recognizing that ideology and not only grievance motivates terrorism is a good first step, but Trump should not make the mistake of his predecessors and confuse rhetoric with reality.
Trump’s victory tour may feel good, but once the shadow of Obama becomes a more distant memory, policymakers in the White House, Riyadh, and Jerusalem will need to recognize that substance must trump theatrics.
It’s nice to have a good first date, but the second and third date matter just as much.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.
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