America showers Tehran, Ankara and Moscow with Christmas gifts

“We cannot protect our interests… without maintaining strong alliances and showing respect to those allies.” This was the damning indictment with which Defence Secretary James Mattis resigned last week, immediately after learning of Trump’s Syria pullout plan. Not only is this withdrawal a betrayal of Kurdish recruits who bled on the front-lines against Daesh, only to be devoured by Erdogan who is now free to dominate northern Syria.

Arab and Western allies depended on American commitments in eastern Syria as a bulwark against untrammelled Iranian expansionism. Our foes are predictable in their enmity. A trusted ally who betrays you by stabbing you in the back in a time of encroaching threats is one-hundred times more dangerous and despicable. This betrayal grows more painful after realising how cheaply it was sold for: Under mounting legal jeopardy and threats of impeachment, with Congress refusing to fund his ridiculous wall; all Trump wanted was a cheap Christmas victory to tout to his alt-right lunatic-fringe political base.

Yet the Syria withdrawal represents an infinitely larger Christmas gift to others who Trump, in his wisdom, has chosen to shower his munificence upon: Netanyahu is licking his lips in readiness to swallow the Golan region in its entirety. Putin ecstatically thanked Trump for the decision during a bizarre press conference; proclaiming: “Donald’s right” that Daesh has been defeated. We’ve yet to hear the full story from Mueller’s investigation into whether Putin purchased Trump’s unswerving loyalty through bribery, blackmail, or both.

But it was clearly worth every penny. This horrifying announcement followed a phone call during which Erdogan threatened and cajoled Trump into a withdrawal commitment; sweetening the deal by promising to buy a couple of shiny US missile batteries. However, by far the biggest beneficiary of Trump’s generosity is Iran, which will now deploy its proxies to consolidate its control over the rest of Syria, further entrenching its dominance in Baghdad, Beirut and all the way to the Mediterranean. Iran-sponsored paramilitaries from Al Hashd al Shaabi are already preeminent in the Syria-Iraq border region.

They will waste no time in linking up with associated militia forces in Syria and Hizbollah to create a continuous belt of territory under Iranian hegemony from which to go on the offensive against their regional and Western enemies. Trump’s announcement emboldens Iran’s allies in Baghdad to escalate their demands for Cabinet seats. This also adds fuel to Khamenei’s poisonous rhetoric that America can’t be trusted; having signed a flawed nuclear agreement, then ripped it up two years later. Now it’s the turn of Arab and Kurdish allies to discover that Trump’s promises count for nothing.

The loathsome Jared Kushner spent two years promising that if Arab states reduced their hostility to Israel and backed his peace efforts – even as his father-in-law tossed Jerusalem to the wolves – then America would contain Iran. GCC states even silently tolerated boorish demands about lowering oil prices and bankrolling America’s commitments. All this today counts for nothing. America has no Iran policy, excepting some clumsy sanctions which allow the Revolutionary Guard to profit from oil smuggling. America’s Middle Eastern strategy is determined by its commander-in-chief ’s whims after spending his days binge-watching Fox News; no remaining sane Administration officials to curb their leader’s worst instincts.

Trump’s retreat accelerates the countdown towards a devastating confrontation between Israel and Iran’s proxies. Netanyahu, like Trump, has been distracting the public from all-consuming corruption charges with bellicose rhetoric about a few pitiful Hizbollah border tunnels. Both sides are now locked on a path of reciprocal threats and escalation. As America retreats and Iranian proxies advance, an Israeli invasion simply becomes a matter of time. The perception of betrayal was palpable in unprecedentedly robust statements from Western officials; rebuking Trump’s assertion that Daesh had been defeated and stressing the necessity of containing Iran.

European official Carl Bildt stated: “Mattis is the remaining strong bond across the Atlantic in the Trump administration. All the others are fragile at best, or broken at worst.” Britain’s Middle East Minister Alistair Burt warned: “If allies cannot be relied upon, others are sought to take their place.” Trump’s juvenile tweets betray his dangerous ignorance: “Russia, Iran, Syria and many others are not happy about the US leaving, despite what the Fake News says, because now they will have to fight ISIS and others, who they hate, without us.” Russia and Iran never lifted a finger to confront Daesh in Syria. They bear responsibility for ISIS’s emergence, with Assad from 2011 facilitating a conveyor-belt of terrorists from Syrian jails into the jihadist movement in order to create a bogeyman with which to terrorise the West.

Assad and Iran bankrolled Daesh by trading in oil, while coordinating attacks against moderate rebel forces. Daesh is coming back strongest in the central Iraqi regions under the control of Tehran’s Iraqi proxies. Both sides share a fundamentally anti-Western agenda, while not wanting to allow autonomous and representative governments to emerge in Baghdad, Beirut and Damascus. Recent estimates of Daesh’s remaining capacity are around 30,000 fighters – hardly a spent force. These extremists thrive on instability in societies where populations have been alienated by brutal, sectarian and unjust governance.

We should commence the countdown now for Daesh reemerging as a massive regional and global threat. There have long been intense policy discussions within Western defence establishments about which entity represents the greatest threat: Iran and its allies; or Daesh and the jihadist movement? Trump has decisively solved this strategic conundrum once and for all: America will pull out its troops and allow both of these menaces to thrive and proliferate. The Middle East has been pounded by successive crises and conflicts over recent decades. But tighten your seatbelts – it’s all about to get 100 times worse!