US President Barack Obama wound up his tour of the Middle East yesterday with a visit to the ruins of Petra in Jordan, which he described as “spectacular”. But how spectacular was his own performance in the region?
By not promising too much before he started, Obama had kept hopes of near-miraculous developments to minimum.
But he managed, at the end of his four-day trip, to reaffirm old alliances, express support, and also showcase the vision of the United States for the region’s future.
Obama helped to broker the restoration of ties between Israel and Turkey, in a move that coaxed an apology out of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for Turkish deaths in a raid on a Gaza flotilla.
He then went on to praise Israel as an ancient Jewish homeland, a haven from persecution, empathising with his hosts’ sense of threatened isolation and their pride in a new hi-tech industry. Was this perhaps a bid to calm Israeli fears after his 2009 speech praising the Muslim world in Cairo?
Terming the US-Israeli alliance as “eternal”, he also appealed to the Israeli leadership to make peace with Palestinians as it was the only way to ensure the Jewish state’s survival. Obama also spoke up for the right to Palestinian statehood, but it was perceivably more tempered than the praise for Israel. There was no call from the US leader for Israel to stop settlement-building as a pre-condition to resume peace talks, an omission that is unlikely to have earned him many fans on the Palestinian side.
Even so, by spending time with the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Obama raised the leader’s profile relative to that of rival Hamas.
Stating his aim at defusing tensions with Iran over its nuclear ambitions through diplomacy, Obama then focused on the situation in Syria. He pledged $200mn to Jordan this year, as it cares for more than 450,000 Syrian refugees. Earlier, he warned of the dangers of the spreading conflict in Syria, saying the country could develop as a hub for terrorism if the violence was not contained soon. Again, he stopped short of promising any concrete American role in stabilising the situation in Syria.
Obama was visiting the Middle East for the first time since 2009. Then, Egypt was America’s staunchest ally in the region. Now, after the Arab Spring brought down Hosni Mubarak, Obama was silent on Egypt, even as Jordan’s King Abdullah II warned that the West has become naïve about the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood, the most dominant political winner so far since decades-long dictatorships were topped by popular uprisings.
At the most, what this short trip would have achieved for the US president would be to preserve his legacy as the “leader who tried” in the second term.
While Obama is a past master in oratory, the turmoil in the Middle East may need more than the salve of pretty speeches.