The Obama Era opened with his Cairo speech, in which he embraced Muslims in general and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular. He planned to depose the secular dictators and replace them with the Muslim Brotherhood. Thus Gadhafi, Mubarak and Assad were marked for removal in that order. The EU was on board. After supporting the takeover of Egypt by the Muslim Brotherhood headed by Mohamed Morsi, he backed the takeover of Syria by the Muslim Brotherhood in collaboration with the newly Islamist Turkey, headed by Recep Tayyid Erdogan, extolling him as his best friend. Simultaneously, beginning in 2009, he reached out to Iran.  He wanted to embrace it as an ally rather than to designate it as an enemy. His efforts culminated in the disastrous Iran Deal, which provided a tail wind to Iran’s hegemonic ambitions. He overlooked the fact that Iran was a long standing ally of Assad’s and was fighting to resist his removal, which was Obama’s stated...(Read Full Article)