Secretary of State John Kerry told the UN Security Council on Wednesday that “a moment of truth” had arrived in the efforts to enforce a ceasefire in Syria. He was addressing the fact that his Russian partners, on whom he and President Obama had placed so much trust and responsibility, were actively flouting the halt to fighting. The Russians and their client, the Assad regime, clearly have no intention of halting a war that they are winning. So Kerry is left making melodramatic pronouncements that no one can take seriously.
Kerry’s figure of speech was a reminder that, in fact, this moment of truth had already come and gone long ago for the administration with respect to Syria. It happened during the secret negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program when it became apparent to Tehran there was no concession Obama wouldn’t make to secure an agreement. It can be fairly said that everything that has happened in the region, both with respect to Washington’s effort to appease Iran and the Syrian catastrophe, has flowed from that moment.
The conceit of the administration’s policy was a belief that a rapprochement with Iran would end the nuclear threat and help beat back the rise of Islamists in Iraq and Syria. But an essential part of the effort involved America making its peace with the survival of Bashar Assad’s barbarous government in Damascus, whose ouster the president had repeatedly demanded. The retreat from that position—and the punting of responsibility for enforcing Obama’s empty threat about his crossing a “red line” with the use of chemical weapons to Russia—was part of a process during which the U.S. lost all leverage over Iran. The result was not only a weak agreement that will expire in a decade but also a Syrian civil war that morphed into the greatest human rights disaster of the 21st century.
That is why Kerry is left to vainly cry for cease-fires that do no good as the Russians and the Assad forces stop or bomb humanitarian convoys heading to areas not under their control.
It’s also why the Iranians are literally parading their contempt for the United States. Rather than “get right with the world”—as the president said when justifying his policy—they are continuing to build up their military, illegally testing ballistic missiles, and spouting slogans about reducing the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa to dust during an annual military parade. The banner proclaiming that message was a quote from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and was apparently meant as a riposte to the new military aid agreement between Israel and the United States that was widely interpreted as an attempt by Obama to address the way the Iran deal had endangered both the Jewish state and neighboring Arab countries.
Moreover, the supposedly moderate Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, whose election was used to justify outreach to Tehran by the administration, is apparently on the outs with Khamenei and is likely to be defeated next year.Having secured its objective by the collapse of international sanctions, the richer and more secure Islamist government no longer has the need for a moderate façade.
Nor need they or the Russians fear that the U.S. is prepared to do anything but complain impotently when Obama and Kerry’s partners flout their attempt to do something about Syria.
The president has spoken of the nuclear deal as his chief foreign policy legacy and, in a sense, that’s very true. It has made Iran even more dangerous and only postpones the moment when it will get a nuclear weapon, while also ensuring that Tehran can count on a strategic axis of allies in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. Though Obama is taking his last bow at the UN posing as a peacemaker, an essential part of Obama’s legacy will be the way his nuclear deal enabled the descent of Syria into madness and bloodshed. The path to that horror was paved by a moment of truth that passed without notice at the time but which history will remember to the president’s eternal discredit.
