Is Donald Trump Destabilizing the Middle East?

You can’t blame everything on President Trump.

By Stephen Flurry • December 8, 2017

United States President Donald Trump’s decision on December 6 to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has enraged leaders, journalists and regular people all over the world. Nearly everyone believes that Mr. Trump’s decision destroyed the possibility of peace between Israel and the Palestinians and destabilizes the entire Middle East.

Thomas Friedman, a well-respected writer for the New York Times, argued that President Trump’s decision will have disastrous consequences. “I can’t think of anything more unnecessary and destabilizing,” he wrote (emphasis added throughout).

Really? He can’t think of anything more destabilizing? I can.

How about the Iran nuclear deal, which cleared the way for Iran to build a nuclear weapon? What about America handing Iran hundreds of billions of dollars in sanctions relief, which it has used to sponsor terrorism throughout the region? Or what about the declaration by the Obama administration just 11 months ago that a Jewish presence in the Old City of Jerusalem and at the Western Wall is illegitimate?

According to Friedman, none of that was destabilizing. None of that was unnecessary. But moving the embassy to Jerusalem, which everyone in the world knows is Israel’s true capital—something that almost every politician in Washington has pledged to do over the last 22 years—now that is destabilizing.

Friedman continued:

Iran has a richly talented population, and rich Persian culture. But instead of unleashing both … the ayatollahs are suppressing those talents at home and unleashing the power of Shiite mercenaries on Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and compelling influence that way instead.

That begs the question: Why would you give those Iranian ayatollahs hundreds of billions of dollars to spend on terrorist mercenaries? And which administration did that? They want to blame President Trump for destabilizing the Middle East, but his administration has yet to give billions of dollars to terrorists!

Near the end of his article, Friedman wrote that President Trump’s decision to move the embassy “is such a pathetic way to disguise the fact that America really is not present in the Middle East these days.”

I agree with the fact that America’s presence in the Middle East is disappearing. But how can you blame the current president alone for Middle Eastern turmoil?

President Trump has his faults, for sure. But President Barack Obama is the one who withdrew American troops from the Middle East. He was responsible for drawing a red line over Syrian chemical weapons and then erasing the line and handing Syria to the Russians. He was responsible for blowing up the region during the Arab Spring and then leaving Iran and the Islamic State to pick up the pieces. He was responsible for deciding not to defend the American compound in Benghazi—even as it was being attacked.

That’s the truth! But as Brad Macdonald wrote in his Trumpet Brief this week, nobody wants to hear the truth anymore—especially if it doesn’t align with the media’s liberal agenda.