Weakened Obama Faces Demands For More Muscular Middle East Policy

Washington, DC, United States David Rosenberg - The political upheaval in the wake of U.S. mid-term elections leaves President Barack Obama in a bind, as a Republican-dominated Congress pushes him to take tougher policy stances in the Middle East while the steep losses his Democratic Party sustained weaken him as a world leader.

“I’m afraid that the Middle East and Muslim countries will misinterpret these results and think that he is even weaker now,” Eytan Gilboa, professor of political science at Israel’s Bar Ilan University, told The Media Line. “People in the Middle East don’t understand U.S. politics. They will interpret this as something that will make the president a lame duck. I don’t think that is true, he may be in a year from now, but not yet.”

After two years in office and another two to go before presidential elections, Obama has a big uncompleted agenda in the region – shepherding Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, blocking the Iranian nuclear program and ensuring Iraq doesn’t unravel after U.S. troops leave the country. The Middle East is also at the center of the U.S. efforts to control terrorism.

Congress has little impact on the Middle East and other foreign policy issues, and they didn’t figure large in the campaign, which was dominated by concerns about the economy, unemployment and government spending.

That’s why Phil Wilcox, a former U.S. consul general in Jerusalem and a researcher at the Middle East Institute, predicted Obama would retain a relatively free hand in foreign policy.

“I think that if Obama uses his power as the president he can make his own foreign policy, usually the House and the Senate follows the White House lead,” Wilcox told The Media Line.

However, other analysts said they were concerned that lawmakers would hamstring the White House with congressional investigations, legislation and delays in approving key diplomatic appointments.

A Republican-dominated Congress could approve an Iran sanctions bill that undermines Obama’s efforts to pursue negotiations with Tehran, and it might turn down nominees for ambassadors to Syria and Turkey, both of which are awaiting approvals, Marc Lynch is associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, wrote in Foreignpolicy.com. Republicans could also cut funding for the civilian mission in Iraq, he said.

Congressional pressure may force Obama to take a tougher line with Iran, to block its nuclear program; with Syria, which vies with the U.S. for influence in Lebanon; and with Turkey, which is perceived by many in Washington as drifting away from its Western orientation, analysts said.

Obama kicked off his administration’s Middle East policy with a highly publicized effort to mend relations with the Arab world and to giving more weight to negotiated solutions to problems over the military operations that characterized the policy of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

But Mehmet Yehin, an expert on Turkish-American relations at the International Strategic Research Organization, or USAK, said the president had been gradually shifting strategy even before the elections.

“Obama is a pragmatist. He talked about talking with Iran, but he wasn’t fixated on this. Two years later he has gotten a bit tougher, and I think he will get even tougher,” Yehin told The Media Line. “The Obama administration will take a tougher stance in the Middle East because of the push of the Republican Party.”

Yehin said U.S. sales of arms to Turkey, which it wants to help put down the separatist Kurdish movement, may fall victim to the new harder line as Republican lawmakers look askance at Turkey’s new, friendly attitude toward Iran and Syria. Congress may also upset bilateral relations with resolutions on the massacre of Armenians and the Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus perceived by Turkey as hostile.

Israel, on the other hand, may find that pressure from the White House to negotiate a peace agreement with the Palestinians eases off, as Obama looks toward the 2012 presidential elections, said Shmuel Sandler, a senior researcher the BESA Center for Strategic Studies near Tel Aviv.

U.S.-Israeli relations grew frosty in the first year of the Obama administration but as elections approached the White House has sought to restore the warmth in the ties. Still, in the weeks prior to the election it was pressing Israel to freeze construction in settlements built on land Palestinians want for the future state. Palestinians have conditioned talks on a freeze.

“[Obama] will try, now that the election is over, to pressure Israel more to continue the freeze on settlement construction to enable the Palestinians to reach some sort of agreement,’ Sandler told The Media Line. “But I think that his advisers will tell him that this is it, you have to start preparing for the next election, and you will need a broad coalition of minorities, blacks, Jews, blue collar. I guess that he will have to start preparing now.”

Yehin predicted that Obama would back off the Israel-Palestine issue altogether because it is unlikely to lead to a concrete achievement he can show voters in 2012.

If Obama takes a more hawkish stance on Iran, he will certainly have the backing of the new Republican Congress, Sandler said. But more importantly, he will have the quiet support of the Arab world, which fears Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and its meddling in Lebanon and Gaza.

But Gilboa warned that a weakened Obama will have trouble trying to exert muscle on Iran. “In the Middle East there is an appreciation of powerful leaders, or force, and if they perceive Obama to be weak they won’t take the U.S. seriously,” he said.

(Michael Grubb and Kalindi O’Brien contributed to this report.)