Obama Dissatisfied With Slow Pace Of Ceding Mideast To Russia, Iran

The president believes it could have happened faster with cooperation of Congressional Republicans in legalizing Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Washington, August 22 – US President Barack Obama voiced frustration this morning at his administration’s apparent inability to hand over hegemony in the Middle East to the Ayatollahs and Vladimir Putin any faster, White House officials reported today.

Press Secretary Josh Earnest responded to press corps questioning today and noted that while the ultimate goal of abandoning US allies in the region to Iranian and Russian ambitions will still take place, the president had hoped it could happen more thoroughly by the time he leaves office in January.

“The president believes it could have happened faster, especially if he had received the cooperation of Congressional Republicans in legalizing Iran’s nuclear weapons program,” said Earnest. “As it stands, however, the retrenchment of American power in the Levant, the Persian Gulf, Egypt, and beyond is proceeding at a less-than-desirable rate, and it appears that the next administration will have to take charge of completing the dismantlement of seventy years of American successes in minimizing rivals’ influence in the Mideast.”

Earnest pointed to continuing US military involvement in Iraq and Syria, where insurgents with a goal of establishing a regime friendly to Western and democratic interests have been repeatedly admonished by Secretary of State John Kerry not to fight Russian-backed Assad-government forces. “I’d also like to call your attention to our close working relationship with Iran-backed Shiite militias in Iraq, which wouldn’t have happened under George W. Bush,” he stated. “Our original timetable called for a complete betrayal of our traditional allies and of liberal forces in the region by October of this year, but that may have been based on an assessment with unwarranted optimism. At this point, the president does not see a total abandonment of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, moderate Iraqi forces, the Kurds, and moderate Syrian rebels taking place this year.”

One bright element of the otherwise sluggish retrenchment, said the press secretary, is the gusto with which Iran and Russia have embraced the power vacuum created by the Obama administration. “The good thing is that Putin and [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei don’t need us to follow a particular timetable in order for them to seize control of what we abandon,” he explained. “They’re versatile that way. It might be a disappointment for Hezbollah to be suffering such casualties in Syria instead of launching indiscriminate missile fire at Israeli communities, but with the financial, economic, and diplomatic assistance we’ve been able to engineer for their sponsor Iran, that’s only a temporary problem.”

“Iran and Russia should be well-positioned to conduct a complete takeover the Middle East by the time the next president has to think about running for reelection,” Earnest predicted. “While that’s much farther away that we originally wanted, it does give our erstwhile allies time to do something truly destabilizing, like embarking on a regional nuclear-arms race.”