Waning American influence in the Middle East

Here is a nice article discussing waning American role in the Middle East. Regardless of your attitudes to the Arab-Israeli conflict and the George Bush foreign policy, anyone who is not blind to the facts would acknowledge that the decline of the American influence is due to the inefficient management of the foreign policy by Washington in the past two and a half years.

The quoted article points out the shocking truth - even Israel can afford to care about the US policy much less than it used to:
"In addition, from the Israeli government’s perspective the United States is a less useful ally in the new Middle East that is emerging, analysts say.
“Why does the U.S. have less influence with Israel right now? In part because the U.S. has less influence with the Arabs,” said Robert Malley, a special assistant to President Clinton on the Arab-Israeli conflict."

The article however focuses on teh Arab-Israeli issue, whereas the scope of the US failures in the Middle East is much broader. These include:
1. Alienating Israel and Israelis by consistently picking fights with the Israeli prime minister and reneging on the promises of the previous US administrations. In particular, it includes Obama's overexaggerated focus on the settlements, his insistence on the "1967 borders" (1949 armstice lines), and the policy of linkage (nowadays quietly forgotten), which made Israel responsible for all of the Middle East problems.

2. Failure to exert any preassure on the Palestinians, which allowed their leaders to disregard the US opinion altogether.

3. Failure to influence Turkey and prevent the break of the diplomatic relations between Turkey and Israel, both of which are US allies.

4. Failure to stop Iran nuclear program. The biggest achievement in this field were weak sunctions adopted by the UN Security Council. The recent reports suggest that Iran might have past the "point of no return" in its progress toward nuclear weapon, and, if necessary, can produce such a weapon within a few weeks.

5. Failure to support anti-Ahmadinejad protests that followed the rigged election in Iran.

6. Failure to oppose transition of power in Lebanon from the democratic government to Hezbollah, and failure to promote the international court indictment against the Hezbollah members indicted over the asassination of the Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri.

7. The multiple failures to take a clear and strong position during the Arab spring:
 a) the US attitude to the Egyptian protests went through a full 180 degrees turn;
 b) US allowed brutal suppression of the protests in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia;
 c) US "led from behind" in Libya, calmly watching the mutual slaughter, showing no indication that it wants  Gaddafi gone till the very last moment, and ridiculously refusing to call the events in Libya a "war";
 d) no action in respect to the continuing mass murder in Syria, which has already claimed thousands of human lives.