U.S. clout in the Middle East has been shrinking now to its lowest point since the end of the Cold War when the U.S. had emerged as the only global player in the region: The “peace process” is all but dead. The radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr’s movement has joined an Iran-oriented Iraqi government. The new Lebanese Prime Minister was selected by Hizbollah. Turkey is pursuing a foreign policy independent of Washington and Iran is continuing to flex its muscle in the Levant and the Persian Gulf.
The political crisis in Egypt – and the no-win policy choices available now to Washington — demonstrates the dramatic erosion in U.S. influence there. The Mubaraks of the Middle East may still be able to count on the support of their militaries and Mukhabarts (secret services). But having lost their legitimacy as national leaders they are threatened by the eruption of a political volcano — masses of young angry people. Their lowest common political denominator that brings them together is the hostility towards the U.S. which had helped keep their reviled rulers in power for so many years, and to Israel, which is perceived to be America’s partner in crime and the oppressor of their brothers and sisters in Palestine.
If Obama decides to save the American client in Cairo by giving Mubarak a yellow light to rescue his regime, he will only guarantee that the U.S. will become the main target for the demonstrators in Egypt and other Arab countries, igniting more anti-American violence and raising the costs of U.S. intervention in the region to the stratosphere.
But if Obama allows Mubarak to fall – even if that takes the form of a peaceful transition of power – the U.S. would not be able to control the outcome of the revolutionary change in Cairo that even under the best-case-scenario is bound to strengthen the power of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups.
