Obama's Middle East Policy Favoring Iran Creates Violence

This weekend, while the world was watching the modern Greek tragedy unfold and keeping an ear tuned to Vienna for news about the Iran nuclear negotiations, there were several disturbingly 'ordinary everyday' occurrences in the Middle East. ~~~~~ A suicide car bomb killed 33 people and wounded 10 in southeastern Afghanistan. The attack took place close to a US base on Sunday, according to Afghan police -- close to a checkpoint on the outskirts of the city of Khost where several cars had been stopped, Khost police chief Faizullah Ghairat said. The US military said none of its personnel were injured. The UN has reported that most of the casualties were civilians and 12 were children. The base at Camp Chapman, once used by the CIA to help oversee strikes against Taliban and al-Qaida targets, suffered one of the worst attacks in CIA history in late 2009, when seven intelligence officers were killed by an al-Qaida operative that Americans thought had been"de-radicalized." ~~~~~ Four people were killed and 15 wounded when a rocket hit a residential district in the eastern Libyan port city of Benghazi on Sunday, medics reported. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack. But, ISIS militants have claimed that they launched previous rocket attacks in Benghazi, where army forces and armed local militias have been fighting Islamist groups for more than a year. The rocket attack on the busy street came just hours after a jet attack west of Benghazi hit a bulldozer loaded with ammunition, according to Nasser al-Hasi, an air force spokesman. Benghazi fighting is part of the war raging in Libya between rebel groups who helped topple Muammar Qaddafi in 2011 and now back rival governments. Both sides command coalitions of former anti-Qaddafi rebels calling themselves armies, which were re-organized along political, regional and tribal lines after Qaddafi was overthrown and killed. ~~~~~ A section of the wall of the ancient citadel in Aleppo was destroyed on Sunday by an explosion in a tunnel under the city, according to a Reuters report. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the damage occurred when government forces blew up a tunnel dug by insurgents under the city, while the state news agency said the tunnel was blown up by rebels. A section of the wall was shown turned to rubble in footage posted online by Halab News Network, an activist outlet. The Ancient City of Aleppo has been on the UNESCO list of World Heritage sites in danger since 2013. Aleppo was Syria's largest city before the civil war began. It is now divided into areas controlled by the al-Assad government and areas controlled by insurgents who are battling to topple President al-Assad. ~~~~~ Fighting near the southern Yemeni city of Aden killed 35 people on Sunday, the government in exile said. The fighting is a breach of a temporary humanitarian truce brokered by the UN. A week-long truce was supposed to start on Saturday to allow aid deliveries to Yemen's 21 million people who have been affected by the civil war, but there was no sign of any abatement in the bombing. At least 10 people were also killed in air strikes overnight into Sunday across Yemen, according to medical sources. A coalition of Arab states has been bombarding the Iranian-allied Houthi rebel movement - Yemen's dominant military force - since late March in an effort to reinstate President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who has fled to exile in Riyadh. The coalition, in coordination with forces loyal to Hadi, on Sunday captured Ras Amran, killing 30 Houthi fighters and five coalition fighters. Reuters reported that air strikes on the Yemeni capital Sanaa had resumed on Sunday morning. In a separate incident, Houthi fighters and allied units in Yemen's factionalized army attacked a water storage tank in the central Aden neighborhood of Crater, residents said. ~~~~~ Car bombs and suicide attacks targeting shiite Moslem districts of Baghdad killed 35 people on Sunday, one of the heaviest recent tolls in the Iraqi capital, which has faced a wave of bombings by ISIS militants. The deadliest attack was in the northern Shaab neighborhood, where a car bomb followed by a suicide blast killed 19 people, according to security and medical sources. The car exploded near a crowded market and, as police and bystanders gathered, an attacker detonated explosives strapped to his body. In Bunouk district in Baghdad's northeast, a car bomb killed nine people, sources said. Security forces said they were sweeping areas nearby, some with sniffer dogs, after receiving information about two other possible bombs. More than 100 people were wounded in the three explosions. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but ISIS militants who control much of northern Iraq and the province of Anbar west of Baghdad regularly send bombers into the capital. Earlier on Sunday, a suicide bomber killed five people in Kadhimiya neighborhood, site of one of shiite Islam's holiest shrines, shortly before dusk and the end of the daily Ramadan fast. Another bomb in the Iskan district of western Baghdad killed two people, medical sources said. ~~~~~ Dear readers, in February, President Obama gave an extensive interview to Vox. In it he explained the goal of his foreign policy in the Middle East : "You take the victories where you can. You make things a little bit better rather than a little bit worse. And that is in no way a concession to this idea that America is withdrawing or there’s not much we can do. It’s just a realistic assessment of how the world works.” Perhaps it is time for President Obama to reconsider his definition of making things "a little bit better." While he and his Secretary of State rush to give Iran the deal that will fund its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program, President Obama might pause to consider the elephant in the negotiation room that Iran and he have agreed not to discuss -- the fact that Iran is a terrorist state wreaking havoc all over the Middle East. Sunday's bombings are evidence of the violently destabilizing character of the Iran regime. Iran's tentacles are long and wrap around every corner of the Moslem world. The elimination of all sanctions now in place against Iran will not only fund nuclear bombs and the ICBMs to launch them into Israel, Saudi Arabia, Europe and eventually the US -- that freed-up money will also increase Iran-sponsored terrorism in the region. Instead of making things "a little bit better," President Obama's Middle East policy goal and his emphasis on an Iran deal are making things immeasurably worse.