Juan Cole, expert in Middle East affairs, writing on truthdig, assesses Obama's successes and failure in the Middle East during 2010:
"This was the year, then, that Iran again won the struggle for influence in Iraq; the year the Israelis sabotaged a revived peace process; the year Iran went on thumbing its nose at the international community with regard to its nuclear enrichment program; and the year that the government in Afghanistan lost a good deal of its credibility. Obama should get credit for good intentions, and talking directly to the major principals. But he appears never to have appreciated the lessons taught by Jimmy Carter at Camp David in 1978, which is that a big geopolitical breakthrough can be accomplished only if the president inserts himself directly into the negotiations and lays his own political capital on the line. Obama has seemed relatively distant from these pressing Middle East issues, and farmed some of them out to subordinates. They are not the sort of problems that can be resolved in that way."
"This was the year, then, that Iran again won the struggle for influence in Iraq; the year the Israelis sabotaged a revived peace process; the year Iran went on thumbing its nose at the international community with regard to its nuclear enrichment program; and the year that the government in Afghanistan lost a good deal of its credibility. Obama should get credit for good intentions, and talking directly to the major principals. But he appears never to have appreciated the lessons taught by Jimmy Carter at Camp David in 1978, which is that a big geopolitical breakthrough can be accomplished only if the president inserts himself directly into the negotiations and lays his own political capital on the line. Obama has seemed relatively distant from these pressing Middle East issues, and farmed some of them out to subordinates. They are not the sort of problems that can be resolved in that way."
Comments