Obama-gate and World War III

Americans are the biggest losers from the slew of scandals now rocking the White House, but who are the biggest winners?  Iran, North Korea, Syria, China, and Russia.  If U.S. foreign policy seemed spineless and muddled in confronting bad actors before the Benghazi-IRS-AP scandals surfaced, the U.S. just became that much more irrelevant to its arch-rivals and antagonists on the world stage.

Unfortunately, the trio of scandals comes at an extremely dangerous time.  The ever-unpredictable North Korea just fired three short-range guided missiles.  Much more ominously, Russia is reverting to a Cold War mindset in ways far more serious than the recent arrest of alleged CIA operative Ryan Fogle.  Russia is doubling down on its strategy of backing its Syrian client, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Russia recently sold advanced Yakhont anti-ship cruise missiles to Syrian President Bashar Assad.  These missiles, outfitted with an advanced guidance system, effectively empower Syria to thwart any attempt by international forces to help Syrian rebels with a naval embargo or no-fly zone.  Upping the ante, Russia sent at least a dozen warships to its Tartus naval base in Syria, according to a Wall Street Journal report last Thursday.  Russia has also declared its intention to complete its sale of the S-300 advanced anti-aircraft missile system to Syria.  The S-300 is a state-of-the-art system that can intercept fighter jets and cruise missiles at a range of about 124 miles and would therefore — if actually delivered to Assad — represent a game-changer in the Middle East.  That is undoubtedly a red line for Israel, and Israel takes its red lines seriously, as it has shown with airstrikes on Syrian targets to prevent the transfer of sophisticated weapons to Hezb’allah.

When the above developments are combined with the already combustible circumstances prevailing in the Middle East, the results could quickly explode into a catastrophic regional conflict.  The belligerents — Israel on the one hand and the Syrian-Iranian-Hezb’allah axis on the other — have decades of hostility and mistrust between them, and no open communications by which to resolve conflicts or clarify intentions.  Thus, the possibility of miscalculation is dangerously high, and the short distance between Syria and Israel only accelerates the time to full-scale war.