"I was elected on getting out of these ridiculous endless wars."

"The region is in chaos because the hegemonic power does not seem to know what it wants to do, and so nobody else does."
"[Even in Britain, a close ally of the United States], nobody knows what to do any more."
Michael Stephens, scholar, Royal United Services Institute, London

"Many nations around the Middle East now are considering major changes in their strategic defense plans because they no longer see the United States as a reliable ally."
"It will be very difficult to convince nations of the Middle East that the United States is serious about what it says."
Gamal Abdel Gawad Soltan, adviser, Al Ahram Center for Strategic Studies, Cairo

In this photo from August 12, 2019, plumes of smoke rise after an explosion at a military base southwest of Baghdad, Iraq. (AP Photo/Loay Hameed)

Who has the enthusiastic approval of Donald J. Trump in their behaviour and actions as heads of State? Men like himself. Devious, untrustworthy, convinced of their absolute divine right to rule and rule as they wish. The ruthless, the vain and the ignorant who believe they are their nations' deliverers and benevolent dictators. Those who believe in their elite destiny that has unfailingly ushered them into their positions of power through the pretense of charlatans convincing an electorate that the ballot box is awaiting their choice.

So the freakish little pomp-head that rules North Korea elicits Donald Trump's admiration for his unswerving belligerence and demands, and Trump is willing to acquiesce to a surprising degree. He has engineered a personal rapprochement with the autocratic Vladimir Putin whose designs on his Eastern European neighbours' frantic grasp of sovereignty he is happy to challenge, recalling the bygone days of the USSR, just as Recep Tayyip Erdogan has flaunted his Islamist credentials in preparation of re-installing his version of the Ottoman Empire.

Iron Dome battery near the Syrian border in the Golan Heights (Photos: EPA)

They all envision themselves as exceptionally entitled to flout their nations' term limits to enable them to rule ad infinitum. And while the United States under both Barack Obama and Donald Trump has drawn in its octopus-arms embrace of the world outside its borders, willing to shed its grip on power and influence, it has not hesitated to advance the hegemonic influence of its adversaries, Trump's personal allies, on request.

So delivering the steadfast and loyal Kurdish allies of the United States into the psychotic hands of their fiercest enemy, allowing Turkish President Erdogan to mount a violent offensive while the U.S. politely withdraws the protective barrier of its troops, Trump bellows his pleasure at solving the problems of the Middle East as far as America is concerned, by allowing the adversaries to sort things out as they will, and they will, officiously, brutally, through ethnic-cleansing bloodbaths.

And where then, does that leave America's long-time partners like Israel and the Persian Gulf monarchs so long reliant on American protection? Good question. Trump's spur-of-the-moment decision making, based in his faultless intuition of any given situation governs his impulsive penchant for besmirching U.S. honour and puzzling its Western counterparts, never knowing what next in the ordered world of the Democratic West is to be roiled.

A suicide drone developed by Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards (AFP)

A hubristic commander-in-chief in Washington has put the entire world on edge, in actual fact. His unpredictability means the United States can no longer be relied upon as a trustworthy partner with common interests in a sane and regulated world order. The brutal Turkish assault on the Syrian Kurds has enabled Erdogan, pace Putin, to take possession of Kurdish heritage territory, threatening the Kurdish military with annihilation.

Just as the U.S. was "locked and loaded" to respond to any provocations from the Islamic Republic of Iran, resulting in nothing much when Iranian missiles targeted Saudi oilfields, Israel now awaits the inevitable; rockets aiming for its sensitive military, geographic-vulnerable cities and nuclear installations with the Republic's new, more efficient and accurate missiles which it has threatened to use for that very purpose -- to destroy the "Zionist entity". So much for daylight between the U.S. and Israel.

Illustrative: Iran says it successfully tested the Hoveizeh cruise missile on February 2, 2019 (Screen grab via Tasnim)

"Iran’s most recent attack on Saudi oil production demonstrates the sophistication and extent of Iranian capabilities. Iran used Ababil 2 drones and Quds-1 cruise missiles to execute the attack. Neither weapon has the needed precision when controlled from a distance, so it is likely that Iranian intelligence infiltrated Saudi Arabia and guided the weapons in their terminal phase. This constitutes one of the great U.S. intelligence failures since 9/11 — a U.S. ally’s oil production crippled due to large-scale sabotage by a hostile power."
"Strategically, only America and Israel can check Iranian ambitions. The U.S. maintains a network of Middle Eastern and European bases from which it can concentrate ground and air forces against any point in the region; a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf or Eastern Mediterranean greatly complicates Iran’s ability to operate freely in Syria and Iraq, or to close the Strait of Hormuz and pressure U.S. allies in Asia. Moreover, U.S. diplomatic, financial and commercial pressure can still strangle the Iranian economy, despite the damage the JCPOA and its aftermath did to the U.S. sanctions regime. Unless Iran can eliminate U.S. presence in the Middle East, its broader campaign will remain constricted."
Seth Cropsey, senior fellow, Hudson Institute, director, Center for American Seapower