Ali Khedery

Ali Khedery was formerly the longest serving US official in Iraq, a special assistant to five US ambassadors and a senior adviser to three US four-star generals. He is now based in Dubai.

Speaking to News Agency on Wednesday, he described Donald Trump’s resounding victory in the US election as a “total rejection” of President Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s political platforms.

“The American people voted freely in an open election. Their will was expressed very clearly. There was an anti-establishment mood in the country and the people wanted change. As a result, the Republican Party swept the presidential race as well as both Houses of Congress. Trump thus has the White House, control of both Houses of Congress, and soon, the Supreme Court — all three branches of government,” he said.

Khedery was never a big fan of Obama’s policies. In July 2014, he wrote a blistering article in The Washington Post in which he criticized US policies in Iraq and for supporting former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki which made Iran more powerful.

“I have been quite a vocal critic of Obama — although I voted for him in 2008,” he said. “Despite the soaring rhetoric, he unfortunately was not able to translate words into action at a time of unprecedented geopolitical instability.”

Khedery felt that Obama’s failures were both domestic and international.

“With regards to domestic policy, clearly the American people felt … that the country was heading in the wrong direction. Again, there was a categorical rejection of Obama’s failed policies over the past eight years and there was a categorical rejection of Clinton’s platform which envisioned four more years of Obama.”

So what, in his assessment, went wrong with Obama?

“The short answer is that Obama over-promised and under-delivered — over and over and over again,” he said.

He said there were important lessons to be drawn from Trump’s victory speech on Wednesday.

“Almost none of it was about him; Trump thanked Hillary Clinton; he thanked the American people; he thanked the Secret Service; he thanked the New York law enforcement agencies; he thanked his family; he thanked his political allies,” he said.

Khedery said Trump’s speech was in stark contrast to that of Obama.

“Many of the things that Obama talked about were about himself. He has written two books about himself; he thought he was an agent for change but he wasn’t. Or what he did do, did not produce the result that he promised …. He promised we were going to end the war in Iraq and he pulled American troops out of Iraq precipitously and that led to ISIS. He promised peace in the Middle East with the Iran deal which has obviously only emboldened Iran as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism,” he said.

“Obama’s White House, which is full of inexperienced ideologues, rarely took the time to understand the second and third order consequences of their poorly conceived policies. Those policies ultimately helped destabilize the world in places like Libya, Syria and Iraq, giving rise to transnational jihadi groups. That terrorist threat ultimately helped propel Trump to victory,” said Khedery.

He advises regional leaders to rely on themselves.

“The rulers in the region and the region’s citizens have to understand that the American people are tired of the Middle East. They’re tired of hearing about it. They’re tired of seeing it. They’re tired of bleeding for it. And they’re tired of paying for it. This is the result of events since 9/11 and of the catastrophic mistakes made by both George W. Bush and Obama, by both the Republican and Democratic foreign policy elite. The American people want no more quagmires or open-ended commitments around the world, especially in the Middle East given the extraordinary costs of the failed Iraq and Afghanistan wars,” he said. “We are in a time of great change — that change is in the region’s long-term interest. Both the rulers and the people of the region must embrace self-reliance; that is the only sustainable way to live as opposed to being dependent on an outside force 10,000 miles away — Washington, D.C.”

Khedery said that the prevalent mood in the US right now was that of retrenchment and isolationism.

“Trump’s main thrust is seemingly inward, focused on rebuilding American infrastructure, for example, as opposed to rebuilding Afghan or Iraqi infrastructure. What that means is that the leaders of the region will have to step forward and improve governance, economics and services for their people,” he said. “It means that America will continue to be there for its allies but the days when our regional allies were spoiled by an open-ended American commitment in which various regional leaders were willing to fight to the last American soldier are over.”

On the fate of the Iranian nuclear deal, Khedery said a number of things could happen.

“There is a distinct possibility that the deal will be abandoned under a Trump administration,” he said. “If Clinton had won, the Iran deal would certainly have been reinforced since it was executed and negotiated by a Democratic president along with some very senior members of Clinton’s inner circle who were involved intimately in the negotiations. Instead, Trump has stated forcefully and repeatedly that he thought the Iran deal was one of the worst deals that America had ever negotiated. And I think he is absolutely right. As a result, there are a number of things that might happen to undermine the Iran nuclear deal.”

And what does a Trump presidency mean for Syria?

“It is too early to tell,” said Khedery. “On the one hand, Trump’s personal temperament may guide him to outsourcing Syria to Russia, and by extension to Bashar Assad. Trump may come to the conclusion that America has few strategic interests in Syria (other than defeating ISIS) and that Washington has more significant interests — in other words, bigger fish to fry. On the other hand, depending on who emerges as senior members of Trump’s national security team, there is a compelling argument to be made that as long as the Russians are carrying out airstrikes against civilian targets and so long as Assad is committing genocide, then that means that ISIS will exist permanently or that more radical groups will emerge. We need to restore the balance of power in the region and once that is done, we can draw down and reduce the American footprint or get the allies to pay for large American military bases in the region which would guarantee certain countries’ security and stability.”

He pointed out the fact the Republican Party had generally been anti-Iran.

“Which is absolutely justified, given that Iran is the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism; since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran has killed and wounded thousands of American civilians and soldiers and many allied civilians and government personnel. There is merit in the idea that on one hand, they (the United States) may outsource Syria to Russia and Assad which means Iran and Hezbollah, while on the other, they may want to contain Iran,” he said.

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