Nuclear Deal With Iran A Mistake | Eastern North Carolina Now

 Earlier this month, I traveled to Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt as part of a congressional delegation to discuss the deteriorating security situation in the most volatile region on the planet.

 I met with national leaders and visited one of the dozens of refugee camps along the Turkish-Syrian border.

 I came away with two inescapable conclusions: Arabs and Jews have been drawn together by a common enemy — Iran and terrorism; and we are on the cusp of a historic strategic failure because of the ineptitude of President Obama's foreign policy.

 Let's start with Iran. In Jerusalem and Saudi Arabia there is agreement. President Obama has turned history on its head by signing a deal that will only serve to accelerate the nuclear march of the ayatollahs.

 The threat of a new Persian Empire has every nation in the region in the cross hairs. When I asked a senior leader of an Arab nation what was the major problem with Iran, he sadly said, "American leadership."

 Additionally, Bibi Netanyahu could not have been clearer. Every mistake the president has made domestically and internationally pales alongside his Iranian nuclear deal. While the intent of the president's deal was to slow Iran's path to the bomb, within weeks of the ink drying, Iran was launching ballistic missiles within half a mile of an American aircraft carrier, and launching missiles with "Death to Israel" written on the nose in Hebrew, making it clear that the Supreme Leader sees that America has surrendered the field to him.

 While Iran's terrorist tentacles are spreading across the Middle East, the deadly toll of the Syrian civil war mounts: 500,000 deaths, nearly 5 million refugees, and a flood of the helpless storming the gates of Turkey, Jordan and Europe.

 The conflict has grave strategic consequences, not least of which has been the return of Russia to the region that Richard Nixon kicked it out of in the 1970s.

 Syrian dictator Bashir Assad's threat to use chemical weapons against his people was met by President Obama's red line. When Assad crossed that line, Obama blinked and the Middle East shook.

 Even Joe Biden decried the president's inaction telling him, "big nations don't bluff." Yet, Obama sees this retreat as "the defining moment of his presidency." He's probably right.

 Let's count the toll of Obama's vision: Iran emerges richer (the president released $140 billion in embargoed funds) and more powerful than ever and is still the leading financier of terror worldwide; Assad seems likely to survive; Russian boots are on the warm sands of the Middle East; and Obama has ceded American primacy to the Iranian fanatics and Vladimir Putin. On top of that, Israel feels abandoned and alone and our traditional allies have been cast aside by the president's desire to make history.

 Harvard historian Niall Ferguson says that the president likes to talk about "the arc of history" and sees himself as a grand strategist. As Ferguson notes, "grand strategies are judged by their consequences, not by their intentions, and in the Middle East — not to mention North Africa and parts of South Asia — the consequences are not looking pretty. If the arc of history is in fact bending toward Islamic extremism, sectarian conflict, networks of terrorism and regional nuclear-arms races," then the 44th president will turn out to have made even Jimmy Carter look good.

 Thom Tillis, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from North Carolina. This article, by Senator Thom Tillis, was originally posted in the Fayetteville Observer.

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