President Obama has now united the world -- not a single country trusts us anymore, because our hero has shafted those who relied on us: Britain, Poland, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, even Syria and Libya. Our solemn national pledges kept the peace for sixty years; now they are worthless.  Even Russia's Putin has a visceral dislike for our hero.  Half the American people don't trust Obama either, and now  the rest of the world agrees.

Obama has brought unity at last.

It's not often that the Saudis and the Israelis agree on the same lethal strategic danger, but they do today.

Here is a Saudi commentator on Al Arabiya, Jamal Kashoggi:

"When the term "Shiite Crescent" was coined a few years back, it was meant to warn of Iranian expansionism across the Levant.

Nowadays ... Shiite fundamentalism is basking in all the glory of triumph.... the Crescent is liable to evolve into a political axis stretching from Tehran to Beirut via Baghdad and Damascus.  It is only natural for (Iran) to consolidate victory on the ground by blending her triumphant axis in a singular political, economic and military network.

... That's why I believe Saudi Arabia expressly will not allow Iran to win in Syria."

Meanwhile an Israeli commentator, Yaakov Lappin, writes:                                                        

"After two years of fighting and at least 80,000 casualties ... the Syrian civil war has degenerated into a long足term, regional, sectarian Sunni足-Shi'ite conflict which has crossed into neighboring Lebanon and Iraq and threatens to spill over into Turkey, Jordan and Israel. No resolution to this feud is in sight.

... highly trained Shi'ite Hizballah battalions ... under Iranian orders, have mobilized from their bases in Lebanon and crossed into Syria to offer vital battlefield assistance to the Syrian regime's strained army.

This situation has sparked outrage across the Sunni world, and prompted Sunni religious and political figures to issue call for jihad against Hizballah, on behalf of the beleaguered Syrian rebels."

While the Western public media are totally focused on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations the real story is a huge emerging war between those two 1000-year enemies, Sunni and Shi'ite Islam. The Saudis have not forgotten that Ayatollah Khomeini tried to overthrow their regime during the annual pilgrimage, the hajj. 

Obama has been trying to break the Shi'ite crescent by arming and training the rebels against Iran's ally Assad. In Benghazi, Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed while running Libyan arms to Al Qaida-allied rebels in Syria.  It's not working. The Russians are siding with Iran and Assad, and Iran's steel trap is threatening to snap shut on the pathetic rabble we support in Syria.

No wonder Israel and the Saudis are worried. Obama was going to solve Middle Eastern troubles forever and ever.  For four years Obama begged and wheedled the mullahs, and took no decisive action during the critical window of opportunity before they acquired nukes and missiles.  The mullahs were not interested in those peace overtures.  They follow a war theology, and celebrate martyrdom, not peace.  Think Imperial Japan in World War II and you get the idea.  The mullahs are not liberals; they are not even conservatives; they are throwbacks to the Dark Ages.

So now Iran is biting back. We are trapped in a classic quagmire, with no way to pull out without making things worse.

This all started when Obama promised a bold new age of peace to the Muslim world, and then showed how it was done by pulling down Mubarak's Egypt, which had kept a real peace for thirty years. Rather than knocking down a fast-nuclearizing Iran, Obama failed even to show symbolic support for the young people of the Green Revolution in Tehran.

The precariously balanced pieces of Middle East stability started to tumble down: Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Tunisia. Obama and the New York Times called this disaster the "Arab Spring."  About 100,000 Arabs have died as a result of the "Spring," and worse may be coming.

The trouble with communist agitators community organizers like Obama is that they know how to destroy, but not how to build.  Look at our domestic affairs and you'll see the same thing: ObamaCare is supposed to be great, but in fact it is destroying the medical sector of the American economy, just to buy votes for Democrats.

Obama has managed to turn sixty years of slow, painful peace-building in the Middle East into chaos. We are only lucky that in Egypt the Obama-supported Muslim Brotherhood was overthrown by saner folks.

We are now in a classic double bind, what chess players call a Zugzwang, a pincer movement that means a defeat whichever way we turn.

Yes, the administration is going to parade a "peace" agreement between Israel and the artificially constructed Palestinians.  Israel will concede land, and the Pals will pretend to make peace. That will make headlines in the liberal press. As usual, the New York Times will miss the real story, the regional Sunni-Shiite war.

Israel is seeing the Iranian trap slamming shut on its territory. An agreement with the Palestinian Arabs will make no difference, because the Pals are Sunnis, and Iran is Shi'ite. And if Iran should be pushed back, the other extremist militants, the Al Qaida types, will control Syria.

Obama meddling has endangered the 30-year peace in the Middle East. The mullahs suckered Obama to push back their real theological enemies, the Sunni Muslims in the Arab world. The Sunnis are no fools and are preparing to fight a regional war against Iran's steel trap.

Wherever the United States has refused to defend the peace, new powers have moved in. Russia is on the rise again, and Iran's imperialism is threatening the region.

This is what happens when we "lead from behind."