The British newspaper “The Times” said that US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s efforts “to secure peace in the Middle East have failed miserably,” which is stark evidence of the decline of the United States’ influence in the region.
She added that Blinken spent most of last December traveling in an attempt to prevent the war in Gaza from escalating into a regional conflict in which Iran and its so-called “proxies” fight Western interests.
The newspaper stated in a report that, given the events in Yemen, the Red Sea, Pakistan, Iran, and on the Lebanese border with Israel, it appears that Blinken’s mission has failed, while Russia and China in particular are achieving diplomatic successes.
It was made clear that Washington, during the era of President Joe Biden, abandoned trying to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and underestimated Iran’s influence and ambitions, but according to analysts, these mistakes came back to haunt them.
American hesitation
In an interview with Politico magazine, former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said, “The recent global events in the Taiwan Strait, in the Middle East, and in Ukraine are all the result of American hesitation in effective leadership.”
According to the report, Israel’s destruction of Gaza and its killing of thousands of Palestinians destroyed all the plans that were being prepared for the region so that the United States would be preoccupied with East Asian issues and confronting China in particular.
The “Times” report added that the Houthis in Yemen paralyzed shipping movement in the Red Sea, affecting global supply chains and starting a military conflict with the United States and Britain, while Iran’s allies launch almost daily attacks on Israel and American forces in the region, while Iran and Pakistan exchange… Cross-border attacks.
The report confirmed that the Arab countries that Blinken visited on his last tour told him that the United States needs to put pressure on Israel to stop the war while providing a path for the Palestinians to establish a state.
Israel rejected these pressures, saying that it needed to destroy the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and release dozens of prisoners who were kidnapped during the attacks of last October 7.
According to Anna Jacobs, senior Gulf affairs analyst at the International Crisis Group, Gaza must be at the center of any attempt to contain the conflicts, and she stressed that “the first step in stopping the escalation is to reach a ceasefire in Gaza, and this requires more serious American pressure on “Israel.”