Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney on Monday attacked President Barack Obama over U.S. policy in the Middle East, arguing that Obama’s lack of “resolve” in the region made conflict more likely and put U.S. security at risk.
“Our country seems to be at the mercy of events rather than shaping them,” Romney said in an opinion article published by The Wall Street Journal.
“President Obama has allowed our leadership to atrophy” in the Middle East, Romney charged, adding: “By failing to maintain the elements of our influence and by stepping away from our allies, President Obama has heightened the prospect of conflict and instability.”
Romney pointed to the thousands of people who have died in Syria, the electoral victory of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the killing of the U.S. ambassador in Libya as recent “disturbing developments” that he said the Obama administration had failed to address adequately.
Obama “does not understand that an American policy that lacks resolve can provoke aggression and encourage disorder,” Romney said. He took particular aim at Obama’s policy toward Israel, which critics have said falls far short of the support offered by previous U.S. presidents.
And he suggested that Obama had not been forceful enough with Iran and what the West says are its covert efforts to develop a nuclear weapon, a suspicion that Iran has always denied. “When we say an Iranian nuclear-weapons capability – and the regional instability that comes with it – is unacceptable, the ayatollahs must be made to believe us,” Romney wrote
Obama was criticized by opponents recently for declining a request for a meeting from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has called on Washington to take a tougher stance against Iran. The request had been timed to coincide with a visit to the United States by Netanyahu and many other international leaders to attend last month’s United Nations’ General Assembly in New York.
Obama is in the final stretch of a campaign to be reelected on November 6 and not only declined to meet with Netanyahu but also any other foreign leader during the UN General Assembly.
There was no immediate response to Romney’s criticism from the White House.
