Sec. of State Rex Tillerson visited Lebanon last Thursday, and let's just say it wasn't exactly a shining moment for U.S. diplomacy. Tillerson was made to sit alone in a room with no American flag in sight and wait, as photographers took pictures and video, before Hezbollah's chief allies in Lebanon's government, President Michel Aoun and his son-in-law the foreign minister, finally came out to greet him. Images of the U.S. Secretary of State fidgeting in front of an empty chair were then broadcast across the Middle East to symbolize American impotence at a fateful moment for the region.
The televised humiliation of Tillerson was accompanied by even more explicit evidence of American policy confusion in the face of Iran's take-over of the Lebanese state and fresh attacks from Syria across Israel's borders. After Iran launched a drone into the Israeli sector of the Golan Heights, the Israeli Air Force attacked the T-4 air base in the Homs governorate, the site of the Iranian mobile command and control center that launched the drone. The decision to destroy the Iranian control center came following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Russia last month, during which Netanyahu again expressed Israel's rejection of Iran's efforts to establish a military presence in Syria, and reiterated his government's resolve to act against it. According to the Israelis, the second wave of strikes launched against the Iranians in Syria was the broadest single aerial attack against Syria since 1982.
Read Full Article »