A Blueprint for Getting Out of the Middle East | The American Conservative

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

57% : Future demand will be slowed by the push for renewable energy and other climate change measures.
49% : Iraq and Iran, two majority Shia countries, have extensive contacts but are very different.
46% : He figures four countries in the region -- Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey -- might seek to dominate the Mideast, but almost certainly would fall short.
43% : Washington's restraint led Riyadh to engage in talks with Tehran, a benefit of refusing to make every Mideast problem America's own.
42% : The Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II administrations all later warred against Iraq, empowering Iran.
39% : During the 1980s, Washington backed Iraq's Sunni dictator against Iran, providing intelligence, aiding development of chemical weapons, and protecting Kuwaiti oil traffic that helped fund Baghdad's war.
37% : Today's "rogue" nations and groups -- Iran, Yemeni Houthis, Syria -- have or are seeking control of oil they would like to sell.
34% : Only Tehran is a serious candidate for attempting to close the Gulf to oil traffic, but then the U.S. would have only itself to blame, since such an action almost certainly would be retaliation for American attacks on Iran.
33% : Despite negotiating to reinstate the nuclear deal with Iran, the U.S. is seeking to defend an unnecessary garrison in Iraq by bombing Iraqi militias allied with Iran.
27% : That led to threats and sanctions against Tehran, followed by the Obama reversal to negotiations.
11% : Yet the Obama and Trump administrations then showed shocking subservience to Riyadh, backing its murderous war against Yemen to salve the hurt feelings of the royals that the U.S. had made a deal with Iran.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.