BEIRUT (Sputnik) — Buses with Syrian militants and their families who were staying in Lebanese refugee camps crossed back into Syria late …

By Susan B. Glasser, Article represents opinion of the author and does not represent khazen.org

Russia won in Syria thanks to President Barack Obama’s inaction. The Middle East unraveling of the past decade is due in no small part to America not listening to her allies in the region. Never mind President Donald Trump’s Muslim-bashing rhetoric, he may just be a better partner. For months, leaders of America’s Arab allies in the Mideast have telegraphed this view of the world, and it helps explain why the gilded palaces of the troubled, war-torn region are the few places on the planet — outside Russia — where Trump has been more popular than the president he succeeded.This is the case Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri laid out in an exclusive interview for The Global Politico at the end of a weeklong visit to Washington. The tone was measured, but taken together his comments amount to a striking and stark indictment of Obama and much recent U.S. policy in the Middle East. “The unfortunate consequence of not acting” there, Hariri argued, has been Russia’s restoration as a regional heavyweight, the resurrection of Bashar Assad’s bloody regime in Syria and the failure to produce an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

“Clarity,” the prime minister said, and the hope for a more decisive approach is the reason why he and other Arab leaders prefer Trump, despite the bombast and uncertainty the first six months of his presidency have unleashed. Unstated, but by all accounts just as significant, is the expectation that Trump will take a more hawkish approach toward Syria’s backers in Iran, and Hariri repeatedly brought up concessions Obama made toward Tehran to get his nuclear deal as an example of how the U.S. lost its way in the region. Given the bloody six-year war in next-door Syria that has come close to overwhelming tiny Lebanon, sending a flood of 1.5 million refugees into a fragile nation of just 4.5 million people and putting the terrorist group ISIS right on their border, it’s a case worth listening to — even if you think it absolves the Arab world of accountability for its own actions.

FLEITA, Syria, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) — Tens of buses are ready to transfer thousands of militants and civilian refugees from Lebanon into …