Obama set to plunge into roiling Mideast waters

US President Barack Obama . AFP FILE PHOTO

JERUSALEM — President Barack Obama is plunging into the turbulent Middle East on a mission aimed primarily at assuring America’s top ally in the region and its friends back home that it will not be forsaken amid bitter domestic political squabbles and budget crises in Washington.

Obama arrives Wednesday in Israel for his first visit to the country — and only his second to the Middle East, outside of a quick jaunt to Iraq — since taking office. He will also be making his first trips as president to the Palestinian Authority and Jordan this week. But on an itinerary laden more with symbolism than substance, an Israel that is increasingly wary of developments in Syria and Iran is Obama’s main focus.

When Air Force One touches down at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport, Obama will be met by an Israeli leadership and public anxious to hear the president affirm America’s commitment to the security of the Jewish state while standing on their soil.

Obama sparred frequently with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the Palestinian peace process during his first term. And despite public assurances from both sides that relations otherwise remained solid, the president endured four years of criticism from pro-Israel advocates and conservatives in the U.S. and numerous commentators in Israel for not doing enough to back the Mideast’s only stable democracy in the face of growing threats to its existence.

So even though U.S. officials have set expectations low and previewed no significant policy announcements, there is a clear metric to measure the success of Obama’s three-day stay in Israel and the West Bank: how much he is able to reverse the perception that his administration is not fully committed to Israel’s security.

Before he even leaves Ben Gurion airport for the 45-minute helicopter flight to Jerusalem, Obama will stop to view an Iron Dome battery, part of the missile defense system that the United States has poured hundreds of millions dollars into developing. Israeli officials credit Iron Dome with significantly reducing the impact of rockets fired into its territory from militants in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon and don’t want to see U.S. funding cut due to budget constraints.

Once in Jerusalem, a potent religious symbol as well as one of the main obstacles to an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, Obama will make several cultural stops — to see some of the ancient Dead Sea Scrolls and pay tribute to the founder of modern Zionism — intended to show his appreciation for the Jewish people’s millennia-old connection to the land that is now Israel as well as the horrors of the Holocaust. He will also visit the Church of Nativity, which is revered throughout Christiandom as the site where Jesus was born.

Obama will make an almost perfunctory visit to the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority’s headquarters in the West Bank, where he will meet embattled Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to assure him that an independent Palestinian state remains a U.S. foreign policy and national security priority. Despite not coming with any new plan to get the stalled peace process back on track, Obama plans to make clear that his administration intends to keep trying to get talks relaunched.

But the centerpiece of the first leg of the trip will be a speech to Israeli university students on Thursday, during which Obama is expected to renew U.S. assurances to stand by Israel as it seeks to counter threats from Iran and protect its people in the midst of civil war in neighboring Syria, where new questions were raised Tuesday about the Assad regime’s possible use of chemical weapons.

Preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon and the Syrian crisis from spilling over into the broader region are top priorities of Israel and the United States, although they have differed in the past on precisely how to achieve both ends.

Iran, in particular, has been a vexing issue, as Iranian leaders continue to defy pressure from the U.S. and other world powers to prove that its nuclear program is peaceful and not, as many suspect, cover for atomic weapons developments.

Israel repeatedly has threatened to take military action should Iran appear to be on the verge of obtaining a bomb. The U.S. has pushed for more time to allow diplomacy and economic penalties to run their course, though Obama insists military action is an option.

But there are differences over a timeline for possible military action. Netanyahu, in a speech to the United Nations in September, said Iran was about six months away from being able to build a bomb. Obama said last week that the U.S. thinks it would take “over a year or so for Iran to actually develop a nuclear weapon.”

Obama will close out his Mideast trip with a 24-hour stop in Jordan, an important U.S. ally, where his focus will be on the violence in Syria. More than 450,000 Syrians have fled to Jordan, crowding refugee camps and overwhelming aid organizations.

In his talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah, Obama also will try to shore up the country’s fledgling attempts to liberalize its government and stave off an Arab Spring-style movement similar to the ones that have taken down leaders elsewhere in the region.