On Syria, for example, Hariri says that Obama was just taken in by Assad and the Russians when he made a deal with them in 2013 to remove chemical weapons – and that Obama should have bombed Assad when the Syrian dictator crossed his “red line” by gassing his own people.

“We know their actions. We know their lies. We know what they do to people. We know how they act with people. So, when Bashar al-Assad says that, you know, he’s going to get rid of the chemical weapons, he’s not,” Hariri says. “And if you believe him, it’s your mistake that you’re believing him. And that’s why when the red line was drawn, you could have come to the same deal after your actions. But that message would have, you know, gone down way better in the region and the regime would have understood that America meant business.”…

Hariri also faults Obama for the big gap between the “inspirational” words in his 2009 Cairo speech suggesting a new American approach to the region – and the “nothing” that came of Obama’s efforts to forge peace between Israel and the Palestinians. And he points out that while Arab leaders opposed President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, they were also strongly against the 2011 American pullout of Iraq during Obama’s presidency, a withdrawal that many in the region believe left a dangerous vacuum eventually filled by the rise of the Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria.