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Source: https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-us-cant-just-quit-the-middle-east/
The U.S. Can't Just Quit the Middle East
(American Enterprise Institute) Danielle Pletka - From the perspective of the Biden administration and its Obama holdovers, the sooner the Middle East tends to its own knitting the better. However, America has enduring interests in the Middle East. Some are economic interests, like the energy supply. Others relate directly to the safety and security of the American people, including the likely proliferation of nuclear weapons, the growth and flourishing of Sunni and Shiite Islamist terrorism, and the security of Europe (in case some had forgotten the refugee masses that poured from Syria into Europe in 2015). There is no confronting China without secure oil supplies, no guaranteeing Israel's security from the Pacific, and no pretending that freedom of navigation through Suez or the Bab el Mandab is without value. It's high time to acknowledge that the terrorist threats that crisscross the region are real. Lebanon has been taken over by the world's most potent terror group, Hizbullah. Syria is a hub for Iranian weapons proliferation and a training ground for Islamist terrorists. Egypt is under the gun from ISIS and al-Qaeda. Yemen is an ongoing threat to its neighbors, and a training ground for terrorists targeting the U.S. The writer is a senior fellow at AEI and teaches U.S. Middle East policy at Georgetown University.