Eli Lake of Bloomberg has an important piece on the recklessness of American policy in the Middle East under President Barack Obama.

One of the unexpected results of President Barack Obama’s new opening to Iran is that U.S. taxpayers are now funding both sides of the Middle East’s arms race. The U.S. is deliberately subsidizing defense spending for allies like Egypt and Israel. Now the U.S. is… paying for some of Iran’s military expenditures as well.

It all starts with $1.7 billion the U.S. Treasury transferred to Iran’s Central Bank in January, during a delicate prisoner swap and the implementation of last summer’s nuclear deal… For months it was unclear what Iran’s government would do with this money. But last month the mystery was solved when Iran’s Guardian Council approved the government’s 2017 budget that instructed Iran’s Central Bank to transfer the $1.7 billion to the military.

Emphasis added.

The article, if anything, understates the importance of Obama’s so-called “Iran deal” to the flourishing arms race in the Middle East.  In fact, a great deal of the Sunni side of the arms race resulted from bribes the US administration provided them to make them less vehemently opposed to the deal.  The US offered Sunni states billions in arms deals in order to calm their fears of an increasingly aggressive, unbound Iran.

The US is also funding Iran by funding Iraq.  The Iraqi government has been receiving American military assistance since its liberation in 2003.  Reuters has reported that it has seen contracts for $195 million from the Iraqi government for Iranian arms. Doubtless that money is coming out of the “train and equip” funds that the US Department of State has been providing to Baghdad.  In 2014 the US provided nearly as much money to the Iraqi government, which is effectively fighting as an ally of Iran, as the $1.7 billion it provided to Iran directly last year.

Meanwhile, the Russians have been profiting off of all of this American money.  Russia has been transferring its advanced S-300 missile systems to Iran in return for cash payments.  These missile systems are considered by defense experts to be capable of taking down up to fourth generation fighter aircraft, to include American F-15s, F-16s, and F-18s, which jointly make up the major bulk of America’s fighter fleet (71% as of 2012, with an additional 15% being A-10 attack aircraft).  Such fighters would also encompass the entire fighter fleet of Israel’s air force, as well as the Sunni air forces that are arming up right now.

Iran, conversely, has adopted a strategy chiefly of preferring unmanned missiles as a counterbalance to regional air or American air forces.  They have had success in both extending the umbrella of their missiles’ reach, and in improving their accuracy.  As Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei recently said, “Those who say the future is in negotiations, not in missiles, are either ignorant or traitors.”

In addition to these big-ticket items, small arms sales to the Middle East have doubled.  Though ‘small arms’ sounds as if it were less important than big-ticket items like missiles and bombs, in fact small arms typically cause the majority of fatalities in any conflict.

For now the race to arm the Middle East for an upcoming war is an exciting business venture:  even Canada has greatly increased its participation in making money off the Middle East’s hunger for weapons.  As Willy Stern recently pointed out in his analysis of Hezbollah arms stockpiles in Lebanon, however, it points to an incredibly bloody future war.  The US government has, either recklessly or for reasons they have not disclosed, decided to pour money and arms into both sides of this upcoming conflict.