YOU CAN HARDLY BLAME THE DIPLOMACY TYPES...:

Reassurance, however, comes at a price. In the case of the Iran deal, the administration has allowed the costs to rise unnecessarily, acquiescing to actions that threaten long-term US interests. Indeed, the Arab autocratic order is back in force only a few years after popular revolts swept the region. Security crackdowns are building a new chapter of exclusion and extremism, but soliciting no more than a muted reaction from Washington.

Consider Egypt, where the international rehabilitation of Abdel-Fatah al-Sisi, the country's strongman, is well under way, even though his government's relentless repression of dissent exceeds in intensity and scope the clampdowns of Hosni Mubarak, the president ousted in the 2011 revolution.

The US sent the wrong message by resuming military aid to Egypt this year, having suspended it in 2013 when an elected Islamist president was overthrown in a popularly-backed military coup. The only leverage Washington had over Mr Sisi was squandered.

In Bahrain too, the US lifted restrictions on arms sales in June, claiming Manama had made significant progress on human rights. That was two weeks after a court sent Ali Salman, leader of the main Shia opposition party, to jail for four years. Bahrain's Sunni minority regime has been fighting off repeated outbursts of unrest from disgruntled Shia; continued suppression of the political opposition is certain to further radicalise Shia youth and unsettle a country that is home to the US Navy Fifth Fleet.

After nearly a decade of isolation Iran has agreed a breakthrough deal with six world powers to wind back the country's progress towards building a nuclear bomb in exchange for a sweeping reversal of international economic sanctions

In both Bahrain and Egypt, the US acted with an eye towards Saudi Arabia, the increasingly assertive leader of the Sunni Arab camp, and backer of the Bahraini monarchy and Egypt's military coup.

But it is in Yemen that the US mollification of Arab allies could have the most destructive impact. At a time when the US priority is -- and that of all its allies should be -- the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the group known as Isis, Washington has supported a Saudi-led military campaign that has spread more chaos.

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