Obama Courted Iran. Obama Courted Syria. Obama Achieved Nothing.

• Martin Peretz

Reuters reports on the brotherly friendship of Tehran and Damascus. It is not a new relationship. In fact, it goes back many years. But since Barack Obama imagines he can change the world by telling his supporters that this is what he’s going to do he sent messengers and missives to the two tyrannies. Nothing came of these courtships, and certainly nothing came of the American effort to get Iran to cease its pursuit of nukes.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad assured his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday that their ties were solid — a view unlikely to please Washington which is working to isolate the Islamic state.

“We have stood beside Iran in a brotherly way from the very beginning of the (Iranian Islamic) revolution,” Assad said during a one-day visit to Tehran.

Ahmadinejad awarded Assad Iran’s highest medal of honor in recognition of his support for Palestinians and Lebanon and his resistance to “global arrogance” — a term which usually refers to the United States and its allies.

“We are two governments and nations which are brothers,” Ahmadinejad said at the televised ceremony where the two presidents smiled and held their hands aloft for the cameras.

Assad said the medal was in appreciation of “the continuing and eternal stance of Syria to be on the side of Iran … The two countries’ close and continuing contacts are in the interest of the region.”

Almost nobody notices the disasters of U.S. policy outside our borders because the disasters within our borders are so climactic. One of the president’s most ambitious ventures was to bring Syria to heel. He sent many emissaries to Dr. Assad. Their visits all flopped.

But Obama is still pressing Israel to leave the Golan Heights, and Secretary Clinton is trying get Syria to soften the views of the Palestinians. The president and the secretary of state don’t recognize failure. So they court more humiliation.