Gingrich: Russia's Syria Move Part of Steady Decline of Obama Policy

News that Russia is working in cooperation with Iran and Iraq to back the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad signals a continuing collapse of President Barack Obama's foreign policy, says former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

"You have Russia, Iran and Iraq working together with Syria. All these are things that three or four years ago the president would have deeply opposed," Gingrich said Monday on Fox News Channel's "On the Record with Greta Van Susteren." "Now he is going to have to accommodate a reality that he can't change."

Obama's famous "red line" warning issued to Assad in 2012 against using chemical weapons went unheeded and Syria wasn't punished for breaking it a year later.

It was the beginning of a steady decline of American influence in the Middle East, Gingrich said.

"The Iranians have been trying to develop a regional hegemony. The Russians have become their ally. What you are seeing is a tremendous shift of the power away from the United States and Western Europe towards Russia and Iran," he said. "And it's a strategic defeat – a very dramatic defeat in historical terms."

Putin now intends to cooperate with Iran and sell weapons to Iraq, Gingrich said. "If we want to hang around, that's fine. We just don't matter very much to him."

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