Obama's Best Buddy, Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan, to Double Bilateral Trade With Iran

In a January 2012 Time interview with Fareed Zakaria (http://swampland.time.com/2012/01/19/inside-obamas-world-the-president-talks-to-time-about-the-changing-nature-of-american-power/?iid=sl-main-lede), President Obama proudly proclaimed:

"I think that if you ask them, Angela Merkel or Prime Minister Singh or President Lee or Prime Minister Erdogan or David Cameron would say, We have a lot of trust and confidence in the President. We believe what he says. We believe that he’ll follow through on his commitments. We think he’s paying attention to our concerns and our interests. And that’s part of the reason we’ve been able to forge these close working relationships and gotten a whole bunch of stuff done."

A close working relationship with Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan? Nice to know.

Indeed, on March 25 a jubilant Obama met with the Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan for one hour and 45 minutes at a hotel in Seoul ahead of the two-day Nuclear Security Summit in South Korea. Following their discusions, Obama and Erdoğan held a joint press conference, and Obama once again declared that Erdoğan is an "outstanding" partner (see: http://www.todayszaman.com/news-275311-erdogan-obama-discuss-syria-iran-at-seoul-meeting.html).

Well, this outstanding partner subsequently spent the past several days meeting with Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei and Iranian President Ahmadinejad, and on March 28, following discussions with Iranian First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi, Erdoğan announced that Turkey and Iran had agreed to double bilateral trade to 30 billion dollars within the next three years (see: http://www.mehrnews.com/en/newsdetail.aspx?NewsID=1565561).

This agreement to expand trade from $16 billion in 2011 to $30 billion in 2015 comes at a time when the US and Europe are seeking to impose stringent sanctions on Iran to prevent further development of its nuclear armaments program.

Obama, a foreign policy naif, certainly knows how to pick his friends . . .