Top Obama Official Wendy Sherman Blames Trump For U.S. Embassy Attack

Sherman wasn't the lone Democrat to use the Baghdad siege to knock Trump.

Elizabeth Warren and Tim Kaine also took to Twitter to thrust the blame onto President Trump for the attack.

The New York Times also empathetically framed the Iran-backed militia who stormed the Embassy as "mourners."

Here's what Sherman wrote in her USA Todayop-ed:

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo started having a tough 2020 only one day into the new year. He was forced to postpone his trip to Kyiv, Ukraine, this week to attend to the new crisis in Iraq. As fraught as Pompeo’s visit to Kyiv was going to be, in the shadow of the impeachment battle, Iraq trumped Kyiv after the New Year’s Eve attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

It is President Donald Trump’s failed policy toward Iran that has brought us to this combustible moment.

Iraq is a tough country under any circumstances, made more so after the 2003 U.S. invasion that upended the Middle East and cost so much in U.S. lives and treasure. But Iraq also created strange bedfellows. The U.S. troops worked alongside Iraqi and Iranian militia to destroy a common enemy, the Islamic State terrorism group. And even as Washington was confronting Iran over its nuclear program and malign behavior elsewhere, we maintained an uneasy coexistence in Iraq, where Tehran holds considerable sway.

That uneasy balance was destroyed when Trump withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, better known as the Iran nuclear deal. Like other critics of the agreement, Trump believed it should have resolved all of America’s issues with Iran. Trump believed we were giving Tehran benefits without a requisite return. He thought a "maximum pressure" campaign would ultimately bring Iran to its knees, or incite a popular uprising against its theocratic regime.

The Hillhas more to say about Sherman's blame on Trump for the U.S. Embassy attack:

        

 Wendy Sherman, former under secretary for political affairs during the Obama administration, wrote for USA Today that Trump's failed attempts to deal with Iran and his withdrawal from the nuclear deal with Tehran resulted in a "combustible moment."

"It is President Donald Trump’s failed policy toward Iran that has brought us to this combustible moment," she wrote. 

"Even as the United States was confronting Iran over its nuclear program and malign behavior elsewhere, we maintained an uneasy coexistence in Iraq, where Tehran holds considerable sway," Sherman continued, adding that the coexistence "was destroyed when Trump withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, better known as the Iran nuclear deal."

Sherman went on to fault Trump for "diminishing" the State Department and other agencies she said the Obama administration relied on for diplomacy in such regions.

A former top official at the State Department wrote Thursday that violent protests that targeted the U.S. Embassy in Iraq were the result of President Trump's foreign policies.