Even as the Obama administration continues to "weigh options," the forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) continue to press on, taking more towns in western and central Iraq, and posing an increasingly credible threat to take Baghdad. Meanwhile, the administration, after much soul searching and with the utmost reluctance, has decided to send 300 of what it calls "advisors" to support the Iraqi army, while other units have been dispatched to the Arabian Gulf as a "show of force." More than advisors, and certainly more than a "show" is required to have any hope of stopping the militants, much less rolling them back.

As the Obama administration decides how to respond to the latest crisis in Iraq, one question that has come up is how to respond to Iran's offer to collaborate with the United States on the matter. Official U.S. reactions have been mixed, and initial discussions have reportedly already taken place on the margins of the P5+1 nuclear negotiations in Vienna. In Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, however, I argued that it would be a mistake for the United States to embrace Iran's offer to collaborate, or even to create the appearance that we are doing so through prominent bilateral talks on the matter. Not only will further Iranian involvement do little to stem Iraq's crisis -- it could also make matters worse. As I note in the column, the US should want to see less, not more, Iranian involvement in regional conflicts, given Tehran's history of sowing instability and supporting terrorism.

President Obama faces so many foreign policy crises today that it almost seems mean spirited to suggest he also think about problems he may face tomorrow. It looks like he wants to get away: enjoying a golf outing on Father's Day in Rancho Mirage, slipping the leash (as he put it, likening himself to a circus bear) to get a burger without the knowledge or protection of his Secret Service detail, looking forward wistfully to sipping a tropical cocktail on a beach when his term is done. He has a full plate right now, however, and must defer retirement until January 21, 2017.  

The president was struggling domestically but especially globally. The daily headlines were delivering a daily rebuke of his signature policy in Iraq, and pressure was growing to accept that perhaps the strategy, long defended by the White House from partisan critics, might actually be failing. Challenges elsewhere in the region, especially in Iran, continued to compete for attention and, indeed, the Secretary of State had proposed a bold new approach to Iran, one that might change the dynamics in long-stalled negotiations over Iran's nuclear policy. 

The series of crises buffeting the global order is creating such a maelstrom that each week's emergency quickly becomes last week's forgotten headline. Every few days seem to bring a head-snapping change in geographic direction. The last three months alone have seen tensions over China's atavistic assertions of imperial privilege in East Asia; Russia's forcible rearrangement of borders at Eurasia's hinge point in Ukraine; the emergence of Boko Haram as a first-order terrorist threat in western Africa; American signals of retreat and unprecedented concessions to the Taliban in Afghanistan; and now the real threat that ISIS might succeed in creating a jihadist colony across large swaths of land formerly governed by Syria and Iraq, in the process potentially disintegrating the fragile Iraqi state and launching the broader Middle East into a catastrophic Sunni-Shia war.