Pentagon’s Top Mideast Policy Official Stepping Down Early Next Year

The Pentagon’s top Mideast policy official is stepping down, opening a key vacancy as the Obama administration struggles to rebuild ties with Israel and beat back the Islamic State.

Matt Spence, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Middle East policy, told his staff this week that he would be leaving the Pentagon early next year. His successor has yet to be named.

Whoever inherits the job will face an array of challenges. Washington’s relationship with Jerusalem has steadily deteriorated during the Obama presidency because of disagreements about the peace process and hit a new low last month when a pair of senior administration officials were quoted calling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a "chickenshit" and "coward."

The bigger issues are in neighboring Syria and Iraq, where months of U.S.-led airstrikes have yet to dislodge the Islamic State from the vast swaths of the two countries that it now controls. The White House said last week that it would double the number of American troops in Iraq to more than 3,000 as it revisits its strategy for beating back the group. The administration faces different challenges in Syria, where it is racing to train moderate rebels in time to battle the Islamic State just as it finds itself in a strange marriage of convenience with Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad, who shares the administration’s focus on destroying the militant group.

Spence, who took his current post three years ago, began his time in the administration working for then-National Security Advisers James Jones and Tom Donilon and maintains close ties to an array of senior officials in the Obama White House. He is widely expected to take a high-level post elsewhere in the administration, but his immediate plans aren’t yet known.

A senior defense official said Spence had been particularly effective at forging strong and effective relationships with senior military leaders and had been a sharp negotiator enhancing U.S. defense relationships in the Gulf.

"He played a pivotal role in negotiating the spring 2013 weapons agreement with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel — which was the second largest weapons deal in U.S. history at the time," the official said. "He was also a driving force in DoD’s efforts to work more closely with Gulf allies, which has been central in the allied contributions in the campaign against ISIL."