Syria: Where Is President Obama?

By Elliott Abrams

This commentary was published in The Council on Foreign Relations blog on 24/04/2011

On Friday, the Syrian regime killed another hundred peaceful protesters, and then fired at people attending their funerals on Saturday, killing yet another dozen.

What has been the Obama Administration’s response?  To toughen up its rhetoric a bit, but to do nothing.

On Friday, after an especially weak performance by the President’s press spokesman (who contrasted the terrible situation in Libya with what he apparently thought was a far better one in Syria), the White House issued a new statement from the President.

“The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms the use of force by the Syrian government against demonstrators,”  the statement said.  And, “We strongly oppose the Syrian government’s treatment of its citizens,” it concluded.  What’s wrong with that?

First, where is the President?  This statement carefully avoided using the word “I” and was handed out by the White House.  The President’s appearance on camera, delivering such words personally so that they can be carried into Syria on al Jazeera and YouTube, would be much more effective.  With hundreds now dead in the streets of Syria, it is past time for him to speak.

Second, the Friday statement continues to appeal to Assad: “We call on President Assad to change course now, and heed the calls of his own people.”  That might have been acceptable 300 deaths ago, but it is now absurd.  The President called on Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, a long-time American ally, to leave; why the reticence about Assad, a long-time American enemy?

Third, the White House statement is just words.  It does not promise, suggest, or announce any actions.  This Administration has spent two years engaging with the Assad regime and loosening U.S. sanctions on it.  “The World Trade Organization’s 153 members granted Syria observer status after the U.S. dropped its opposition in a sign the Obama administration is softening its stance toward the Middle Eastern nation,” Bloomberg reported a year ago, noting also that “President Barack Obama’s administration has already loosened export-license curbs on aircraft repairs for state-owned Syrian Arab Airways.” So this  Administration, having followed a foolish policy of engagement with this barbaric regime, has a special obligation to correct its course.  The first action should be recalling our ambassador to Syria, who should never have been given his recess appointment to the post last year.  Second, the United States should be calling immediately for special meetings of the UN Security Council and Human Rights Council, to bring additional focus on the murders of peaceful protesters in Syria and seek sanctions against the regime, in the hope that this attention will constrain its bloody hand.

As in Tunisia, as in Egypt, as in Libya and Bahrain, the President has been slow to react.  This is inexcusable in the face of the mounting death toll—and the very real gains for the United States if the vicious Assad regime falls.

Bandar's Return

By John Hannah
This commentary was published in The Foreign Policy on 22/04/2011

As my friend Simon Henderson has been chronicling, "Bandar is back." Sidelined in recent years by some combination of illness and palace intrigue, Saudi Arabia's legendary former ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, is once again a major presence on the world stage. The Obama administration would be wise to take note. Working in tandem with the United States, Bandar's over-sized talents could prove a huge asset in efforts to shape the Middle East Revolts of 2011 in a direction that serves U.S. interests. Put to other uses, however, those same skills could lead to results that Washington may find, well, much less agreeable.

The reason that Bandar has been urgently called back into service is not hard to fathom. While many in the West have seen the promise of democracy and freedom in the political turmoil roiling Arab lands, the Saudis see little but disaster. They view everything through a single prism: their existential struggle with a menacing Iran that is hell-bent on collapsing the Middle East's existing order, unseating the House of Saud, and asserting a controlling influence over Islam's holiest sites in Mecca and Medina. For the Kingdom, there really is only one yardstick by which to measure emerging developments: Are they a net plus or minus for the Persian theocracy across the Gulf that seeks to assert its hegemony throughout the region?

From that vantage, the scorecard has not been good. The regime of Hosni Mubarak -- longtime Saudi ally; pillar of regional stability; stalwart opponent of the mullahs -- is gone. Yemen, on the Kingdom's southern border, teeters on the brink of anarchy. Most threatening of all, just miles off the Saudi coast, in tiny Bahrain -- a virtual protectorate of the Kingdom and the gateway to its oil-rich eastern province -- the Sunni al-Khalifa monarchy was pushed to the brink by Shiite protesters who, cheered on by Iran, dabbled dangerously with the idea of regime change. Brazenly challenged to defend one of their clearest redlines, the Saudis responded predictably, with a large-scale military intervention that underwrote a brutal crackdown to snuff out the escalating crisis. 

Exacerbating everything for Riyadh has been its overarching loss of confidence in the reliability of American power. Against all Saudi advice, the Obama administration actively worked to help engineer Mubarak's ouster. In Bahrain, senior U.S. officials were publicly pressing the ruling family to make bolder concessions to the protesters -- literally hours before Saudi tanks began to roll. More recently, a tardy and hesitant exercise of U.S. military might has failed to dislodge Libya's Colonel Qaddafi, the man who just a few years ago contracted the assassination of Saudi King Abdullah. And in stark contrast to Washington's very public effort to push aside its longstanding Egyptian ally -- "yesterday," to quote Robert Gibbs -- Team Obama has kept an embarrassingly low profile in the face of sustained protests and bloodshed in anti-American Syria, a regime that proudly serves as Iran's closest ally in the Arab world.

Facing a situation where the region appears to be spiraling out of control, and its most important outside partner veers between weakness, incompetence, and reckless naivete, the House of Saud has circled the wagons, brought all hands on deck, called in the A Team -- choose your metaphor. But it all leads back to Bandar -- one of the most dynamic, creative, and aggressive statesmen of the past 30 years -- being summoned out of diplomatic purgatory to help the Kingdom cope with what it sees as an unprecedented crisis. Make no mistake, the Saudis now feel themselves very much at war with Iran, albeit by other means, and the stakes as viewed from Riyadh are nothing less than the future of the Arab Middle East and the survival of the House of Saud. And the force of nature that is Bandar bin Sultan has clearly been placed at the forefront of the Kingdom's battle plan. 

I've lost count of how many times people have asked me in recent years, "Whatever happened to Bandar?" Now he's suddenly everywhere. Earlier this month, Secretary of Defense Gates visited Riyadh to see King Abdullah. Bandar was there. Days later, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon followed to deliver a message to Abdullah from President Obama. Again, Bandar was prominently featured in the photo-op. More interestingly -- and undoubtedly more worrisome -- at the end of March, in the wake of the Saudi intervention in Bahrain, Bandar was dispatched to Pakistan, China and India to rally support for the Kingdom's hard line approach to the region's unrest.

Bandar's formidable skills in the service of a Saudi Arabia that feels itself increasingly cornered and unable to rely on U.S. protection is a formula for trouble -- made even worse when the likes of Pakistan and China are thrown into the mix. No one should forget that, in the late 1980s, it was Bandar who secretly brokered the delivery of Chinese medium-range missiles to the Kingdom, totally surprising Washington and nearly triggering a major crisis with Israel. The danger today, of course, is that the Saudis feel sufficiently threatened and alone to engage in similar acts of self-help. Would they seek to modernize their ballistic missile force? Even worse, would the Kingdom go shopping for nuclear weapons or, at a minimum, invite Pakistan to deploy part of its nuclear arsenal to the Kingdom? Analysts have long speculated that Saudi money financed the Pakistani nuclear weapons program in exchange for a promise that when it became necessary, its fruits would be put at Riyadh's disposal. As the Middle East convulses and Iran relentlessly inches closer to achieving a nuclear weapons capability, has that time finally arrived?

Even short of these extreme scenarios, other troubling possibilities exist. During his trip to Pakistan, Bandar reportedly discussed contingencies under which thousands of additional Pakistani security forces might be dispatched to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia for the purpose of, in effect, cracking Shiite heads. Iran condemned the news, ratcheting up tensions further and increasing the risk that the situation could erupt into a full-blown Sunni-Shiite war. Additionally, no one can discount the danger that, with its back against the wall, the Kingdom might not once again fire up the old Sunni jihadist network and point it in the general direction of Shiite Iran -- leaving the rest of the world to deal with the nasty, unintended consequences of well-financed takfirists run amok.

To minimize the risk that any of these dangers actually comes to pass, the Obama administration would be well advised to focus like a laser beam on repairing its breach of trust with Riyadh. The visits of Gates and Donilon to the Kingdom clearly had that intent and, by most accounts, succeeded in stemming the hemorrhaging in the relationship. But the effort will need to be sustained.

The administration would also be smart to re-establish a very strong line of communication to Bandar now that he's again playing a major role in Saudi policy. Bandar working without reference to U.S. interests is clearly cause for concern. But Bandar working as a partner with Washington against a common Iranian enemy is a major strategic asset. Drawing on Saudi resources and prestige, Bandar's ingenuity and bent for bold action could be put to excellent use across the region in ways that reinforce U.S. policy and interests: through economic and political measures that weaken the Iranian mullahs; undermine the Assad regime; support a successful transition in Egypt; facilitate Qaddafi's departure; reintegrate Iraq into the Arab fold; and encourage a negotiated solution in Yemen. Even in Bahrain, if anyone in the Saudi hierarchy is going to understand over time that a stable solution must eventually go beyond repression to include a renewed effort at real reform, it is likely to be Bandar.

In April 2002, then-Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia arrived in Texas for a meeting with President Bush. It was a tense time in U.S.-Saudi relations. The Crown Prince was said to be deeply disturbed by raging Israeli-Palestinian violence, and angered by President Bush's failure to heed his pleas to take aggressive action to stop it. The claim was heard that American passivity in the face of Israeli "aggression" was allegedly empowering Iran and rendering the Saudi alliance with Washington increasingly untenable.

The day before the summit, a front-page story appeared in the New York Times declaring that "Saudi to Warn Bush Over Israel Policy." In the article, an unnamed senior Saudi official offered this inflammatory threat:"

 It is a mistake to think that our people will not do what is necessary to survive, and if that means we move to the right of bin Laden, so be it; to the left of Qaddafi, so be it; or fly to Baghdad and embrace Saddam like a brother, so be it. It's damned lonely in our part of the world, and we can no longer defend our relationship to our people.

Everyone immediately knew that the quote belonged to the Saudi Ambassador, Prince Bandar. Was it bombastic? Yes. Enraging? Certainly. But did it also reflect at least part of the Hobbesian reality faced by American foreign policy, however distasteful? Unfortunately, it did. So long as that remains the case, the United States would be wise to do its best not to leave Saudi Arabia, or Prince Bandar, feeling lonely. Putting the princes's 2002 proposition to the test is a risk that no one should be eager to run.   

Libya Needs Serious Diplomatic Efforts, Not Military Intervention

Abdel Bari Atwan writes: It has now become imperative to find a suitable exit for Gaddafi and ensure a peaceful transition of power
This commentary was published in The Gulf News on 24/04/2011 

As the well-polished shoes of several dozen British and French plain-clothes ‘military advisers' hit the ground in Libya, it may not be long before they are joined by the boots of uniformed ground troops. As many commentators have pointed out, the arrival of US ‘special military representatives' in Vietnam in 1961 preceded an eventual invasion by half a million American soldiers.

Nor would it be the first time that Britain and France have been so closely involved in the fortunes of Libya. From 1943-1951, the administration of the former Italian colony was divided between the two countries, with the US establishing a significant military base near Tripoli (from where its specialists continued the research into Libya's suspected vast oil reserves initiated by the Italians in the 1930s).

We are assured that the imminent dispatch of 600 marines and UK war ships to Cyprus is ‘unrelated' to the present crisis in Libya. The deployment of coalition ground troops is not, of course, within the remit of UN Security Council resolution 1973; but then, neither is the regime change resoundingly endorsed by Presidents Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy and Prime Minister David Cameron in an article recently which included this unambiguous statement: ‘Gaddafi must go. And go for good.'

Resolution 1973 allowed for a no-fly zone to protect Libyan citizens and it succeeded in averting the imminent massacre in Benghazi. Now, however, Gaddafi has adapted his military tactics to evade aerial bombardment — by hiding tanks and taking the battle to the heart of the cities for example — and the world can only look on in horror as his forces slaughter the citizens of Misrata.

Whilst considering what steps Nato might take next I remembered a curious tale I heard from a British taxi driver in 1991 during the first Gulf War. His late father, an architect, had been involved in the 1930s construction of King Gazi's Flowers Palace, in Baghdad; the day before I met him, the taxi driver's home had been visited by MI6 agents who were hoping the family had kept some of the architect's plans of the palace. They wanted to pinpoint possible hiding places of Saddam Hussain who had hunkered down in it.

The idea that foreign special forces might assassinate or spirit Colonel Gaddafi away is not as far-fetched as it may sound. Only last week, French agents kidnapped the stubborn ex-president Laurent Gbagbo of the Ivory Coast who refused to leave office despite having lost the election. The pointed reference to the International Criminal Court in their Op/Ed may suggest that Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy hope to see an abducted Gaddafi brought before it.

Former Libyan intelligence chief, Mousa Koussa, who defected to the UK on March 30 where he was questioned by British and French intelligence officers, may have provided valuable information about the movements of Colonel Gaddafi and his family. But Gaddafi would certainly prove a difficult target — his Bab Al Azizya compound is a jungle of tunnels and nuclear bunkers. Furthermore it took the US two years to finally hunt down Saddam Hussain, and Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri remain at large 10 years into the ‘war on terror'.

This brings us back to the ‘mission creep' currently gathering pace in Libya. With its no-fly zone and aerial strikes Nato has taken sides in what is, effectively, a civil war, but has failed to help the rebels overthrow Gaddafi or, apparently, weaken his resolve to fight to the bitter end.

Nato motives

The majority of Libyans long to see Gaddafi deposed and expelled from Libya, and for reform, justice and democracy to replace the dictatorship. Some express their desire at public protests and are prepared to die for their cause, others only do so behind closed doors.

Yet the involvement of Nato may, in the long run, hinder the rebels' progress towards freedom, by prolonging and widening the conflict — we have only to look at Iraq to see that such interventions do not provide a ready-fix solution. The uprising's impetus is unquestionably impassioned and noble, but doubts persist about the provenance of some of the rebel leaders and this must concern us. Commander Colonel Khalifa Haftar, for example, has spent the past 20 years in Langley, Virginia, HQ to the CIA which backed and financed his Contra-style militia, the Libyan National Army. Other key figures in the rebellion were, until weeks ago, among the regime's most savage and enthusiastic quashers of dissent.

We must seriously question the Nato countries' motives for involvement too. Can it be a simple co-incidence that Colonel Gaddafi — adept in using oil concessions to play nations off against each other — was courting the Brics countries (Brazil, Russia, Indian China and South Africa) in February and March, offering them lucrative contracts over US and European contenders? This may perhaps have contributed to both the West's sudden realisation that Gaddafi is a brutal tyrant and the coy refusal of the Brics nations to support resolution 1973?

And where are the Arab states in all of this? Many are armed and equipped with the latest military hardware — much of it purchased from the US and Britain. The US initially made Arab involvement a pre-requisite for action. Shamefully, the Arab League — having initially endorsed the UN Security Council's resolution — has done and said little since.

Military action should neither have preceded nor replaced the serious and prolonged diplomatic effort which is now imperative to find a suitable exit for Gaddafi and a peaceful transition of power — ideally to a government which will not include any of the colonel's clan or be under the thumb of any western power.

Tens of thousands of Libyans have already died in the present crisis. Let us not forget that every drop of blood spilt in the course of this civil conflict is Arab and Muslim blood and therefore seek a speedy resolution.  

Abdel Bari Atwan is editor of the pan-Arab newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi.

Palestinian Membership In The UN

By Musa Keilani

This commentary was published in The Jordan Times on 24/04/2011

 

The debate over the Palestinians’ quest for international recognition of their statehood got into high gear last week. The administration of US President Barack Obama offered the golden advice, saying it did not think that it was a “good idea” for the Palestinians to unilaterally seek recognition for independent statehood from the United Nations before reaching a peace agreement with Israel.

Washington did not give its support to an initiative launched by Britain, France and Germany for the international Quartet to outline the basis for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. The proposal calls for an immediate halt to Israel’s settlement activity in the occupied territories, a solution to the question of Palestinian refugees, and agreement on the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of both countries and on borders before the 1967 war, with approved territorial exchanges.

The plan also called for security arrangements that respect Palestinian sovereignty, and protect Israel’s security and prevent a resurgence of Palestinian armed resistance.

The US administration did not think a Quartet meeting would produce anything useful in terms of getting the talks restarted. But Washington very conveniently sidestepped the reality that the very process of laying out the basis for a peace accord would have encouraged the Palestinians to resume negotiations since they would have known what to expect.

The US also blocked the endorsement of a resolution by the Security Council that would have condemned Israel’s colonialisation of the occupied territories.

These actions are not compatible with the declared US commitment to international principles, but then, one has become used to the reality that Washington applies such commitment very selectively, particularly when it comes to Israel.

One is tempted to ask the US what, indeed, would be a “good idea” for the Palestinians to follow.
In simple terms, Washington would like to have the Palestinians reenter direct negotiations with Israel, go through the motions without being able to secure their territorial and political rights, accept the Israeli version of a “peace” agreement, settle down to whatever is given to them and hold their peace forever.

During the negotiations, the US could be expected to twist the Palestinians’ arm whenever they balk at accepting Israel’s conditions. It has been the case since the 1993 Oslo agreement: Israel promises something, offers something far less than it promises and the US steps in to pressure the Palestinians to accept even less than what Israel is offering.

One could argue that such was the case during previous US administrations and that Obama is different. That is a laugh, because Obama is one of the US presidents who had no option but to back down in a confrontation with Israel over the peace process. And he found out the hard way that Israel had powerful friends in the US political establishment who could make life difficult for any American head of state.

Obama might not have much liking for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but he has no choice but to put up a smiling face and host him at the White House. And that also means that the US president had better uphold Israel’s needs, demands and conditions without question.

Therefore, it is no wonder that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas rejected Israel’s offer of a state with “temporary” borders; he knew he could not count on the US to support the legitimate rights of the Palestinians in the negotiations in the interim period. Abbas knows that the Palestinians would be stuck with whatever “temporary” borders are offered by Israel and that would be the end of the Palestinian struggle for liberation and independent statehood in the true international meaning of the term.

He and his diplomatic envoys reiterated last week that the Palestinians would like to have a peace treaty with Israel by September, as proposed by the Quartet, and short of that, they would go to the UN Security Council for recognition of their independent statehood.

A sweeping and major turning point would indeed by recognition of a Palestinian state bythe Quartet itself.

According to American and European diplomats quoted by The Los Angeles Times, if peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians are not renewed, the Quartet formally recognises a Palestinian state.

Is it a possibility? At best, it is doubtful, since the US is also bound by its “strategic” relationship with Israel to refuse taking any decision that is not endorsed by Israel. Therefore, the best thing Palestinians have is to follow the course of UN recognition of their state. Of course, without a recommendation by the Security Council, they would not be given recognition by the General Assembly.

According to Abbas, the Palestinians would have the support of more than 140 countries by September, compared to the 128 they require in order to qualify for UN membership. He also says that Britain and France would accept such a state. Therefore, his best option is to go to the Security Council with such strong support that the big powers would not be in a position to reject the Palestinian request outright.

Netanyahu is expected to make a speech at a joint session of the US Congress. He is planning to unveil a new peace initiative, but one fails to see what novelty he could introduce, since the Israeli position has already been made clear. He could indeed dust off his offer of a temporary state, but that has already been rejected by the Palestinians.

One thing is clear: something has to happen by September, the timeline set by Obama and accepted by both Israelis and Palestinians fora peace agreement. All indicators show that Washington will not veto a resolution for Palestinian statehood, though it might not support the move, as an Obama adviser, Martin Indyk, says. If nothing happens and if UN membership for the state of Palestine is aborted, then the world could expect a resurgence of armed resistance by the Palestinians, with Abbas unable to do anything about it even if he wanted to. That would definitely mean a threat to world peace and security.

Under the so-called “Uniting for Peace” resolution, the General Assembly can take action if it believes the Security Council failed to preempt a threat to world peace and security. And that could mean Palestinian membership in the UN.

El Baradei's Call

By S. H. Moulana
This commentary was published in The Arab News on 23/04/2011

Nobel Peace Laureate Mohamed El Baradei has suggested that those who were part of the Bush administration should be probed for war crimes in connection with Iraq.

The former chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in his new memoir condemns the lies uttered and the deception practiced by the Bush White House in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion. Everybody would agree with his view that the Bush administration officials should face international criminal investigation for a war of aggression.

El Baradei accused US leaders of deliberate distortion of the truth when they claimed that Iraq possessed doomsday weapons despite contrary evidence collected by him and other arms inspectors inside the country. The head of the IAEA from 1997 to 2009, El Bardei was a rallying figure during the recent Egyptian uprising that deposed President Hosni Mubarak.

In his 321-page memoir, he tells of an October 2002 meeting he and the UN chief arms inspector, Hans Blix had with then US Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and others, at which the American leaders sought to convert the UN mission into a cover for what would be, in essence, a US-directed inspection process. The UN officials resisted, and their teams went on to conduct some 700 inspections of scores of potentials weapons sites in Iraq, finding absolutely no evidence to support the US claims of weapons of mass destruction.

El Baradei says that he was aghast to see the US attitude before the March 2003 invasion, which he calls aggression where there was no imminent threat, a war in which hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed.

But George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair will never be hauled to The Hague as Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic was, because we have two different systems of justice — one for the US and UK and one for Asian and African nations and small powers of Europe.

Syria: There is No Benefit From The "Resistance"

By Tariq Alhomayed
This commentary was published in Asharq al-Awsat on 23/04/2011

What a blood Friday in Syria! This was the response given by Syria civilians yesterday who were defenseless in the face of the regime's suppression and violence. It seems that today we are facing the true definition of the "resistance" slogan that has often been raised by Damascus, on all levels. It seems, according to what is happening in Syria, that the "resistance" means a regime "resisting" its people, and their demands for legitimate reform, even through the use of arms!
 
The Syrian regime did everything in its power to convince the people of Syrian, and the world at large, that what is happening in the country is a conspiracy and an extremist terrorist operation; whilst at others time it even described what is happening as being a Zionist – American conspiracy. However nobody has been convinced by such talk, for rather than the Syrian regime rushing to make real reform, taking decisions that will have a direct impact upon the lives of its citizens, the Syrian regime has wasted one opportunity after another and fallen into the same trap as others, from the Ben Ali regime to the Mubarak regime. Just like Libya and Yemen today, the Syrian regime has failed to pay attention to the time factor, which is the most important thing! As a result of this, it is only natural that we are seeing the ceiling of the demands being raised today in Syria, with the protestors now beginning to chant, "the people want the fall of the regime."
 
Despite the media being prevented from internally covering what is happening in Syria, and the attempts being made to hide the facts on the ground, the images and videos being provided by the protestors via the new media reveals to us that the situation in Syria has begun to move in a different direction that is not in the regime's interests. This is illustrated clearly by the content of the banners lifted in Syrian cities, as well as the size of the crowds taking part in demonstrations throughout a number of different cities, as well as the participation of a wide spectrum of Syrian society in these protests. All of this is an indication that the regime is in trouble, especially as Syria is a state that is based upon security and fear.
 
As evidence of the difficult situation that the Syrian regime finds itself in, and the exacerbation of this situation, the regime has begun promoting the theory that Hezbollah could take action again Israel. Syria is doing so in order to find a way out, easing the pressure it is facing, and avoiding the trouble of implementing a real change in Syria, which would represent a genuine disaster for Iran and Hezbollah. However in the event of Hezbollah taking any such action [against Israel], it would be difficult to think that this could have a positive impact on the region, whether with regards to Iran and Hezbollah, not to mention Syria, for at this point the game will be being played openly, and everybody's cards will be exposed, and the consequences of this will be huge for Hezbollah and particularly Syria, even if Hezbollah is acting solely at the request of Iran, and Damascus is not involved.
 
Many illusions and slogans have been exposed in our region as a result of the political earthquake whose aftershocks are still being felt in a number of Arab states. The most prominent false slogan to have been exposed is the slogan of the "resistance" for if what we are seeing in Syria is the "resistance" of the regime against innocent Syrian citizens, or if the resistance is what has Hezbollah has done, and is doing, in Lebanon, particularly if this results in the organization opening a military front with Israel in order to save Iran's allies in the our region, than we must say that there is no benefit from the resistance!

Syria, Between Ankara And Tehran

By Walid Choucair
This commentary was published in al-Hayat on 22/04/2011

 

The transformations, revolutions and popular uprisings in some Arab countries are having huge repercussions for the geo-strategic map of the region. Meanwhile, the demonstrations that are taking place in Syria, and the regime’s method of dealing with them, are leading to hugely-important calculations, both in the short and long term, on the part of leading regional powers that are concerned with these developments.

Gulf countries have dealt with protests in Bahrain, and Iranian intervention there, as an act taking place in the Gulf arena. These countries, led by Saudi Arabia, are worried by the extreme conditions of crisis in Yemen as something taking place in their back yard, and are undertaking mediation in the framework of successive initiatives that they have put forward. But the Syrian situation constitutes an extremely important arena for two influential powers in the region, namely Iran and Turkey. The unfolding of events in Syria is cause for innumerable calculations for Ankara and Tehran.

It is no secret that the leadership in Turkey, based on a desire for stability in Syria and the preservation of the current order there, led by President Bashar Assad, have prompted and encouraged, and even pressured, in the direction of seeing the regime respond to the demands for reform, even though this is causing resentment in Damascus. It is also no secret that Ankara is anxious about the repercussions of any security upheaval or escalation of the situation in Syria along the two countries’ 700-kilometer-long border, among the minorities that are embraced by Turkish society. This anxiety is connected to the long-term security of Turkey’s rulers, and not the democratic change that the Turkish model has come to represent for the world; the Justice and Development Party believes that the Syrians have learned lessons from the experience of their neighbor.

Needless to say, the upheaval in Syria affects Turkey’s political and economic interests, since Damascus is the gateway to Ankara in these arenas in the Middle East. Turkish exports have grown by billions of dollars and the country’s role has grown larger in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and in treating the Lebanese crisis, not to mention in Iraq. All of this has rendered the call for the Syrian leadership to respond to reforms, and quickly, an urgent matter; recent visitors to the Turkish capital say Ankara will continue to “lobby” for these steps, relentlessly.

Meanwhile, Iran is also anxious, about the possibility that the developments will lead to a new political formula in Syria, which will have an impact on its role and influence in the Levant, due to the likely impact on the role of Hezbollah in Lebanon. This anxiety is understandable, and legitimate. In parallel to Turkey’s advice to the Syrian leadership to accelerate the pace of reform steps, Iran has closely followed the developments in all parts of Syria. The close ties between the two countries in recent years, at the political, economic, social, military and security levels, have also allowed it, along with the leadership of Hezbollah, to give advice to the Syrians about how to deal with the popular protests. The Iranian anxiety about the consequences of these protests can only been explained by Tehran’s accusation that America and Zionism are conspiring against Syria, with Iran’s allies in Beirut repeating this accusation.

The possibility that the current Syrian regime will change its behavior, instead of experiencing regime change, has Iran anxious about the transformations in Syria. This is taking place amid talk that the concerned countries, which favor the survival of the regime, want to see its reform moves, which will gain Damascus their support, accompanied by a policy of moving away from Iran. What increases this concern even more, to the degree of outright tension, is that Ankara has seized two Iranian planes loaded with weapons that were headed for Syria, and announced the move. However, it was not disclosed that the Turkish authorities also seized another shipment of weapons that were being smuggled over the land border to Syria.

Although one might assume that Iran is advising Damascus to deal with the protests the way it dealt with those of the Iranian opposition, Tehran is also keen to see Syria continue as an arena that is in the interest of its regional policies; this is not unrelated to its support for seeing the Syrian leadership adopt a policy of reform, even if belated, which is followed by a hard-line policy after each reform step, or a carrot-and-stick approach.

The Syrian leadership’s decision, between the advice of Ankara, and that of Tehran, is the decisive point here. Will Damascus try once again to have it both ways, or will it listen to one set of advice, and not the other?