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2 Syria flirts with the
West By Iason Athanasiadis
TEHRAN - A series of visits by Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad to staunch US allies
Yemen and the United Arab Emirates culminating in
talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in
Moscow this week is prompting speculation that
Syria has finally decided to leave the Iranian
orbit.
"Bashar was recently invited to
Tehran by [Iranian President Mahmud] Ahmadinejad
as part of the Iranian effort to demonstrate
regional leadership - but he failed to show up,
without even offering
a
public excuse," said one Washington foreign-policy
insider. "If you put this together with the 'Obaid
initiative' to mobilize Arab action to stop Iran's
encroachment in Iraq, it almost has the appearance
of a regionally coordinated campaign."
He
was referring to a controversial op-ed in the US
media by Nawaf Obaid, a consultant to recently
departed Saudi ambassador to the US Prince Turki
al-Faisal, in which Obaid warned that Saudi Arabia
would intervene on behalf of Sunni Arabs in Iraq
if the United States withdrew prematurely.
Assad's talks in Yemen revolved around
regional flash points, from infighting in the
Palestinian territories to instability in Lebanon,
Iran's nuclear program, Iraq and Somalia. The
visit came just two days after the arrival in
Yemen of US assistant secretary for Near Eastern
affairs David Welch for talks with President Ali
Abdalla Salah.
"I'll leave it to President
Salah to convey their views to President Assad,"
Welch said in a reference to Washington's close
Yemeni ally. "They know the views of the United
States."
Syria has come under immense
pressure in the past two years since the
assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik
al-Hariri, for which the international community
blamed Damascus. Lacking a strong army and without
the oil supplies that could guarantee strong
foreign-currency receipts, Syria has been
identified as the weakest link in the alliance
that runs from Tehran to the Mediterranean and
which opposes US influence in the region.
"President Assad also knows what is in the
wind," said Paul Sullivan, adjunct professor of
security studies at Georgetown University. "There
is pressure on him to make a lot of changes but,
as in much in Syria, changes in politics,
diplomacy and the like are like economic reforms:
it is like watching the grass grow slowly only to
see it cut back quickly."
A Syrian
realignment away from Iran and toward Washington's
vision for the region would disrupt the
uninterrupted land-bridge of Iranian influence
that extends from Tehran across Iraq and Syria to
Lebanon. As Iran's strongest Arab ally, Syria has
acted as a diplomatic go-between. It is also an
open market for Iranian products and industries.
Quoting from a classified two-page
document leaked to Time, the magazine argues that
the US administration has identified "a
potentially galvanizing issue for ... critics of
the Assad regime in Syria's legislative elections
in March 2007" and is already "supporting regular
meetings of internal and diaspora Syrian
activists" in Europe. The document bluntly
expresses the hope that "these meetings will
facilitate a more coherent strategy and plan of
actions for all anti-Assad activists".
"The Baker-Hamilton report called on the
US to 'flip' Syria - to woo Syria away from Iran,"
said a prominent expert on Iran who worked in the
Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter administrations. "If
that's what's going on, the UAE visit after the
snub of Iran may be early signs of success."
Among other things, the report of the Iraq
Study Group, co-chaired by former US secretary of
state James Baker and former congressman Lee
Hamilton, recommended that the US engage Syria and
Iran over the problems in Iraq.
Several
Iranian international-relations experts contacted
by Asia Times Online declined to comment on the
subject, one citing the current political
situation. But Hasan Akhtari, Iran's ambassador to
Damascus, told the London-based pan-Arab newspaper
Al-Hayat that "unlike what some people think, we
aren't worried about the deterioration of
Syrian-Iranian relations because we know that this
isn't happening and will not happen"/
Surging ahead Syria's
geopolitical sway has surged ahead in the
aftermath of last summer's war between its
Hezbollah ally in Lebanon and Israel. Syria's
political class is almost unanimous that now is
the
