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3 A US detour via Syria
to Iran By Sami Moubayed
Dick Cheney, who spoke from
Australia of "all options" being on the table for
dealing with Iran.
Hersh has one striking
statement, quoting a source informed on the
"redirection" as saying, "It's not that we don't
want the Salafis to throw bombs, it's who they
throw them at - Hezbollah, Muqtada al-Sadr, Iran
and the Syrians, if they continue to work with
Hezbollah and Iran." Hersh adds that a special planning
committee has been created in
the offices of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff,
charged with creating a contingency bombing plan
for Iran that could be implemented "upon orders
from the president, within 24 hours".
If
10% of what is being said about the US attitude
toward Iran is correct, then all the noise made
about the Baghdad conference is nonsense. Iran
will continue to use the Iraqi battlefield to
pressure and embarrass the Americans. It is Iran's
only way to push forward with its nuclear program,
which, according to US intelligence, will be ready
in the form of a weapon by 2015.
Iran
wants to strike a deal with the Americans based on
the premise that it will help in Palestine,
Lebanon and Iraq on the condition that its gets a
free hand to pursue its national ambitions.
These areas of Iranian influence are a
double-edged sword for the Americans. Either Iran
can bring law and order to them - or unleash hell
- if the Americans decide to attack.
There's always Syria For these
reasons, although the Americans are talking with
Iran today, they would rather deal with Syria.
They know, however, that Damascus alone cannot
solve Iraq's problems, though it can be used to
moderate Iranian behavior.
For some time,
the world has been divided on what to do with the
Syrian-Iranian alliance. Some talk about breaking
it - but this would be too difficult. Others,
currently in the ascendency, want to invest in it.
They believe that Syria is a country that can be
talked to and which speaks reason.
It does
not have the ambitions of Iran, nor does it share
in the history of anti-American sentiment that is
high among Iranian leaders. True, Syria alone,
without the help of Saudi Arabia, cannot curb the
anger of the Iraqi Sunni street. Nor can it bring
the Shi'ite militias to order. It can, however,
better control its 605-kilometer border with Iraq
and also try to mediate between Sunnis and
Shi'ites.
More important, it can talk
reason to Iran. Syria's actions, unlike Iran's
often stubborn stance with regard to Washington,
have been encouraging. In September 2004, the
Syrian ambassador to Washington, Imad Moustapha,
delivered a letter from the Syrian leadership to
the Bush administration, expressing Syria's
willingness to cooperate in bring security and
stability to Iraq.
The US did not reply.
Again, he delivered the same message in 2005,
pointing out, however, that if the US wanted
Syrian cooperation, political engagement with
Damascus must ensue. Again, according to a recent
article by the Syrian ambassador, "the US was not
interested".
The US attitude changed as
the chaos and death toll rose in Iraq. The Iraq
Study Group Report stressed the need to talk to
Syria to help stabilize Iraq. Former secretaries
of state Madeleine Albright and Henry Kissinger
made similar appeals to the Bush White House.
Former secretary of state Colin Powell even gave
an interview to Newsweek, saying that during his
talks with the Syrians, right after the fall of
Baghdad in 2003, he received plenty from them -
shattering the long-lasting argument that says the
US found a non-cooperating Syria in the Middle
East.
Congress members from both sides
have recently either spoken in favor of talking to
Damascus or visited the Syrian capital to meet
with President Bashar al-Assad. Last month, Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid said that based on the
National Intelligence Estimate, "Syria is not
causing strife within Iraq." He added, "The
Syrians have nothing to do with it."
Attending the Baghdad conference was Step
1 in the right direction toward Syria. It was
accompanied by other gestures toward Damascus. One
was when Colonel William Crowe, who is in charge
of the border district between Syria and Iraq,
spoke to reporters about the number of foreign
fighters coming from across the Syrian border. He
said, "There is no large influx of foreign
fighters that come across the border."
One
day after the Baghdad conference, Ellen Sauerbrey,
the US assistant secretary of state for
population, refugees and migration, went to
Damascus with a team from the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees. It was the first such
visit by a senior US official since 2005. She
discussed Iraqi refugees, who number 1.5 million
in Syria alone, arriving at a rate of 40,000 per
month. Her visit spelled out dialogue, rather than
confrontation.
Skeptics suggest that the
US agreeing to meet with Iran and Syria at the
same venue was simply a cosmetic move to contain
Democratic ire in Congress, or a ploy to defuse
talk of a US confrontation with Iran and show that
it is pursuing diplomatic options.
The
truth might be more prosaic: the US is finally
admitting its faults and acknowledging that Iraq
cannot be stabilized without its neighbors.
Unfortunately, the "diplomacy to justify
aggression" option remains on the table.
Sami Moubayed is managing editor
of a new Syrian magazine, Forward.
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