Nuclear deal with Iran is key to improving Syria peace negotiations

GlobalPost

OWL’S HEAD, Maine—The first round of face-to-face peace talks in Geneva between the Syrian government and various opposition forces ended last week without any decisive results.

The demand by the United States and the forces we back that Syria's President Assad agree to relinquish power as the first step towards a solution is, of course, exactly backwards. That's why everyone went to Geneva: to find a compromise, not to submit to demands.

What you can't win on the battlefields of Syria you are surely not going to win on the playing fields of Geneva.

The United Nations negotiator, Lakhdar Brahimi, was unusually frank in his evaluation of progress: "We haven't made any progress to speak of. The gaps between the sides remain wide; there is no use pretending otherwise."

A second round remains unclear, though Brahimi has invited the warring sides to meet again this week in Geneva. There is not going to be a deal, so what each side will now be focusing on is assuring the public blame for failure rests with the other side.

"The [Assad] regime is responsible for the lack of real progress," The New York Times quoted both US and European officials.

The Syrian opposition spokesman echoed his western allies in saying that progress would only be possible if the Syrian government agreed to a transitional government, pointing the finger at Assad who "does not want a political solution."

For his part, Syria's foreign minister, wanting to sound constructive, said a second round was possible.

Doling out additional anti-Syrian ammunition, a senior US official complained that the Syrians have only given up 4 percent of the chemical weapons they had promised last fall to make available for destruction, which he termed "a credibility issue for the Syrian government." But then credibility issues abound: a few days earlier, in his State of the Union speech, President Obama had boasted about the success of his deal to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons. "American diplomacy, backed by the threat of force, is why Syria's chemical weapons are being eliminated."

As for force, there is, thankfully, no indication that any option under consideration includes US boots on the ground or bombs in the air. As a result, there remains the persistent claim, primarily from right-wing Republicans, that the tragedy of Syria is another example of the failure of Obama's foreign policy in the Middle East.

Not quite fair.

Obama did indeed show a lack of strategic coherence last summer when he threatened air strikes, and then backed off.

But once he reversed course, the Russians pushed Assad to agree to ditch his chemical weapons. Who's to say the threat wasn't what caused Assad to deal.

Obama's major miscue was early on, with his public demand that Assad had to go. It was perhaps an understandable mistake from a foreign policy neophyte.

As is becoming increasingly clear even in Washington, there are worse things than Assad remaining in power for the foreseeable future: Islamist extremists replacing him and setting up a solid base in Syria.

Those who believe they have a backward-looking crystal ball claim that if only the US had used military force early on, we could have dispatched Assad and his regime, replaced it with a nice handpicked bunch of Syrian moderates, then stood aside as over half a century of dictatorial rule transitioned, without further fighting, to a liberal democracy—just as we did so convincingly in Iraq with a few hundred thousand US troops and a few trillion US dollars.

Even now, there are those clamoring for a US military role. Iran is backing Assad with military support; Saudi Arabia and Qatar are pumping money and arms into various Sunni Islamist groups in Syria. Escalation is always a useful approach to an unwinnable civil war.
The fact is, the US cannot intervene in Syria in any constructive way.

The best hope for a peaceful outcome any time soon is through Tehran. Our nuclear talks with Iran are clearly important for what they might achieve between the West and Iran on the nuclear front, and for what they might avoid between Iran and Israel—and inevitably then the US—on the military front.

But they are also important for what they might ultimately achieve in Syria.

Our relationship with Iran over the past 35 years has been pretty much a zero-sum game. Meeting them half-way by accepting Iran’s right to a peaceful nuclear capability but not a military one could return them gradually to the western fold, where, less paranoid, they could play a more positive, or perhaps, less adversarial role in Syria.

Clearly, the Sunni-Shia split in the Arab World is growing. Its escalating violence is seen most clearly along its major fault line in Iraq, where nearly 800 people, mostly Shia, were killed in terrorist attacks last month alone while an al-Qaeda affiliate took over the Sunni town of Fallujah.

Nothing is simple in today's fast-moving Middle East, as past relationships are reshuffled before our eyes. Our own traditional close friend, oil-rich Saudi Arabia, is siding with its own traditional archenemy Israel in opposing any US rapprochement with Iran.

And Sunni Turkey, the most successful country in the region during the last few decades, is moving away from its secular and relatively democratic past into an autocratic and Islamist future, with contradictory ties to Kurdish Iraq and Shia Iran.

A little perspective is needed: Saudi Arabia, which sees itself as the pre-eminent Sunni champion of the Arabs, practices Wahhabism, an extreme form of Islam that no other Sunni state wants. Iran is the most populous Shia state in the region, but Persians are not Arabs, and Arab Shiites will not ally themselves with Iran unless forced to do so.

An end to the Syrian civil war and a lessening of the growing Sunni-Shia split are in fact more important at this point than a resolution to the 65-year old Israel-Arab confrontation. The key first step is a nuclear deal with Iran. One can't help but admire Secretary of State Kerry's ambition. He's got three Middle Eastern balls in the air at once.

Maybe it's time for him to prioritize, to gradually let the Palestinian problem slide to the back burner, releasing both sides, without recriminations, from the April expiration date with the suggestion that now is the time to pause, absorb whatever progress has been made.

A two-state solution has waited half a century; it can wait another year.

Iran needs to be resolved now; that's where the expiration date is real. That's where Kerry, with Obama's strong support, needs 100 percent of his focus.

A successful conclusion to the Iran talks can open up possibilities on the Syrian front. Of course, it's a long shot. And Congress is no help. But in a region in upheaval, there are no easy choices, no sure shots.

Mac Deford is retired after a career as a Foreign Service officer, an international banker, and a museum director. He lives at Owls Head, Maine and still travels frequently to the Middle East.

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