Page 2 of 2 Syria
flirts with the West By Iason
Athanasiadis
best time to clinch a peace
deal with Israel, as evidenced by Assad's frequent
calls for peace negotiations with that country.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem was
quoted in the US media this week as saying
Damascus is ready to talk to Israel "with no
precondition". Syria has previously demanded
Israel's readiness to make territorial concessions
before any talks began.
"The Assads of
Syria are currently being wooed by one and all,
but soon everybody will be wowed by how little
they actually have
to
offer and by how bent they are on overplaying
their hand," said Ammar Abdulhamid, a Syrian
dissident and non-resident fellow of the Saban
Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings
Institute. Abdulhamid has been accused of being a
US-administration-sponsored proxy in its
regime-change strategy against Syria, a charge he
strongly denies.
Closer ties with Israel
will surely come at a cost for Damascus' alliance
with fiercely anti-Israeli Tehran. At a
question-and-answer session with former Iranian
deputy foreign minister Mahmoud Vaezi in the
Iranian capital last year, he told Asia Times
Online, "If Syria wants to have peace with Israel,
this is their own issue. Maybe we don't support
them, but we can't bother them over it either."
Far more tellingly, he added that as a
matter of course, "Syria will receive our
diplomatic support. More than that depends on what
kind of positions Syria will adopt." It was a
polite way of saying that Iranian diplomats would
make speeches in support of Syria, but little
substantial help would be forthcoming should
Damascus not serve Iran's foreign-policy
objectives.
"The Assads don't have it in
themselves to flip, really," said Abdulhamid, the
dissident who also runs the Tharwa Foundation, an
independent initiative that focuses on promoting
diversity in the region. "Flipping requires a
certain family consensus that, in light of
existing family dynamics, is very hard to reach.
The interests of existing family members still
diverge along personality lines, individual
ambitions and business interests."
Should
Assad decide to move closer to the West, it would
not be the first example of such a sudden policy
shift. Nor would it imply the cutting of ties with
Iran. After the demise of the Soviet Union,
Bashar's father and predecessor as president,
Hafez al-Assad, committed Syrian tank units to the
1991 US-led war against Iraq in a stunning
volte face that left analysts reeling.
Proving once again his preference for pragmatism
over ideology, Assad the elder reaped immediate
returns in the form of Washington looking away as
he moved in to cement his control over Lebanon.
"Much more likely is that [Persian] Gulf
leaders are wooing Assad as an intermediary to
Iran to transmit their concerns and hopefully to
achieve greater Iranian moderation," said Graham
Fuller, former vice chairman of the National
Intelligence Council at the US Central
Intelligence Agency. "What position could be
better for Assad than to be wooed by all as an
essential intermediary on Palestinian, Lebanese,
Gulf and Iraqi issues?"
Iason
Athanasiadis is an Iran-based
correspondent.
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