The New York Times and Washington Post are both reporting that the Obama administration intends to send reestablish diplomatic ties with Syria at the ambassadorial level. Here’s the Washington Post giving the administration’s line:
The acting assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, Jeffrey D. Feltman, informed Syria’s ambassador to Washington, Imad Mustafa, tonight of Obama’s intention, according to a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the decision had yet to be made public.
By returning a senior U.S. envoy to Damascus, the Syrian capital, the Obama administration is seeking to carve out a far larger role for the United States in the region as the president works to rehabilitate U.S. relations with the Islamic world and the Arab Middle East.
Of course the decision to withdraw the American ambassador, wasn’t merely due to a fit of pique, but to protest a real problem.
The Bush administration withdrew its ambassador in February 2005 to protest the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri. Syrian intelligence officials are suspected of being behind the bombing in Beirut that killed him, a claim Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has long rejected.
Of course Assad’s rejected it. It doesn’t make him look good. And even if the recent Der Spiegel report is true that Hezbollah was responsible for the murder, it’s hard to believe that Hezbollah didn’t act with the cooperation of Syria.
So this is apparently the administration’s rationale.
The loss of U.S. diplomatic leverage in the region — because of opposition among many Arabs to the Iraq war and a perceived U.S. favoritism toward Israel — has left a vacuum in recent years filled in large part by Iran. The decision to return the ambassador to Syria, senior administration officials said, represents the restoration of a sustained U.S. diplomatic presence in a secular Arab country central to many U.S. interests in the region.
It’s only central if it cooperates with the United States. Back in March, the United States initiated contacts with Syria and presented conditions for changing its policy towards Syria.
A senior U.S. State Department official told the Lebanese daily Al-Nahar that during Feltman’s meeting with the Syrian ambassador to Washington, the former had brought up the issues of Syria’s support of terrorism, its efforts to obtain nuclear weapons, its involvement in Lebanon, and the deterioration of the human rights situation in Syria. [10] The Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar reported that if Syria severed its ties with Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas, and other Palestinian factions that operate within its territory, the U.S. would be willing to play a role in Israeli-Syrian negotiations, to remove Syria from the list of states sponsoring terror, and to lift the sanctions currently imposed on it. [11]
The official Syrain response was:
After the commencement of the U.S.-Syria dialogue, spokesmen of the Syrian regime and articles in the Syrian press expressed the following positions:
· Syria has no intention of changing its policy and will continue to be part of the resistance camp. The U.S. is the one that must change its policy by lifting the sanctions imposed on Syria, appointing an ambassador to Damascus, and launching a dialogue with the resistance forces.
· In starting a dialogue with Syria, the U.S. has capitulated to the resistance and acknowledged the importance of Syria and Iran.
· The advent of the Obama administration does not herald an improvement in the relations with Syria.
Apparently Syria met none of the conditions that the Obama administration had earlier specified and the United States still has awarded Damascus with one of the prizes it sought. One would have assumed that Syrian support for terrorist organizations was a bigger threat to Middle East peace than Israeli settlements. Apparently the Obama administration has decided otherwise.
Remarkably, at a time when the Iranian regime is facing internal political pressures, the United States is going easy on its closest ally.
If Jimmy Carter’s boasts are true, the administration is also considering dropping the Quartet demands on Hamas. Hamas isn’t just a terrorist organization dedicated to Israel’s destruction it is also a major proxy of the Iranian regime in its efforts to project its influence across the Middle East.
If the administration really is intent on rehabilitation Syria and Hamas, it has really chosen a bad time to do it. It should be working to exert even more pressure on Iran not providing respite to the regime. Even if one believes (as I don’t) that President Obama’s Cairo speech has been responsible for stirring the citizen of Lebanon and then Iran to choose freedom, it’s hard to see how cozying up to Syria and Hamas promotes freedom.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
