How many times does the Obama ad ministration have to get bitten before it stops leading with an “open hand”?
Hillary Clinton this week called on Syrian President Bashar Assad to respond to recent US overtures by distancing his country from Iran. Yesterday, Assad responded by signing a new friendship pact with a grinning Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. More, he mocked our secretary of state: “We must have understood Clinton wrong because of bad translation or our limited understanding, so we signed the agreement.”
The latest US overture was the naming of Robert Ford last week as our next ambassador to Syria, five years after we recalled our last ambassador to protest Syria’s suspected involvement in the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
That followed a series of visits to Damascus by increasingly eager top Obama emissaries, who offered Assad trade agreements, economic assistance and diplomatic incentives. Last week, the State Department removed a longstanding advisory against travel to Syria. (To be fair, tourists are safe there: Police states gladly provide fine security for everyone except regime opponents.)
Obama’s “engagement hawks” claim that enough carrots can persuade Syria to leave Iran’s orbit, end its support of anti-American insurgents in Iraq, stop arming Hezbollah in Lebanon, close the Damascus headquarters of Hamas and other terrorist groups and even sign a peace treaty with Israel.
Meanwhile, Assad calmly pockets every gift we shower on him, then thumbs his nose at us. We’ve yet to get a single meaningful concession.
Five years after the (American-supported) peaceful Cedar Revolution drove Syrian troops out of Lebanon, that nation is back under near-complete Syrian control. Lebanon’s new prime minister, Hariri’s son Saad, recently had no choice but to go and pay obeisance to Assad — kissing the ring of his father’s killer.
Meanwhile, Damascus still supports insurgents in Iraq even while saying that it’s tightening border controls. And, almost daily, Assad promises to answer any Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear program with bombardments (by Syria as well its Hezbollah and Hamas allies) of Israel’s cities.
Last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency highlighted evidence that the site in eastern Syria that Israel planes destroyed in 2007 was indeed a nuclear facility. (Some analysts believe that the facility was built, with North Korean and Iranian assistance, as backup for Tehran’s bomb program in case Iran’s own nuclear plants got destroyed.) Syrian officials then summarily rejected the IAEA’s demand to open all nuclear facilities for inspection.
Of course, Team Obama is hardly the first to dream of cozening Syria from Iran’s arms. Assad may have been the loneliest man in the Middle East five years ago, but he’s been worming his way back ever since. The United Nations has all but dropped its attempt to prosecute Hariri’s killers; France opened up to Assad; Saudi Arabia became his best friend; Israel let Turkey open a fruitless “peace mediation” channel to Damascus.
In its waning days, the Bush administration followed suit, giving up its strong defense of Lebanon’s independence. And courting Assad has always been an article of faith for the State Department’s Arabists, who claim that the Syrian-Iranian alliance is “unnatural.”
But I’m told that some Obama advisers are harder-headed — starting with Hillary herself, whatever she has to say in public. Assad’s show of solidarity with Ahmadinejad yesterday should bolster the skeptics’ case. And there are more skeptics in Congress: Robert Ford’s Senate confirmation could prove problematic for the administration.
Obama would be wise to use Assad’s slap at the IAEA to start reversing his all-engagement-all-the-time Middle East policy. He has enough reason now to announce that, until Syria opens up its nuclear facilities for inspections, no US ambassador will be returning to Damascus. beavni@gmail.com