President Obama’s plan, announced last Thursday, to aid Syrian rebels was spectacularly ill-timed as well as wrong-headed.
Ill-timed not just because we’re entering the battlefield very late in the game. But also becauseon Saturdaya new window seemed to open for negotiations with Syria’s ally, Iran, after Hasan Rouhani won the presidential election there.
True, Rouhani is a “moderate” only by the Islamic Republic’s standards. But what Obamaite would risk undermining even the faintest promise of renewed diplomacy with Iran by seriously joining battle in Syria?
And Obama’s move is wrong-headed because, search hard as you may, one goal is absent from the administration’s justifications for entering the Syria fray: Victory.
We may seek to “change the balance of power.” Or to make a point about weapons of mass destruction. Or to gain a diplomatic advantage in the G-8 summit of the world’s top powers that opens today. Or to prove Obama is not “a total wuss,” as Bill Clinton asserted last week.
But while the Russians, Iranians and Hezbollah are willing to go “all in” in the deadly Syria game, we’re at best checking their latest raise.
As aides tell it, Obama finally agreed to move after realizing that President Bashar al-Assad was making nearly irreversible gains, capturing the strategically important city of Qussair and getting set to defeat rebels in the key city of Aleppo. As deaths climb toward the 100,000 mark, Assad is poised to win it all.
In public, administration officials said the use of chemical weapons by Assad’s army to kill 150 people triggered the decision. But why now? The Brits and French concluded long ago that the Syrian army deployed Sarin and other chemical agents as early as last fall. Washington also knew for some time that Assad crossed Obama’s “red line” long ago.
In fact, it seems his aides (and European and Mideast allies) finally managed to convince Obama that Assad’s victory would be a disaster, spelling a defeat for Jordan, Turkey and other allies and creating a victorious, Moscow-backed “Shiite Crescent” stretching from Iran to the Mediterranean. And this anti-American alliance will be even more formidable once Iran goes nuclear.
Which is where Iran’s election further complicates things.
Iran watchers long predicted that the hardest-liner, Saeed Jalili, was favored by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and would easily win a rigged election. But whatever the rigging, Rouhani won instead — after indicating that constructive Iranian nuclear diplomacy could ease the sanctions that have crippled the country’s economy.
So what can Obama tell his Russian counterpart, President Vladimir Putin, in today’s G-8 summit? That we’re about to battle Iran in Syria while Tehran is finally offering us “constructive” negotiations?
Rouhani’s win strengthens those who argue that the combo of economic pressure and diplomacy will suffice to end Iran’s nuclear dash. In fact, as Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said Friday in Washington, those tools are important, but won’t work unless there’s also a “credible military option.”
Yes, an American-backed victory or two in Syria could go a long way toward convincing Tehran that such an option is, indeed, credible. But can Gen. Salim Idris, America’s favorite Syrian ally who leads the anti-Assad Free Syrian Army, score such a victory? It’ll be difficult to do with the very limited support that Obama has promised him so far.
And with Iran dangling the promise of new diplomatic oomph in front of Obama’s nose, he’s even less likely to dive into the Syrian mud.
This, though the Iranian promise is dubious at best: It’s Khamenei who steers Iran’s nuclear policy; as long as he’s alive, the best our diplomats could get from Iran is a temporary, and unverifiable, halt to the nuclear program. This, even if (a big if) Rouhani manages to convince the supreme leader of the merits of diplomacy
And as we negotiate, Iran will reach the “nuclear capable” stage — letting Khamenei later “flip the switch” whenever he thinks opportune, and become a nuclear power.
That day will be hastened if Iran manages to seal a Syrian victory for Assad. And Obama’s indecisive moves, so far, do little to prevent such a win.
Twitter: @bennyavni