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Expect modest US gains from thaw with Syria

Posted on: Tue February 09, 2010

WASHINGTON: The Obama team may get modest benefits from ending a five-year chill with Damascus but will find it hard, if not impossible to peel Syria way from hardline ally Iran and break the Arab-Israeli stalemate, analysts said.    

US President Barack Obama s administration said last week it submitted its nominee for ambassador to Damascus, the fruit of a year-long drive to engage Syria in a bid to promote Arab-Israeli peace. Syria says it is studying the proposed nominee, who is widely reported to be Robert Ford, a career diplomat with experience in Arab countries like Algeria and Iraq, his most recent posting.    

He would be the first US ambassador to Damascus since the one recalled after former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri was killed in a bombing blamed on Syria on February 14, 2005. Analysts said a thaw in ties can allow Washington to reap benefits from intelligence cooperation with Damascus and improve chances for Syria-Israeli peace, even while Palestinian-Israeli peace remains elusive.    

Indeed, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker last week, disclosed that the Syrian secret services have already resumed cooperation with the CIA and Britain s MI6. Aaron David Miller, who was a Middle East adviser in past US administrations, said Washington can achieve modest objectives, such as intelligence sharing, but he set expectations low.    

The appointment of an ambassador doesn t reflect anything like a significant improvement, let alone a transformation in the US-Syrian relationship, Miller told AFP. Syria is a hard nut to crack, he said, because President Bashar al-Assad, from the minority Alawite sect, focuses foremost on ensuring his regime s survival and that means having strategic ties with non-Arab and Iran.    

 I m not suggesting that it (the relationship) isn t amenable to change, but it would only change if the Syrians could convince themselves that they could get their needs met elsewhere, he added.     And its needs flow from its stake holding in Lebanon via Hizbullah, the powerful political movement which Iran has also backed in its decades-old campaign against Israel.    

 As long as the Hizbullah-Iranian relationship is as close as it is, the Syrians, I think, will only alienate the Iranians at their own peril, Miller said. He said Assad s Syria, which has a majority Sunni Muslim population, sees Iran as a hedge against a Sunni-led Arab world that it mistrusts, while it also looks to energy-rich Tehran for economic support.    

Syria also needs Israel to return the Golan Heights, which was captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, said Miller, a Woodrow Wilson Centre policy scholar. Despite the odds, he said, it is worth the effort to improve US-Syria ties, manage Lebanon, try to promote Syrian-Israeli peace talks, and even the Iranians nervous, as is likely with the ambassador s appointment.    

But Miller doubted that a fundamental improvement in US-Syrian ties can occur before a peace breakthrough between Israel and Syria, which would require Damascus to open up economically and cut support to militants.    

Jon Alterman, a former State Department policy planning staffer, did not expect Syria to abandon its strategic alliance with Iran but said it could rebalance its relationship with Tehran and Washington.     And that could blunt Iranian ambitions in the region.    

 Having a more isolated Iran may lead to an Iran that is more cautious in its dealings, for fear of further antagonising the rest of the world, the analyst with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies told AFP.    

Iran not only supports Hizbullah, it backs the Palestinian movement Hamas, allegedly backs anti-US militants in Iraq and pursues a nuclear programme in defiance of the international community.    Washington has also accused Damascus of turning a blind eye to militants crossing its border into Iraq.    

Marina Ottaway, an analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the ambassadorial appointment will not mean much for the stalemated Palestinian-Israeli peace process. But she said it could help revive peace talks between Syria and Israel, which exchanged a fierce war of words last week.    

Nevertheless, Ottaway said Turkey proved to be a better mediator than the United States as the Syrians will be highly suspicious about any proposal by the US. Turkish-mediated talks between Israel and Syria collapsed after the Jewish state launched a brief war against Hamas in Gaza in late 2008. Ottaway believes the ambassadorial appointment amounts to sending a message of the administration s interest in promoting a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace.

Courtesy : The News