peacefare.net

Putin was right

Russia’s President said earlier this week:

It is better to involve Iran in the settlement (of the Syrian crisis)…The more Syria’s neighbors are involved in the settlement process the better. Ignoring these possibilities, these interests would be counterproductive, as diplomats say. It is better to secure its support. In any case it would complicate the process (if Iran is ignored).

Putin is right.  UN/Arab League Special Envoy Kofi Annan is too:  he also wanted Iran at Saturday’s meeting in Geneva, which is scheduled to include the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Turkey as well as Arab Leaguers Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar.

The Americans have been blocking Iran from attending, on grounds that Tehran is providing support–including lethal assistance–to the Assad regime.  That is true.  It is also the reason they should be there.  So long as they meet the Americans’ red line–that attendees should accept that the purpose of the meeting is to begin a transition away from the Assad regime–it is far better to have them peeing from inside the tent out than from outside the tent in.  No negotiated transition away from the Assad regime is going to get far if the Iranians are dead set against it.

If they agree to attend, it will cause serious problems inside Tehran with the Quds Force, the part of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard responsible for helping Bashar al Assad conduct the war he declared yesterday on his own people.  Discomforting the Iranians should be welcome in Washington.  If Iran had refused the invitation, which was likely, it would have been far easier to drive a wedge between them and the Russians, who are at least saying that they are not trying to protect Bashar al Assad’s hold on power.

Of course if they were to attend the Iranians would have raised issues that make Washington and some of its Arab friends uncomfortable.  Most obvious is Saudi and Qatari arms shipments to the Syrian rebel forces, who this week attacked a television station, killing at least some civilians.  But that issue will be raised in any event by the Russians, whether the Iranians are there or not.

The Iranians would likely also raise Bahrain, where a Sunni royal monarch rules over a largely Shia population.  The repression there has been far less violent and abusive than what Alawite Bashar al Assad is doing in Sunni-majority Syria, but the Iranians will argue that if transition to majority rule is good for the one it is also good for the other.  Does it have to get bloodier before the international community takes up the cause of the Bahraini Shia?  This argument will get some sympathetic noises from Iraq, which is majority Shia, but not from Sunni Qatar, UAE or Kuwait.

Turkey, meanwhile, has downplayed the  Syrian attacks on its fighter jets, which I am assured by a Turkish diplomat were in fact on reconnaissance, not training missions, as Ankara publicly claimed.  The reconnaissance flights routinely cross momentarily into Syrian airspace because it is impossible to fly strictly along the irregular border between the two countries.  Damascus shot down one, probably as a warning to its own pilots not to try to abscond, as one did last week.  Israeli jets also routinely violate Syrian airspace, but it is a long time since Syria took a shot at one of them.

The Turks seem to have gotten what little moral support they wanted out of consultations on the Syrian attacks at NATO  earlier this week.  Ankara has decided to low key the affair, thus avoiding further frictions with Syria, which can respond to any Turkish moves by allowing Kurdish guerrillas to step up their cross-border attacks into Turkey.

This is a complicated part of the world, where there are wheels within wheels.  Much as I dislike saying it, Putin was right to try to get all the main players in the room, lest some of those wheels continue to spin out of control if their masters haven’t been involved in the decisionmaking.  But that isn’t likely to change anyone’s mind in Washington, where electoral pressures preclude inviting Iran to a meeting on Syria.  Let’s hope that the meeting is nevertheless successful and that the plan it produces can be sold after the fact to Tehran, which otherwise may prove a spoiler.