It is difficult to read a serious news analysis of American options in Iraq without running into the idea that Washington must open a dialogue with Syria and Iran. This means that Iran and Syria have won the first round of their political boxing match with the United States, and that we are likely to witness a spike in regional tensions as round two of this contest for control of the Middle East sees the antagonists probing all angles of their opponent's potential weak spots.
The bipartisan Iraq Study Group headed by James Baker and Lee Hamilton is expected to include in its recommendations to President George W. Bush the opening of a dialogue with Syria and Iran, seeking their cooperation in stabilizing Iraq and allowing the US to withdraw. The study group, sensibly, has already met with Syrian and Iranian diplomats in the US and at the United Nations.
Yet the concept of engaging Syria and Iran, as it is thrown around in the US, smacks of a troubling combination of romanticism, desperation and neo-colonialism. Syria and Iran have a combined total of around 10,000 years of cumulative experience in dealing with foreign armies that come into the area with an eye to reconfiguring the region and dominating the world. They know how to deal with such phenomena, including by letting foreigners get hopelessly stuck in the local quicksand, spinning them around a few times to increase their confusion, and then negotiating a deal that gets them out, makes you look good, and reverts local hegemony to the local powers.
The US has used significant diplomatic and economic pressures, and not-so-veiled military threats, in the past three years to force changes in the policies of Damascus and Tehran, without major success. So now it seems prepared to try a more rational approach. Syria and Iran are perfectly willing to be engaged by the US. They have a list of issues they would like to include in the discussions, starting with an American commitment to drop regime change as a sword Washington hangs over their head.
Yet Syria and Iran are unlikely to behave like Libya - by caving in to the pressure and unilaterally giving the US what it wants. In recent years they have done exactly the opposite, by defying the US and the world. Both countries feel they are in strong positions for the moment, and will become even stronger as they are courted by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. They will demand a high price for cooperating with the US and helping it leave Iraq.
As part of the negotiating process, they will pressure the US by pursuing policies that further weaken Washington's already frayed position throughout the Middle East. Syria and Iran can do this through their control of their long borders with Iraq, their ties with groups inside Iraq, their close working relations with Hamas and Hizbullah, and their capacity for mischief and political violence in Lebanon and throughout the region.
Many Lebanese, in particular, are concerned that Syria and Iran will both demand greater control of Lebanese affairs in return for cooperating on Iraq. This battle is already under way in the streets and political corridors of Beirut.
Damascus and Tehran also know that preemptive cooperation is usually more effective than preemptive regime change as a foreign policy instrument, which is why Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem was in Iraq earlier this week for discussions on reopening diplomatic ties with Baghdad. A Syrian-Iraqi-Iranian summit of presidents may happen soon.
Washington is in the awkward position of seeking a dialogue and political cooperation with two countries that it has either mainly ignored or actively sanctioned and threatened in recent years. It has diligently disregarded their advice on addressing the Palestine-Israel issue and Israeli occupation of Arab lands as the essential starting point for any revised and more constructive American engagement in the region. So now Washington expects them both to stand at attention and offer cordial assistance, only because the US cannot figure out how to get out of the mess it created for itself and for Iraq? Neo-colonialism comes in many forms, and this is only the latest and most acute.
The US is prepared to make reasonable deals - as most superpowers desperate for redemptive exit strategies from foreign military adventures usually are. The problem for Washington is that its recent pressures against Iran and Syria have expanded into international processes. A UN investigation into the assassination of the late Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri may blame Syrians for the dirty deed, and Iran is being hauled in front of the Security Council to be sanctioned for its ongoing nuclear industry developments.
Neither of these endeavors can be turned on and off at Washington's will, nor should they be. Yet they will be high on the Syrian and Iranian lists of issues to discuss with Washington. Expanding roles for Syria and Iran in the region may be the price the US and the world have to pay for restoring stability in Iraq, which understandably frightens many in the region.
It is important that in its hurry to find an exit strategy for itself from Iraq, a chastened Washington does not simply embrace new forms of neo-colonial behavior and plunge the Middle East into ever more volatile forms of instability or revised configurations of local security states that it warmly embraces.
A democratic, free, stable Middle East remains a good idea, but the lessons of the day would seem to be that it will not be achieved by either American militarism or indigenous autocracy.
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