President Assad and Under Secretary of State Burns (AP)
"[W]e need to understand that Bashar al-Assad is not abandoning his strategic alliance with Iran merely because we’re sending an ambassador to Damascus."The nomination of Robert Ford as the U.S. ambassador to Syria is the first nomination since the ambassador was pulled in 2005 following the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. What do you think the appointment of Robert Ford means for the U.S.-Syrian relationship and U.S. policy?
It’s an important symbol that we are no longer in the business of trying to isolate Syria and believe that Syria could play a more positive role in the region. It’s a move consistent with President Obama’s pledge as a candidate to open channels of communications with our adversaries. It is also something that was announced way back last spring, and is only now being implemented. So maybe the question is why has it taken so long?
Why do you think it has taken so long?
I think that within the administration there are officials that might be best characterized as Syro-skeptics, who think that sending an ambassador is itself a reward and requires a price from Syria. But probably the more accurate answer is that we just had a hard time deciding on whom to send.
And what kind of environment should the new ambassador expect in Syria and what are the first sets of issues he will have to tackle when he gets there?
The new ambassador can expect to be well received and to be seriously engaged. Until recently the Syrians were isolating our embassy in Syria and giving our diplomats very little access. I think that’s improved since the Obama administration has taken office, but still the Syrians have been miffed for some time that we do not have an ambassador there and that for a long time we were giving rather short shrift to the Syrian ambassador here in Washington, Imad Moustapha. So I think Ambassador Ford will be given good access and be able to present his credentials to the president in fairly short order. Having said that, all the fundamental differences between the Syrians and us remain and only a few of them lend themselves to a quick fix.
And what are those fundamental differences?
The fundamental differences concern Syria’s support for organizations that the U.S. considers rightfully inimical to U.S. and Israeli interests. And here, of course, I’m talking about Syrian support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Palestinian territories. Most troubling of all for U.S. policymakers is its thirty-year alliance with the mullahs in Iran.
From your experience as ambassador, what are Syria’s interests in an improved relationship with the United States?
The Syrians say generally there are two or three issues to which they give the highest priority. First and foremost is recovery of every last centimeter of the Golan, which was occupied in June of 1967. Second, is a new relationship with the United States including removal of Syria from the various lists that require the U.S. to apply economic and other sorts of sanctions to Syria. From a Syrian perspective those are the big issues, but I think there are some intangible ones as well. The Assad regime is very sensitive to protocol and wants respect. When they feel disrespect, they react in kind.
Do you see a recognizable change in Syrian behavior since the administration initiated a policy of engagement?
A lot of what’s happening is occurring behind the scenes and is not being much discussed. Senator George Mitchell, the president’s special envoy, has been to Damascus a couple of times; our number three ranking State Department official, William Burns, has just been there; and others, including assistant secretary Jeffrey Feltman and members of the NSC, have been there and have had high-level talks. What those talks probably have accomplished is that both sides have a rather good idea of the other’s expectations. It also appears that since the Obama administration has taken office, Syria has further cracked down on infiltration of foreign fighters going across its border into Iraq, and that Syria has accorded our diplomats somewhat better access.
How much do you think the internal situation in Syria has changed since 2005 when we last had an ambassador?
President Assad, who has now been in power for almost ten years, is very much in control of the situation. I’m not suggesting that he wasn’t in control in 2005, but the regime had been shaken at that time by the assassination of Rafik Hariri and the finger-pointing at Syria. There was a lot of foreign pressure being brought to bear against Syria. But now, President Bashar al-Assad is in a much better and stronger position. He’s had plenty of time to put his loyalists into critical positions in the intelligence, security and military apparatus. He has also ensured that his country is not isolated—he has good relations with Turkey and a strong alliance with Iran. I know you asked about the internal situation, but it’s hard to separate the internal from the external. He has been visited by the king of Saudi Arabia; also Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri has called on him—an important symbolic gesture. So, quite honestly, President Assad probably believes that he’s riding high.
You mentioned Saudi Arabia. There was a big split between Saudi Arabia, and Egypt and Syria, and that seems to be changing, what is your assessment of that shift?
You’re correct. After the Hariri assassination and for several years, relations between Syria and Saudi Arabia were quite frosty and insults were traded. There was very little diplomatic interchange between the two outside of formal channels, such as the Arab League. But the Saudi monarch, King Abdullah, believes that Iran poses a threat to the region and he believes that it is important to try to foster greater Arab solidarity. He further recognizes that Syria is the Arab state, by far, that has the closest relations with Iran. His hope is that over time, Syria can be weaned off that relationship.
What can the Saudis and the Obama administration and others realistically anticipate in terms of the future of Syrian-Iranian relations?
The alliance with Iran has served the Syrian regime very well for the last thirty years; it is a fundamental of their international security policy. They’re in a state of war with Israel. Israel is superior in every way imaginable to Syria, whether in conventional weapons, unconventional weapons, its economy, its technology, diplomatic relations with the West, etc. Recently, Israeli Foreign Minister Lieberman, threatened that if Syria entered into war with Israel, the goal would be to topple the regime. So we need to understand that Bashar al-Assad is not abandoning his strategic alliance with Iran merely because we’re sending an ambassador to Damascus—I mean after all, we had an ambassador to Damascus from 1975 until 2005 with little interruption and they didn’t then sever that relationship, so why would we think they would do so now?
To get to the nub of the matter, if I were advising this administration, I would say, ‘look, the only chance we have of pulling Syria away from Iran through diplomatic means, is to restart Israeli-Syrian negotiations on the basis that the goal is to regain for Syria the 4 June 1967 line that Hafez al-Assad insisted upon and second, to create a new relationship between the United States and Syria.’ Even then, I would not tell the administration if such an offer is put in front of President Basher al-Assad you will be guaranteed that he will move away from Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran. At that point he will evaluate what is going to serve his regime’s interest and Syria’s interest best. Will it be a new relationship with the West and peace with Israel, or will it be a continued state of belligerence and an alliance with Iran? Nobody can predict with assurance what his choice would be. My guess is that Bashar al-Assad himself doesn’t know today what he would do if presented with such an offer.
And do you see any immediate prospects for Syrian-Israeli reengagement on peace talks?
Based on available information, I don’t see much prospect. Ehud Barak, the former prime minister of Israel and current minister of defense, has just been in Washington and has made it clear that he and his Labor Party very much favor having peace talks with Syria over the Golan, but the prime minister and most of the people in the cabinet do not appear so inclined. They are insisting on beginning talks without any preconditions, which means that none of the previous talks between Israeli administrations and Syria would necessarily have any standing. Syria is unlikely to enter talks with Israel absent re-statement of the famous “Rabin deposit:” Israel will withdraw to the 4 June 1967 line if all other issues can be satisfactorily resolved.
So how would you advise the administration to move on this track?
The administration has given the emphasis to the Palestinian track and I understand why—that is the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict and until the Palestinians and the Israelis can come to an agreement there will remain a festering issue there that radicals throughout the region can exploit. But I would also say that if Syria feels its interests are being ignored at the expense of Israeli-Palestinian talks, then it can expect to play the spoiler role. The Syrians are very good at playing the spoiler, as they’ve demonstrated. Therefore, I think it behooves us to try to move on both tracks—something easy for me to say, something very, very difficult to do, particularly with one of the most right-wing governments in Israel’s history in power.
You mentioned Syria playing the spoiler track. What kind of influence does Syria have over Palestinian politics?
Syria has quite a bit of influence over Palestinians politics, not least because it appears that the dominant faction within Hamas is ensconced in Damascus—here I’m speaking about Khaled Meshaal and his close associates there. So, they can encourage Hamas to carry out attacks of one sort or another against Israelis, or against Israeli settlers; by doing so they can contribute to a breakdown of Palestinian-Israeli talks—although at the moment, we don’t even have formal Palestinian-Israeli talks.
Do they have any impact on the internal Palestinian dynamic?
There’s already a very negative internal dynamic in the Palestinian arena, in that the Palestinian Authority and Fatah are very much behind a two-state solution along the lines of the 1967 armistice lines, and Hamas, while sometimes very coy about it, essentially seems to be willing to accept no more than a long-term truce with Israel in return for “full withdrawal.” So there are already fundamental differences within Palestinian ranks that can easily be exploited by Iran and Syria.
You also talked briefly about Lebanon. How would you assess the recent normalization of relations between Syria and Lebanon? What effect does this have on the region and what effect does the region have on this process?
Syria, by and large, has again demonstrated that because of its alliance with Iran and Hezbollah, it is in a position to block almost anything it wishes in Lebanon. Why did it take so long to form a Lebanese government after parliamentary elections last June? Because Syria’s allies for reasons of their own—and here I’m talking about General Aoun and Hezbollah—were unwilling to see a cabinet formed unless they had certain cabinet departments and had the so-called one-third blocking minority (veto) votes within the cabinet. Prime Minister Saad Hariri reluctantly had to bend to this reality. I’m sure it was not easy for him to call on President Bashar al-Assad, but he did it, shortly after King Abdullah’s visit to Damascus.
You spoke also about Turkey. How do you think that the advanced state of relations between Turkey and Syria effects Syria’s calculations?
Turkey has a very, very important relationship with Syria, one that would not have been easily predicted twelve years ago. As everyone who follows this issue knows, Turkey and Syria for a long time had fundamental differences, particularly over water, and Syria’s clandestine backing for a radical Kurdish group, the PKK. But now Syria and Turkey are major trading parties; high-level visits between them are frequent; they are cooperating in a number of areas, and one could even speculate that Syria may see Turkey as an alternative to its relationship with Iran if it ever had to move away from Iran—but that requires a lot of speculation.
Is there anything else that you think is important to mention about the current situation in Syria or about what the Obama administration should be doing with relation to Syria?
Even though I said that we could not expect a fundamental shift in Syria’s relationship with Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas—except possibly in exchange for a peace treaty with Israel that recovered all of the Golan and a new relationship with the U.S. —I would say there are a number of areas in which the U.S. and Syria can move ahead. We blocked Syria’s admission to the World Trade Organization—there’s no reason we need to do that, and my understanding is that we may have told the Syrians that we will no longer block their application for admission to the WTO. The President can lift certain sanctions without reference to Congress. Both countries have great antipathy to radical Sunni movements, particularly Al Qaeda and like-minded groups. Even though Syria may have relationships with Hamas and Islamic Jihad that it exploits against Israel, it knows that ultimately Islamist groups are a threat to the regime. We should be able to reinstitute intelligence sharing on some such groups, as we did post 9/11. Both states also have an interest in Iraq not blowing up. Now, maybe we have some differences on how we’d like to see Iraq’s politics configured, but fighting and chaos in Iraq is in neither country’s interest. We should be able to expect, through consultation with Syria, more care on its part on how it plays its hand in Iraq.
