This is an edited translation of excerpts from the weekly think piece of
leading American-Lebanese journalist Raghida Dergham for
this morning’s edition of the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat:
The West’s ambiguous attitudes towards the Islamic
Republic of Iran raise many questions.
For instance, is the collective objective of the
United States, Britain and France to allow Iran to thwart a Syrian Opposition
victory in Syria?
Or, is their shared aim to push Iran and Hezbollah
deeper into the Syria quagmire?
The West is also out to lunch in the run-up to next
month’s presidential election in Iran. It chose to get some shuteye when it was
supposed to be exposing the establishment’s increasing dogmatism. That’s what the
West did in Iran’s 10th presidential election in 2009, before the
reformist movement was crushed.
Unlike in 2009, when it encouraged Iran’s reformist movement,
the West made nothing this week when the Guardian Council, a body of
theologians and jurists, disqualified reformist ex-President Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani from running and approved only eight conservative candidates to
stand for president.
In their on-off nuclear negotiations for a decade,
the West continues to give Iran elbowroom to press ahead with its most
contentious nuclear work. Here too, the West comes across as appeasing the Mullahs.
As to the regional role to which Tehran lays claim,
the West seems content to play a double role. On the one hand, the West appears
to give Iran free rein in the Arab countries it covets, chiefly Iraq, Syria and
Lebanon.
At the same time, Washington, London and Paris give
the impression of being pleased to see Sunnis and Shiites crossing swords in
Syria’s war of attrition, thus keeping both sides at bay from their cities.
Public acknowledgement of the presence of Iranian forces
in Syria leaves the West in a quandary. A UN Security Council resolution (Resolution
1747 of 24 March 2007) bars arms exports by Iran under Chapter VII of the UN
Charter.
In paragraph 5 of the said
resolution, the UN Security Council “Decides that Iran shall not supply, sell
or transfer directly or indirectly from its territory or by its nationals or
using its flag vessels or aircraft any arms or related materiel…”
Would the West be invoking the breach anytime soon?
The West explicitly warned
Hezbollah recently against intervening militarily in Syria. And as a response
to the group’s joining the war on the side of Assad’s regime, Europe is hinting
it “might” designate Hezbollah’s military wing as a terrorist entity.
The U.S. Senate Foreign
Relations Committee voted this week to pass a bill that will be highly
unpopular in Moscow, let alone Damascus.
The “Syrian Transition
Support Act” would provide arms to Syrian rebels in support of a regime change.
The bill heads first to
the Senate, then to the House and finally to the president.
If the bill is passed,
will President Barack Obama sign it?
So far, his policy has
been to prevent a victory in Syria either by the armed opposition, which
includes not more than five or 10 percent from Jabhat al-Nusra, or by the
Iran-Hezbollah-Russia triumvirate.
As usual, Britain and
France continue to warn on Syria, only to backtrack later. Both have been
talking for months about arming the opposition, even at the cost of busting the
European Union arms embargo, only to put their moves on hold afterward.
Are Britain and France acquiescing
to the war of exhaustion and attrition in Syria, to help their intelligence
services -- and the West generally – gather invaluable information on Sunni
extremists belonging to al-Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra and the likes?
By flying to Amman this
week for the “Friends of Syria” core group meeting, U.S. Secretary of State
John Kerry looked more like Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s Geneva-2
salesman.
Whereas Washington was
previously calling on Assad to stand down, the Amman
closing statement simply said Assad “cannot play a role in the future of
Syria.”
Russia wants Iran to be in
Geneva-2. And the United States has yet to say no. All Washington said this
week in a background briefing on Kerry’s trip to Amman was, “We’ll certainly
have to talk to the Russians more, and we’ll have to talk also to the United
Nations because they very well will have a big role. So the final attendance
list is still under discussion.”
The now-defunct Soviet
Union spent decades trying to reach the warm waters of the Mediterranean.
Russia reached them via Tartus. Iran is already there via Hezbollah in Lebanon.
All these intertwined
elements warrant a rethink. Talk of the Syria war being a quagmire or a Vietnam
hemorrhaging Iran and Hezbollah is offset by whispers of a behind-the-scenes
grand bargain whereby West and East hand Iran victory in her Vietnam war against
Sunni extremists in Syria, plus a say in the regional balance of forces.
