In Syria, Go Big or Stay Home. By Ray Takeyh. New York Times, May 27, 2013.
Takeyh:
From
liberal internationalists to hawkish conservatives, a chorus of influential
voices in Washington is suggesting that American intervention in Syria would
also do serious damage to Bashar al-Assad’s close ally, Iran.
Military
action in Syria would demonstrate, so the argument goes, that America is
serious about enforcing its red lines. Impressed and crestfallen, Iran’s
recalcitrant mullahs would scale back their nuclear zeal and conform to
international nonproliferation agreements.
However,
given the fact that any intervention by the Obama administration is likely to
be tentative and halting, rather than an overwhelming show of military force,
it is not likely to end Syria’s civil war or intimidate Iran’s rulers.
The
sort of intervention needed to bring about a decisive rebel victory would
require more than no-fly zones and arms. It would mean disabling Mr. Assad’s
air power and putting boots on the ground. America would have to take the lead
in organizing a regional military force blessed by the Arab League and
supported by its own intelligence assets and Special Forces. After that would
come the task of reconstituting Syria and mediating its sectarian conflicts. As
the war in Iraq painfully demonstrated, refashioning national institutions from
the debris of a civil war can be more taxing than the original military
intervention.
Because
it would take all of this to oust Mr. Assad and end the violence, America must
accept the need for a robust intervention. There is no easy solution or middle
ground. Moreover, rather than intimidating Iran, a less-than-decisive American
intervention in Syria would do the opposite. It would convince Iran’s leaders
that America doesn’t have an appetite for fighting a major war in the
region.
There
is something curious about the debate gripping Washington. Although more than
70,000 Syrians have been killed since the civil war began and the Assad regime
appears to have violated all norms of warfare by using chemical weapons against
civilians, calls for robust intervention are muted.
The
legacy of Iraq looms large. A war-weary nation that has sacrificed so much on
the battlefields of the Middle East is reluctant to embark on new campaigns.
Neither the Obama administration nor its Congressional critics seem to have an
appetite for nation-building. And there is a reluctance to admit that half
measures like arming the rebels or establishing a no-fly zone are unlikely to
end the suffering of the Syrian people in the face of a determined Alawite
minority, led by a vicious Mr. Assad, who has no qualms about carrying out
ethnic cleansing in a struggle to the death.
A
prolonged war in Syria would offer Iran the same advantages that America’s
invasion of Iraq did. Once the United States settled into the task of
reconstituting Iraq, generals, politicians and pundits insisted that a second
front couldn’t be opened in the Middle East. As Washington tried to sort out Iraq’s
troubles, it ignored Iran’s mischief and subversion.
While
Iran enjoyed immunity from American military force as a result of Washington’s
preoccupation with Iraq’s civil war, Iranian proxies in Iraq systematically
assaulted American troops with I.E.D.’s and helped derail their mission. In the
meantime, Iran’s mothballed nuclear infrastructure was taken out of storage and
refurbished.
If a
very reluctant Obama administration does becomes entangled in Syria, it is
likely to treat Iran with the same degree of caution as the more hawkish Bush
administration did — avoiding any direct confrontation with Iran and refraining
from issuing ultimatums about Iran’s nuclear program. The result would be an
emboldened Iran willing to cross the nuclear threshold and assert its dominance
throughout the region.
To be
clear, there is no doubt that a decisive rebel victory in Syria and the fall of
the Assad dynasty would constitute a major setback for Iran, given that Syria
has always been Iran’s most reliable pathway to its proxy Hezbollah. But a
rebel rout is highly unlikely without full-scale, decisive American
intervention.
Facing
public pressure to stop the violence, Washington may soon embark on an
incremental intervention that would gradually deepen American involvement
without producing a decisive outcome. But such half measures won’t impress
Iran’s hardened rulers, who are engaged in a fundamental struggle for the
future of the Middle East.
Pleased
with Mr. Obama’s much vaunted pivot to Asia, the mullahs in Tehran are already
convinced that America seeks deliverance from its Arab inheritance. A major
American intervention would give them pause; a reluctant intercession in Syria
by a hesitant America would only enhance their resolve.
Paradoxically,
an intervention intended to persuade Iran’s leaders of the viability of
American red lines could instead convince them that their nuclear program is
safe from American retaliation.
