Washington, February 08: The Obama team may get modest benefits from ending a five-year chill with Damascus but will find it hard, if not impossible to peel Syria way from ally Iran and break the Arab-Israeli stalemate, analysts said.
US President Barack Obama’s administration said last week it submitted its nominee for ambassador to Damascus, the fruit of a year-long drive to engage Syria in a bid to promote Arab-Israeli peace.
Syria says it is studying the proposed nominee, who is widely reported to be Robert Ford, a career diplomat with experience in Arab countries like Algeria and Iraq, his most recent posting.
He would be the first US ambassador to Damascus since the one recalled after former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri was killed in a bombing on February 14, 2005.
Analysts said a thaw in ties can allow Washington to reap benefits from intelligence cooperation with Damascus and improve chances for Syria-Israeli peace, even while Palestinian-Israeli peace remains elusive.
Indeed, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker last week, disclosed that the Syrian secret services have already resumed cooperation with the CIA and Britain’s MI6.
Aaron David Miller, who was a Middle East adviser in past US administrations, said Washington can achieve modest objectives, such as intelligence sharing, but he set expectations low.
The appointment of an ambassador “doesn’t reflect anything like a significant improvement, let alone a transformation in the US-Syrian relationship,” Miller said.
“I’m not suggesting that it (the relationship) isn’t amenable to change, but it would only change if the Syrians could convince themselves that they could get their needs met elsewhere,” he added.
“As long as the Hezbollah-Iranian relationship is as close as it is, the Syrians, I think, will only alienate the Iranians at their own peril,” Miller said.
Syria also needs Israel to return the Golan Heights, under illegal Israeli occupation since 1967, said Miller.
Despite the odds, he said, it is worth the effort to improve US-Syria ties, “manage” Lebanon, try to promote Syrian-Israeli peace talks, and “even make the Iranians nervous,” as is likely with the ambassador’s appointment.
But Miller doubted that a “fundamental improvement” in US-Syrian ties can occur before a peace breakthrough between Israel and Syria.
Jon Alterman, a former State Department policy planning staffer, did not expect Syria to abandon its strategic alliance with Iran but said it could “rebalance its relationship” with Tehran and Washington.
“Having a more isolated Iran may lead to an Iran that is more cautious in its dealings, for fear of further antagonizing the rest of the world,” he Alterman.
Marina Ottaway, an analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the ambassadorial appointment will not mean much for the stalemated Palestinian-Israeli peace process.
But she said it could help revive peace talks between Syria and Israel, which exchanged a fierce war of words last week.
Nevertheless, Ottaway said Turkey proved to be a better mediator than the United States “as the Syrians will be highly suspicious about any proposal by the US.”
Turkish-mediated talks between Israel and Syria collapsed after Israel launched a devastating war against Gaza in late 2008.
Ottaway believes the ambassadorial appointment amounts to sending a message of the administration’s interest in promoting a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace.
—Agencies