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U.S. Believes Syria Is Overplaying Its Hand in Iraq

[Jerusalem Post] Jonathan Spyer - The government of Iraq is furious at the mounting evidence of Syrian involvement in the car bombings last month in Baghdad which left 95 dead. The evidence suggests that the U.S. administration is increasingly aware that its energetic attempts over the last months to induce Syria to alter its approach to its neighbors appear to have failed. Seven U.S. delegations have traveled to Damascus since Obama took office, but the flurry of diplomacy has not produced the expected change in Syrian behavior. Syrian encouragement of opposition intransigence is playing a central role in preventing a resolution of the ongoing political deadlock in Lebanon. Syrian domiciling of Hamas is not accompanied by any noticeable efforts to induce that organization to moderate and make possible progress on the Israeli-Palestinian track. A recent article in the Kuwaiti Arabic daily AlRai quoted an American source as saying that the Syrians "don't know the difference between normalizing relations and behaving like they've defeated the U.S. in a world war." "Assad fires a rocket here and there and expects us to run to him...this kind of security blackmail no longer works on the United States." The writer is senior researcher at the Global Research in International Affairs, IDC, Herzliya.
2009-09-18 08:00:00
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