US Syrian policy is based on US desire to accommodate Iran

The White House’s failure to stop the ongoing slaughter perpetrated by the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad stems from President Barack Obama’s “desire to accommodate Iran” so that last year’s nuclear deal will extend past his administration, the president’s former top Syria adviser charged in an analysis on Monday.

Frederic Hof, formerly Obama’s special adviser for transition in Syria and currently the director of the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, faulted the Obama administration for failing to have “defended a single Syrian civilian from the Assad-Russia-Iran onslaught.”

“In fact the administration’s policy toward Assad Syria (as opposed to ISIS Syria) rests on its desire to accommodate Iran—a full partner in Assad’s collective punishment survival strategy—so that the July 14, 2015 nuclear agreement can survive the Obama presidency,” Hof wrote.

Hof took exception to a recent defense offered for Obama’s Syria policy by White House press secretary Josh Earnest, who told reporters last week that “we’ve got a test case just over the border in Iraq about what the consequences are for the United States implementing a regime-change policy and trying to impose a military solution on the situation.” Earnest then added, “there are some people who do suggest that somehow the United States should invade Syria.”

Hof rejected Earnest’s “dissembling,” arguing that the press secretary “would be unable to name anyone counseling the invasion of Syria” if asked. He would also be unable to explain “why limited military measures designed to end Assad’s mass murder free ride—such as that offered by the 51 dissenting State Department officers—amounts to ‘regime-change’ and ‘trying to impose a military solution,’” Hof argued. (The 51 State Department employees released their letter critiquing the Obama administration’s Syria policy in June.)

Hof wrote that the president could open “a platform for useful debate” by acknowledging that the situation Syria is a “catastrophe,” but one that is a result of his having made “the hardest of calls” by prioritizing the nuclear deal with Iran over action against Assad. Hof also cast doubt on the idea that Iran would “abandon the nuclear agreement if its client gets spanked.” (According to Wall Street Journal reporter Jay Solomon, the White House decided not to strike Assad after he violated Obama’s “red line” on chemical weapons attacks in 2013 when Iran threatened to break off nuclear talks.)

Former U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford said in June 2014 that he resigned from his post because he was “no longer in a position where I felt I could defend American policy.” In May, Hof wrote a similar critique of the Obama administration, noting that it failed to protect Syrian civilians because that would have conflicted with the “pursuit of a nuclear agreement with Assad’s premier long-term enabler and partner in mass murder: Iran.”

In The Mind of the President, which was published in the June 2016 issue of The Tower Magazine, editor-in-chief David Hazony quoted Hof’s earlier critique of the Obama administration and provided context for the scope of the catastrophe in Syria:

That this concern was decisive to the situation in Syria—and the mass refugee crisis now wreaking havoc across the Middle East and Europe—was also reiterated by Frederic Hof, Obama’s former point man on Syria who is one of the few administration officials to resign in protest.For an American president and his principal subordinates to avert their gazes from mass homicide and from doing anything at all to mitigate or complicate it is far from unprecedented. In this day and age, however, knowing what we know about 20th century failures to protect civilians thanks to the research and writings of Samantha Power and others, it is stunningly remarkable and regrettable. For a man of Barack Obama’s evident humanity and values, surely there has been something of transcendent importance that has stayed his hand from protecting Syrian civilians; something of paramount national security significance that has stopped him from acting in support of American friends and allies trying desperately to deal with the hemorrhage of humanity from Syria. Thanks to Ben Rhodes and his chronicler we know now what it has been: Pursuit of a nuclear agreement with Assad’s premier long-term enabler and partner in mass murder: Iran.

The result of U.S. inaction, when action was possible and proposed, in order to make sure nothing stopped the Iran deal, has been the perpetuation of Assad’s brutality and the glaring perpetuation of a war that pits radical Sunnis against Shiites against Kurds against less-radical Sunnis against an Alawite regime, with Russia and Turkey and Iran and Saudi Arabia vying for influence, leaving hundreds of thousands dead and many millions displaced. Syria is now a country that will never be whole again but may also never successfully break apart. It is a war that could last a hundred years.

“By not intervening early,” French Prime Minister Manuel Valls told Goldberg, “we have created a monster.” How big of a monster? Estimates range as high as 400,000 dead and tens of millions displaced.

Think about it: From a humanitarian perspective, the devastation resulting from the effort to prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb may have already exceeded the devastation that would result from Iran actually dropping a nuclear bomb. (via TheTower.org)