Arab News Blog

Washington’s strategy of selective engagement with Syria has not produced any tangible results. The question is: Why does Damascus continue to do the opposite of what the Obama administration wants it to?

There are two reasons:

First, Washington still lacks real leverage in its talks with Damascus. To make things worse, Syria currently enjoys a relatively comfortable position in the region, partly because of Washington’s lack of a coherent Syria policy but also because of its own efforts to develop its military alliance with Iran, enhance its political relations with Turkey and Iraq, and restore its power-broker role in Lebanese politics.

The second, and perhaps more important, reason why President Obama’s strategy has failed is because Syria is not interested in what Washington is currently selling.

Consider: The chief US goal of selective engagement is to try to take away from Syria a number of cards it holds in the region (though not all of them, given the price it would take to do so), be it Hamas, Hezbullah, or its link to militants in Iraq.

But what Washington needs to realize is that Syria’s aggregate power and influence in the Middle East is defined by these very cards. Syria will not let go of any of these, primarily because these are what keep its regime going.

Simply put, Syria will not allow the United States to pick and choose (hence the selective part of the strategy) what it wants to negotiate on, precisely because a piecemeal approach, as currently advocated by Washington, puts the Syrians in a vulnerable position vis-à-vis their adversaries, namely Israel.

Absent a comprehensive package from Washington, which would include Lebanon first and possibly peace with Israel and the return of the Golan Heights second, Syria will find it in its best interest to stall, keep its cards relatively intact, and refuse to engage in serious negotiations with the US.

Indeed, such an all-inclusive package – which Washington would be unable to (and must not) offer given its stated policy of support to Lebanon’s freedom – is the Baath regime’s only realistic long-term insurance policy.

Syria looks at its relationship with the US from a holistic perspective, while the US is currently viewing its relationship with Syria much more narrowly. Syria wants to completely overhaul the relationship and normalize it to ensure the survival of its regime, whereas the US just wants to bargain on a specific set of issues. It doesn’t take a genius to see that it simply won’t work because the two countries want different things.

One can understand why Obama is pursuing a strategy of selective engagement, given the setbacks of his predecessor’s policy of isolating Syria and the vast differences between the two countries on vital issues such as Lebanon. But US officials should keep this in mind as they talk to the Syrians: Syria will not lift a finger on any of the issues that touch US interests in the Middle East unless Washington recognizes first its hegemonic position in Lebanon and possibly its military return.

So what is the alternative? There is no easy answer, hence the very real and legitimate debate that took place on April 21 on Capitol Hill between members of Congress and US assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs Jeffrey Feltman, following his testimony on Syria. As Washington contemplates a more viable strategy for Syria, it would benefit from taking note of an old piece of advice: Get real leverage before you talk to your better-prepared and tougher-minded adversary.”

“…. Odd, for a business that’s supposed to stay out of the news. Then again, that’s been the fate of spy services in recent years. A lot of what they do, from espionage and bribery to counterterrorism and hacking into computers, has ended up on the front page…..

But another of Mossad’s reason for being, as with all the world’s spy services, is to make sure friends are really friends.

And judging by once sensitive FBI documents making the rounds in recent days, the Israelis have been at this task in Washington for a very long time.

The 21 documents, obtained by Grant F. Smith, a Washington, D.C. author who has made a career out of writing critical books on Israeli spying and lobbying, detail the FBI’s investigation into the theft of a confidential U.S. document on the Reagan administration’s position going into the 1984 U.S.-Israel Free Trade Area Negotiations.

Acting on a complaint that the document was circulating on Capitol Hill, the FBI discovered that an Israeli diplomat had acquired the paper and given it to officials at AIPAC, the lobbying group whose annual convention drew both Netanyahu and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton this week.

Although the document was classified only “confidential” (as opposed to Secret, Top Secret and higher), the FBI concluded that President Reagan’s “negotiating position concerning a trade agreement between the United States and the State of Israel is compromised because this report divulges those products and industries that have been identified by the International Trade Commission as being the most sensitive to imports from Israel.”

U.S. trade officials were furious at the discovery, “most angered by the fact that the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) had apparently attempted to influence members of Congress with the use of a purloined copy of the ITC report and had usurped their authority,” the FBI reported at the time.

Its investigation quickly hit a brick wall, however, when the Israeli embassy official who handled the stolen goods, identified as then-Minister of Economics Dan Halpern by Grant Smith in his 2009 book “Spy Trade,” claimed diplomatic immunity. “He indicated that he received this information in his official capacity as a diplomat, and that it would be against the principals of diplomatic work to divulge any information pertaining to the identity of the individual who provided him the report,” the FBI reported.

Because the man claimed diplomatic immunity,”active investigation into this matter will be discontinued at WFO [Washington Field Office],” the FBI said. “Washington Field will be contacted by the USTR or the ITC if pertinent information is developed regarding this or similar incidents.”

In his March 13, 1986 interview with the FBI, Halpern said “he received this information in his official capacity as a diplomat and that it would be against the principles of diplomatic work to divulge any information on the identity of the individual who gave him the report.”

In any event, he told the agents, the report was all over town, and that “the Government of Israel did not ask to receive the report and stated that when the individual provided him with the report, the transaction was not conducted in a discreet or secretive manner.”

Halpern is now on the executive committee of the America-Israel Chamber of Commerce in New York and the co-CEO of Iftic, a private business consultancy, according to his listing there.

But the trade-spy flap was small potatoes compared the arrest 18 months later of Jonathan Pollard, the naval intelligence analyst who passed upwards of a million pages of classified documents to his Israeli handlers, according to court documents. Under a 1987 plea agreement, Pollard is serving a life sentence.

Since then, Israeli intelligence operations here have hardly slowed. In 2005, U.S. counterspies overheard Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., agreeing to help a suspected Israeli agent lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two former AIPAC officials. Harman denied my account in Congressional Quarterly, which was subsequently corroborated by major news organizations.

Back in London, meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary Miliband asserted Tuesday that “trust between [Israel and the U.K.] had been badly dented” by the Dubai passport caper and “demanded formal assurances it never happen again.”

Former Mossad agent Gad Shimron, interviewed in London by The Washington Post’s Karla Adam, said Israel would never officially admit any involvement in the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai.

But Shimron added: “the British are hypocrites, because when they operate against al-Qaeda, they do not do it with genuine passports.”

They don’t call it the “spy game” for nothing.

Uncomfortable at the spectacle of the Obama administration in an open confrontation with the Israeli government, Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman — who represents the interests of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party on Capitol Hill as faithfully as he does those of the health insurance industry — called for a halt. “Let’s cut the family fighting, the family feud,” he said. “It’s unnecessary; it’s destructive of our shared national interest. It’s time to lower voices, to get over the family feud between the U.S. and Israel. It just doesn’t serve anybody’s interests but our enemies.

The idea that the U.S. and Israel are “family” with identical national interests is a convenient fiction that Lieberman and his fellow Israel partisans have worked relentlessly to promote — and enforce — in Washington over the past two decades. If the bonds are indeed familial, however, last week’s showdown between Washington and the Netanyahu government may be counted as one of those feuds in which truths are uttered in the heat of the moment that call into question the fundamental terms of the relationship. Such truths are never easily swept under the rug once the dispute is settled. The immediate rupture, that is, precludes a simple return to the status quo ante; instead, a renegotiation of the terms of the relationship somehow ends up on the agenda.

Sure, the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government are now working feverishly to find a formula that will allow them to move on ………. the Israelis will fend off any demand that they completely reverse their latest construction plans. Instead, they will shamelessly offer to continue their settlement activity on a “don’t-ask-don’t-tell” basis, professing rhetorical support for a two-state solution to placate the Americans, even as they systematically erode its prospects on the ground.

There is, as former Secretary of State James Baker has noted, no shortage of chutzpah in this Israeli government. “United States taxpayers are giving Israel roughly $3 billion each year, which amounts to something like $1,000 for every Israeli citizen, at a time when our own economy is in bad shape and a lot of Americans would appreciate that kind of helping hand from their own government,” Baker said in a recent interview. “Given that fact, it is not unreasonable to ask the Israeli leadership to respect U.S. policy on settlements.”

Sooner or later, the present imbroglio is likely to be fudged over, but make no mistake, it opened Washington up to a renewed discussion of the conventional wisdom of unconditional support for Israel. It also brought into the public arena the way U.S. administrations over the past two decades have enabled that country’s ever-expanding occupation regime and whether such a policy is compatible with U.S. national interests in the Middle East.

Back in 2006, the realist foreign policy thinkers John Mearshimer and Stephen Walt provoked a firestorm of ridicule and ad hominem abuse for suggesting in their book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, …. Israel partisans also heaped derision on the suggestion by the Iraq Study Group commissioned by President George W. Bush that the U.S. would not be able to achieve its goals in the Middle East without first settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Response to the reiteration, last week, of the idea that Israel’s behavior might be jeopardizing U.S. interests has been strikingly muted by comparison. That’s because it came from General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command (Centcom), which oversees America’s two wars of the moment. He is the most celebrated U.S. military officer of his generation, and a favorite of those most ferocious of Israel partisans, the neocons.

Petraeus told Senators ….”The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas.” He also stressed that “progress toward resolving the political disputes in the Levant, particularly the Arab-Israeli conflict, is a major concern for Centcom.”

Normally, any linkage between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a wave of anti-Americanism in the Muslim world is pooh-poohed by neocons and other Israel partisans. Typically, they will derisively suggest that those who argue for the linkage made by Petraeus are naive ……. Abe Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, who has made a profession of trying to negate the difference between anti-Semitism and criticism of (or hostility to) Israel, gamely ventured that “Gen. Petraeus has simply erred in linking the challenges faced by the U.S. and coalition forces in the region to a solution of the Israeli-Arab conflict, and blaming extremist activities on the absence of peace and the perceived U.S. favoritism for Israel.” His conclusion: “This linkage is dangerous and counterproductive.” (continue, here)