Syrian President Bashar Assad has reportedly expressed interest in renewing negotiations with Israel. |
A report by well-informed Syrian born journalist Ibrahim Hamidi in the Saudi-owned Sharq al Awsat newspaper (September 26) suggested that Assad has expressed interest in renewing negotiations with Israel. The intention of such a declaration is without doubt to break the US-imposed strategy of isolation on the regime. It should go without saying that Assad cannot abandon his territorial demands re Israel – namely, achieving the return of the strategic Golan plateau to his control – and hence any negotiation would have zero chance of success. But the very opening of such talks would constitute an important advantage for Assad in breaking his isolation.
The fact that Assad may well be feeling the need to send up such trial balloons at the present time is an indication that the US strategy is working and is a reason to keep forging ahead in this direction.
Assad’s trial balloons indicate that the US strategy to isolate him is working.
Assad would certainly gain from the renewal of negotiations with Israel, and the relegitimization of his government that this would imply. But a re-legitimated Assad, who nevertheless remained aligned with and beholden to the Iranians, would be a complicating factor for Israel in its desire to continue to prevent by force Iranian entrenchment in Syria. And ... there is no evidence to suggest that Assad intends to give up this alliance. Indeed, from his point of view, he would be foolish to do so since Iran was a key factor in preventing his regime’s destruction. It also remains open to question if Assad would even be able to instruct the Iranians to quit Syria, or to break with them, given the extreme weakness of his armed forces, and the unavailability of substitutes other than the Iranians and their allies.
A re-legitimated Assad would complicate Israeli efforts to prevent Iranian entrenchment.
Both the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, meanwhile, are in favor of the rehabilitation of Assad, as part of a larger strategy of rebuilding the diplomatic center of the Arab world. This general project, which also includes efforts to strengthen Prime Minister Mustafa Kadhimi in Iraq, is one which is also good for Israel, since it is an effort to build an Arab alliance around a core of pro-western states with de facto or de jure normalized relations with Israel.
However, it is erroneous to believe that Assad’s Syria can be a member of such an alliance. His interests and preferences will keep him firmly in the pro-Iran bloc and in close alliance with Russia. He will be happy to take any advantages offered by Arab diplomacy while retaining this orientation. Israel will need to make this case to its Arab partners in the period ahead.
Israel should reject any overtures from the Assad regime.
Given the clear usefulness of maintaining the isolation of Assad, and the synergy between Israel and the US Administration in this regard, it is important that Jerusalem make clear its commitment to the maintenance of the strategy of maximum pressure on Iran and the regional camp around it, including the Assad regime. Israel should reject any overtures from the regime. Such overtures reflect a discomfort and desperation on the part of the regime which it is in Israel’s interest to maintain.
Jonathan Spyer is director of the Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis and a Ginsburg/Milstein Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
