The White House seems to think that Vladimir Putin’s Syria policy is a blunder of the first order. Recently, the Russians have deployed combat planes, tanks, ships, engineers, technicians, as well as special forces units to help sustain Bashar al-Assad’s regime. But that’s a bad idea, President Obama said last week. The project, he averred, was “doomed to fail.” Moscow, he contended, was “going to have to start getting a little smarter.”
Presumably, White House officials are telling themselves that Syria will be Putin’s Vietnam, or his Afghanistan, or some manner of “quagmire” from which he will be unable to extricate himself. It’s useful to recall that the administration thought the same regarding Iran. Syria, in Obama’s words, was “bleeding [the Iranians] because they're having to send in billions of dollars.”
Indeed, Syria might well have become an Iranian sinkhole except for the fact that the White House continued to bail out the Islamic Republic’s Mr. Fix It, IRGC-Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani, by providing him air cover in Iraq, coordinating with his allies in Lebanon, and in Syria leaving his friends alone and targeting some of his enemies. President Obama is a very smart man but it’s become increasingly clear that there are significant gaps in his knowledge. As the Cold War shows, it is very difficult to bleed an adversary unless you are willing to back its opponents. Obama, to the contrary, has endowed Iran with billions of dollars that will flow to it with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Russia’s hand is now similarly strengthened with its incursion into Syria. This is not a pile of rocks like Afghanistan that will serve as the tombstone of the Soviet empire, but rather a valuable piece of real estate on the Mediterranean through which Putin means to collect rent and project power. If Obama and John Kerry thought the Russians might be willing to abandon Bashar al-Assad, American gullibility has given the Russians a punchline. “Rumors of Rus-US-Saudi ‘secret talks on ousting Assad’ groundless,” the Russian ambassador to London tweeted Tuesday. “Moscow is not in the regime change business.”
Certainly not. After all, it’s propping up Assad that has made Putin the main interlocutor on all things Syrian, so there’s no reason to forfeit that card. Whether the Saudis or Turks want to discuss terms for their Syrian proxies, the Europeans a ceasefire or the refugee crisis, or the Israelis Iranian arms shipments to Hezbollah, the world needs to come to Moscow or Sochi to get satisfaction.
Indeed, even Tehran is now indebted to Putin for helping rescue a vital Iranian interest. Without the Assad regime, Iran would have a much harder time resupplying Hezbollah, the clerical regime’s most useful deterrent force against Israel. Yes, Iranian and Russian interests in Syria are more or less aligned, but it’s no longer exactly an equal partnership—if you’re the one asking for help, you’re the junior partner, a reality that Suleimani’s July trip to see Putin underscores. (A pro-Assad pro-Hezbollah newspaper in Beirut reported Tuesday that Suleimani made a second trip to Russia.)
In short, Putin’s move was plenty smart. As a recent Wall Street Journal editorial explains “For 70 years American Presidents from both parties have sought to thwart Russian influence in the Middle East.” And now Putin is in. It’s true the Cold War ended more than two decades ago and the United States no longer depends as much on Persian Gulf oil as it did in the 1970s, but Putin’s military incursion into Syria still constitutes a strategic threat to American interests.
It puts an unfriendly Russia on the border of three key American allies in the Middle East—Israel, Jordan, and Turkey. It gives Putin a forward operating base in the region—and perhaps more importantly a permanent naval presence on the shores of the energy-rich eastern Mediterranean. The recent assessments showing that Iran may become a major supplier of natural gas to Europe suggests that the Russian-Iranian relationship that has now been cemented in Syria will account for much of Europe’s energy needs, a fact that is likely to shape the policies of one of America’s key trading partners. And perhaps most importantly, the Russian-Iranian pact is likely to turn the Iranians into an even more aggressive and reckless regional actor.
The nuclear deal is predicated on the idea that the regime in Tehran will come to modify its behavior for the better in order to re-enter the community of nations. Obama says it doesn’t matter if the Iranians become more moderate since the JCPOA is better than no deal at all. But that can’t be true—or else the commander-in-chief is a sociopath who has put future generations of Americans in the crosshairs of an obscurantist, terror-supporting regime that will have an industrial-scale nuclear program within the next decade and a half.
No, in several interviews the president has expressed optimism that Iran would become a more rational actor in pursuing its interests. He and John Kerry have argued that the nuclear negotiations began a process in which 36 years of hostility between Iran and America were coming to a close, and now other avenues where Iran and the White House might cooperate were opening.
For the sake of argument, let’s stipulate that Obama and Kerry’s missionary zeal is grounded in fact—that Iran really wants to come closer to the American orbit, if for no other reason than to make money. Putin’s move virtually ensures that’s not going to happen. Iran, beholden to a Russia that dispatched troops to defend a vital Iranian interest, is now firmly in Moscow’s orbit, and Putin sees himself in competition with the United States. He will be looking for ways to weaken America, and Iran will serve as a useful instrument.
For the last several years, the White House has given Iran plenty of room to maneuver around the region, lest it risk a nuclear deal with Iran. With his incursion into Syria, Putin has bought himself the same freedom, if not more, to operate in the Middle East. Now both Iran and Putin are holding the JCPOA hostage, and Obama will have no choice but to fall in line. Among other things, this means that Assad will stay in power, no matter how much traditional U.S. allies object, and the Israelis’ ability to move against Hezbollah will be sharply limited.
The point then isn’t just that Russia now has a foothold in the Middle East. Rather, through a combination of incompetence and hubris, Obama has tied American regional interests, as well as those of our allies, to the whims of a Russian dictator. Worse yet, it’s not clear how a future administration frees itself from this trap, partly set by the forty-fourth president of the United States.