Are Syria, Iran playing Obama for a fool?
January 31, 2014 -- Updated 1355 GMT (2155 HKT)
Hundreds of refugees make their
way across the Syrian border into Jordan. Many have walked up to 20
kilometers to flee the ongoing civil war in Syria.
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Syrian refugees flee to Jordan
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Syria has only removed about 4% of priority one chemical weapons, U.S. says
- Frida Ghitis: Syria, Iran seem willing to toy with the U.S., raising doubt about negotiations
- She says U.S. needs to make clear that it will back up its positions with action
Editor's note: Frida
Ghitis is a world affairs columnist for The Miami Herald and World
Politics Review. A former CNN producer and correspondent, she is the
author of "The End of Revolution: A Changing World in the Age of Live
Television." Follow her on Twitter @FridaGhitis.
(CNN) -- Remember Syria's chemical weapons? Yes,
those, the ones the Syrian regime agreed to give up after President
Obama threatened to bomb.
All of the "priority one" the most dangerous of those weapons, were supposed to be gone by December 31 last year. They're not. Almost all of them
-- more than 95% -- are still in Syria despite a commitment by the
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to get rid of his deadly arsenal.
The deal to remove
Syria's stock of WMD was the one tangible accomplishment of the Obama
administration's approach to the Middle East's multiple crises. Now that
deal looks to be failing, even as red flags also start flying along the
path to a deal with Iran.
Frida Ghitis
It's hard to escape the impression that Iran and its close ally, Syria, are toying with the U.S.
America is earnestly
seeking a diplomatic solution. And we should all hope diplomacy succeeds
in securing an agreement that stops the carnage in Syria and one that
prevents Iran from becoming a greater threat to its neighbors. But there
is a reason these efforts are already running into trouble.
Secretary of State John
Kerry is valiantly pursuing the suit-and-tie approach to peace, but
Kerry is handicapped by the growing perception that Obama will not use
military force under any circumstances. The U.S. doesn't need to release
bombs to show it is powerful. What it needs to do is remind its
adversaries, its enemies, that it has options beyond the well-appointed
rooms of hotels along Lake Geneva.
Obama can do this by
speaking directly and firmly about those choices. That alone would go a
long way in reshaping some points of views, and could produce results.
If it doesn't, more concrete steps would be required, from increasing
material support for specific anti-al-Assad forces to a tightening of
sanctions against Iran and other steps.
Diplomats can help
concentrate the mind of their interlocutors when the people on the other
side of the table worry about the possible cost of failure.
This is true of Syria's al-Assad,
who has heard Obama's threats on the use of chemical weapons starting
in the summer of 2012, and is still playing games with America while
relentlessly slaughtering and starving his people.
And it is true about Iran, which just heard Obama during the State of the Union threaten
to veto a plan to set the stage now for additional sanctions against
Iran if negotiations fail in the next six months. Iranian officials
presumably also heard the president state what so many have stopped
believing: that he is prepared "to exercise all options to make sure
Iran does not build a nuclear weapon."
The more we hear from the Iranians, the less likely it seems that a successful agreement can be reached.
After CNN's Fareed Zakaria talked to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani last week, he concluded
there's a "train wreck" on its way in negotiations. The U.S. is moving
forward on the assumption that a deal would involve the dismantling of
some key nuclear facilities, but Rouhani, the moderate face of the
Islamist Republic, made it "categorically, specifically and
unequivocally" clear that Iran has no intention of ever rolling back its
nuclear program.
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On Syria, I had heard
rumors that the removal of its most terrifying weapons was not going as
scheduled. Then an anonymous source told Reuters
that the regime has delivered a dismal 4.1% of the 1,300 tons of toxic
agents it has reported, "and there is no sign of more," on the way.
Then the U.S. confirmed it.
On Thursday, Ambassador
Robert Mikulak, who heads the U.S. delegation to the Organization for
the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, told the group
that Syria is ignoring the timeline for removal of banned weapons and
displaying "a 'bargaining mentality' rather than a security mentality."
In addition, he said, there is little progress on Syria's commitment to
destroy its chemical weapons production facilities.
If Syria's games over
its chemical weapons sound familiar -- agreements followed by
"misunderstandings" and endless delays -- it is because we see much the
same already unfolding with Iran.
Iran's President and
foreign minister are well versed in their communications strategy with
the West. They are charming and fluent, speaking directly to Western
publics who would like nothing better than to be done with the threat of
a confrontation. And how great it would be to truly resolve the issue
diplomatically.
Hope, however, is not a
strategy any more than closing your eyes when you don't like what you
see, as when Iranian President Hassan Rouhani tweeted
that in the Geneva agreement the "world powers surrendered" to Iran.
That's when the White House dismissed the worrisome statement as a play
for a domestic audience.
Since then, however, one after another Iranian official has
maintained they have no intention of taking apart any of their nuclear
program. Without destroying any centrifuges, reactors, or other
facilities, Iran can negotiate with the West, and receive political,
diplomatic and economic benefits from the loosening of sanctions, as it
already has. And then, as top Iranian officials have said, it can
reverse any freeze and resume high-level enrichment in 24 hours. That's
the vow from the top nuclear negotiator and the foreign minister.
Making matters worse,
much worse, we have just learned that American intelligence officials
believe Iran has essentially already reached the "nuclear breakout"
capability it sought. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress this
week that Iran has made "technical progress in a number of areas --
including uranium enrichment, nuclear reactors, and ballistic missiles
-- from which it could draw if it decided to build missile-deliverable
nuclear weapons." In other words, he concluded, the only thing between
Iran and nuclear weapons is a political decision to build the bomb.
Everything else is already in place.
That extraordinary
revelation received little attention in the U.S., where the headlines
were consumed with the crisis in ice-logged Atlanta. In other places,
the news was cause for alarm. "Heaven help us," tweeted a respected Israeli journalist, "Iran can now build and deliver nukes."
How is it possible that Iran and Syria are getting away with this?
Iran and Syria are not
the only countries convinced that the U.S. will not take military
action. Saudi Arabia apparently has reached much the same conclusion.
After his 2012 red lines
became blurred, the deal to get rid of al-Assad's chemical weapons
allowed Obama to claim he had succeeded in showing consequences for
their use, even if al-Assad stayed in place and the killing continued.
But now it looks as if essentially nothing has changed. Except that tens
of thousands more have died.
To support American
diplomacy, Obama needs to erase that image of a weak America. Again,
there is no need to launch attacks and deploy troops. But there is a
need to show to America's enemies they cannot play the U.S. for a fool.
The President needs to assert convincingly that he will be able to
exercise power if that becomes necessary. Nothing would be more helpful
to the chances for diplomatic success.
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