Thursday, April 29, 2010

Who's Winning So Far? Iran/Syria: 2; United States: 0

By Barry Rubin

Remember Turkey? It used to hold joint military exercises with the United States and Israel. Now it holds them with Syria while refusing to hold even an air-sea rescue drill with Israel. Yet there's no real concern in the U.S. government that Turkey--or rather the neo-Islamist current government--may be changing sides or of U.S. technology becoming available to Iran and Syria in the future.

Consider this list, which is pretty undeniable in factual terms:

U.S. engagement with Iran: failure.

U.S. engagement with Syria: failure.

Iran/Syria engagement with Lebanon: success.

Iran/Syria engagement with Turkey: success.

Bottom line: The United States has failed to pull Syria away from Iran; Iran and Syria have pulled Lebanon and Turkey away from the United States.

Iran/Syria: 2; United States: 0

In Washington policy circles and to a large extent in the mass media, no one has noticed this little comparison of success.

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