Syria 'Influence Game' Explores US Engagement With Iran
In an exclusive report, Barbara Slavin covers a "competitive influence" game meant to stretch the minds of the US military. The object of the game, she writes, was not to overthrow Assad, tame Hezbollah or stop Iran’s nuclear program, but to leverage US capabilities and alliances and better understand how the region’s many actors fit together.
A year from now, the US, NATO and Arab allies will be patrolling a no-fly zone over a safe haven in northwestern Syria that is home to more than 1.5 million internally displaced Syrians and non-Syrian refugees.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while still in power in Damascus, will have been severely injured by a suicide bomber.
The UN Security Council will have finally passed a resolution on Syria — to safeguard Syria’s chemical arsenal. Iran will have been invited to multilateral negotiations with the US, Russia, Turkey and the Arab League that are nominally about weapons of mass destruction but really about shaping a post-Assad regime. In return for a seat at the Syria table, Iran will have halted enrichment of uranium to 20%, sent out its stockpile to Russia and replaced Iranian Quds Force operatives in Syria with representatives of “humanitarian” non-governmental organizations.
None of this may come to pass, but that isn’t the point.
