U.S. President Obama should challenge the Iranian regime’s “Syrian land bridge to Hezbollah through more vigorous support for anti-Assad forces,” Jackson Diehl, Deputy editorial page editor of the Washington Post, writes.
At his post-nuclear deal news conference last month, Obama conceded that the regime in Iran might use some of the billions it will soon receive to supply the Lebanese Hezbollah militia with fresh weapons, and he vowed to do his best to stop it. “It is in the national security interest of the United States to prevent Iran from sending weapons to Hezbollah,” he said.
Mr. Diehl suggested on Monday that including the Iranian regime in Syrian peace talks would be a mistake.
“The Assad regime is propped up almost entirely at this point by money, weapons and fighters supplied by Iran,” Mr. Diehl wrote on Monday.
“More important, conceding an Iranian say on Syria contradicted Obama’s goal of stopping its support for Hezbollah. That’s because Iran’s deep and so far unwavering support for the regime of Bashar al-Assad is driven almost entirely by its use of Syria as a land bridge to the Shiite militia.”
Mr. Diehl said thousands of Hezbollah fighters “are keeping the Assad regime standing in Damascus — not because of any love for Assad’s Alawite sect but to preserve this link to Iran.”
“Lacking reliable sea access to Lebanon, Iran needs control over the Damascus airport and the border between Syria and Lebanon to ensure Hezbollah’s resupply. That’s why, as it loses ground to rebels in the north and south, the Assad regime’s army — itself now largely an Iranian proxy — has begun to concentrate on defending a narrow strip of territory between Damascus and the border.”
“The bottom line is that a serious effort to end Syria’s war will require Obama to choose between challenging Iran’s Syrian land bridge to Hezbollah through more vigorous support for anti-Assad forces, or accepting a settlement that tacitly sanctions a continued Iranian proxy army on Israel’s border. Considering his investment in the nuclear deal, it wouldn’t be surprising if he shrinks from both options — and hands a Syrian nightmare to his successor.”
