Why Iran might be worried by Hillary Clinton’s meeting with Syria exiles
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s meeting Tuesday in Geneva with exiled Syrian opposition leaders may have focused on the political transition the US envisions for Syria, but in the backdrop stood Iran and the longstanding American effort to break the Tehran-Damascus axis.
The ongoing regional upheaval of the Arab Spring presents “a once-in-a-lifetime chance to alter the balance of power in the Middle East, and certainly changing Syria’s orientation away from Iran would be a major coup from America’s perspective,” says Joshua Landis, a University of Oklahoma Syria expert.
“Syria is a key country in so many strategic and economic and diplomatic senses, so snipping the ties that bind Syria and Iran would be significant,” Professor Landis says, “to some degree it would make up for the boost in influence that Iran got after the Iraq war.
Syria’s relations with Iran were not part of Clinton’s public interchange with the opposition leaders. Before going into a private meeting at a Geneva hotel, Clinton told the group that working closely with opposition forces inside the country and reassuring Syria’s minorities that a political transition will benefit them are among their most important tasks.
‘A democratic transition includes more than removing the Assad regime,’ Secretary Clinton said as she sat down with the opposition leaders in a hotel in Geneva, Switzerland. ‘It means setting Syria on the path of the rule of law and protecting the universal rights of all citizens regardless of sect or ethnicity or gender.’
Clinton’s meeting with leaders of the SNC was the most overt sign of US support for the opposition since the Obama administration in August called on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down.