The below transcript is from the Middle East Institute's 66th Annual Conference in Washington, DC, November 14, 2012

Panel 4: Syria and the Regional Implications of the Crisis
Geneive Abdo, Middle East Institute
Amr Al Azm, Shawnee State University
Saban Kardas, TOBB University
Randa Slim, Middle East Institute
Ekaterina Stepanova, Institute of the World Economy and International Relations

Kate Seelye:  Good afternoon everybody, and welcome to our final panel of the day: “Syria and the Regional Implications of the Crisis.” It’s wonderful to see such a strong turnout for our final panel. It speaks to just how urgent the issue is that we are addressing today.

I just want to tell you a little bit about the genesis of this panel. It’s an extension of a discussion about this very same topic that began in Istanbul last June, hosted by the Hollings Center for International Dialogue. They brought together many of the panelists who are here today – Geneive, Randa, Saban and Ekaterina – to look at how the Syrian crisis is spilling over into the neighboring countries and who some of the players are that can help address and bring about a solution to the crisis.

So we have gathered them again today and then tomorrow they will be meeting for three hours with some other panelists. We are going to be turning their findings and discussions into a report for wide distribution. We are very excited about this project and we want to thank very much George Gavrilis and Danielle Duffy of the Hollings Center for making today’s event and the publication to follow possible.

Now I want to introduce our moderator, Kim Ghattas, whose bio I will keep very brief because I think so many of us know her. Kim has been the BBC’s State Department radio and TV correspondent since 2008 and travels regularly with the Secretary of State, covering US foreign policy. She was previously a Middle East correspondent for the BBC and the Financial Times based in Beirut, where we used to report together. Most importantly, she has what looks to be a fabulous book coming out in March called, The Secretary: A Journey with Hillary Clinton from Beirut to the Heart of American Power. I certainly very much look forward to welcoming that book in March. Kim, I’d like to turn the panel over to you.

Kim Ghattas:  Thank you very much for this generous introduction. Thank you all for being here at the end of a very long but very interesting day, with a lot of fascinating panels about the issues that are of the latest urgent importance in the Middle East.

But perhaps the most urgent question at the moment is of course the ongoing conflict in Syria. It’s been almost two years since that uprising has started. It was peaceful at first but it has become increasingly more violent, with regional repercussions we have seen for Turkey, Lebanon, to some extent Israel, Iraq, and Iran. The devastation for Syria, such a beautiful country that I reported on for many years, has really been heartbreaking, with close to 30,000 people killed, of course most of them civilians.

In August of last year, President Obama said that it was time for President Assad to step down. Yet he is still there, hanging onto power. Does anything change now that President Obama has been reelected? Is it really on his to-do list? To discuss these issues we have an amazing group of panelists that are going to take us through some of the different issues. I will not list all of their achievements – they are many – but you have their detailed bios. I will just very briefly introduce them with the issues they will be discussing.

To my left is Amr Al Azm. He is from Syria. He will be bringing us real insider knowledge of that country and what is going on there. This is a country that reporters haven’t been able to get access to very easily so getting an accurate picture of what is going on inside the country is key. Expert knowledge is certainly needed. You were, I believe, in Hama yourself in 1982. So you have seen the destruction that can be wrought by the regime firsthand. Even though you have spent quite a few years abroad now, you do have your finger very much on the pulse. I remember, Amr, almost a year ago – I believe it was last summer – you told me about Riad Seif, and you told me that this dissident, a former member of parliament, was the man for the job when it came to leading the Syrian opposition. Here we are, a year later, Riad Seif is in the leadership of the opposition with Suhair Atassi and Moaz al-Khatib. So we will be looking to hear from you about what next for Syria and what can the opposition really achieve.

Next to Amr we have Saban Kardas from Turkey, the TOBB University in Ankara. Turkey is very much involved in what is going on. They tried but failed for a long time to reason with President Assad. I assume that Prime Minister Erdogan and the foreign minister feel personally snubbed because this was really part of their attempt to have a “zero problem” policy in the region. Instead now they have thousands of Syrian refugees inside their border, there have been artillery fire exchanges between Syria and Turkey. So we will be looking to hear from you about how is the conflict in Syria impacting Turkey’s domestic and regional policies and its relationship with the United States, perhaps, because there does seem to be some frustration when it comes to what the United States is doing – that frustration inside Turkey. But it appears there isn’t a real Turkish plan about how to move this forward. There is now talk about positioning Patriot missiles from NATO on the border with Syria.

Next to Saban we have Geneive Abdo, a Fellow at the Stimson Center. Geneive, you wrote a piece in Foreign Affairs in August last year about how Iran keeps President Assad in power. They certainly have succeeded in doing that. They do that with weapons, technology and expertise – this is what you wrote. One year on, what are Iran’s calculations really? How far will the Iranians go to protect this front? They see Syria as the first front of defense, their line of defense against the United States and Israel. Perhaps you might be touching on how does all this factor into the nuclear negotiations between the US and the West on the one hand and Iran.

Then, more regional repercussions: Lebanon, of course. We will turn to Randa Slim, a fellow Lebanese and a Fellow at the New America Foundation. Randa, you wrote recently a piece about President Assad and it was titled “The Survivor.” That is certainly a very apt title, not just for President Bashar Assad but his father as well. They have gone through many ups and downs, they always land on their feet. Will they be able to survive that? But we will be looking for you to tell us also about one of their mechanisms of survival – they get a lot of help from Hezbollah. We will be listening to hear your take on what Hezbollah’s calculations are at this stage. Obviously they see Syria as a first line of defense for them as well but are they perhaps starting to hedge their bets and plan for the post-Assad period, if it comes?

Finally, last but not least, we have Ekaterina Stepanova. She is the head of the Peace and Conflict Studies Unit at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Ekaterina, you will be bringing us this other worldview. We hear a lot about why the West doesn’t want Assad to stay in power but clearly the Russians don’t agree with that. There is some anger, criticism but also bewilderment at the Russian position. So I think our discussion will be greatly enriched by your input about this. You wrote that in a way, the Russian position and its veto at the UN suits the West, because there really isn’t any appetite at the moment – certainly there hasn’t been over the last year and we don’t know whether there will be in the days coming ahead – any appetite for intervention. So the question is, can there be a transition in Syria without intervention? Particularly now with this new leadership for the opposition, but Russia doesn’t seem to be interested in backing that opposition. We know that the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, is touring the Gulf now and they do back that opposition so it will be interesting to see what comes out of that.

Amr Al Azm:  When Kate sent me the email telling me what she would like me to do here, she gave me a long list of topics I’d be expected to touch on. Then I saw 13-15, I thought, wow, 13-15 hours would be just about right. Unfortunately we only have 13-15 minutes – in fact I have just been warned it’s 13. So I will hammer my way through.

I’d like to begin by saying that it is all too easy in gatherings as such to focus simply on the analysis, the facts and the figures and to forget there is also a human dimension to this tragedy. In an effort to humanize this panel ever so slightly, I’d just like to begin by reminding us very briefly of how it all began. It began when a group of children in Deraa wrote on the school walls, [in Arabic]: “the people want to topple the regime.” For their efforts they were imprisoned and horribly tortured, and as a result of that the uprising began in Syria. This uprising and this particular cry [in Arabic] essentially pitched the protestors and set the people on a course of very bloody confrontation with the Assad regime. Today, 18 months later, we are still counting the costs. Over 40,000 dead, many more imprisoned and millions displaced.

With that I’d like to give you a brief analysis of where we are today. The way I see the situation in Syria – I see stalemate. Right now we have a stalemate on the military and political fronts.

On the military front, I would like to remind you that as much as we like to see Free Syrian Army soldiers occupying positions, taking out border crossings, the reality is such: not a single major city has fallen into the hands of the opposition. By major cities I’m talking about the capital, the main cities of the provinces: Deraa, Damascus, Homs, Hama, Idlib, Aleppo, Dayr al-Zawr, Palmyra/Tadmor, and the coastal cities. Not one of those cities has fully fallen into the hands of the opposition. With that, the regime can still claim to be in control of the country. What the regime has done is essentially abandoned the countryside, the rural areas, but it can reach those areas at any time it chooses with its long-range artillery and its air force.

On the other side, you have the opposition, which does not have the ability to neutralize the not-insignificant resources that are still available to the regime. Yes, the regime has taken some hits. Yes, its equipment has been degraded in many areas. But remember we have not also seen the very heavy equipment of the regime, the main battle tanks that are all still kept in reserve, most of them around Damascus, and probably will be used in the final battle for Damascus and perhaps later on.

So in short, the regime has had some hits, has some of its hardware degraded, but it still has a considerable punch to deliver; and the opposition still has not been able to mount sufficient effective counterforce to take those major cities and hold them.

On the political front, what can I tell you? A disunited, fractious opposition, both inside and outside, best exemplified by the Syrian National Council (SNC). “Disunited” and “fractious” would be the least colorful sobriquets by which the Syrian opposition has often been described.

The stalemate as I have described it – politically, with a disunited, dysfunctional opposition; militarily, on the ground, with the fact that the regime still holds all these major cities – has three major effects.

For starters, it has seriously hampered the ability of the international community to deliver support, both military and humanitarian. This has been very noticeable in recent months.

It has also, more importantly, created a political vacuum. The lack of a clear and well-led opposition with a clear agenda, clear vision, has created this political vacuum that has now been exploited by radical Islamists and Salafi entities and groups, which have been filtering into Syria. Although not as yet – I know some people in the West like to think of this as a major problem. It’s not yet a big problem but it is growing. If it’s not contained it will become a serious issue later on.

The third point is that the stalemate has also helped the regime maintain its core support, not just among its Alawi minority but also from Christians, Druze and even Sunnis – what we call the soft pillars of support of the regime. Particularly those who look at the opposition and cry out [in Arabic]: who is the alternative? This is very significant. Instead of thinking “what is the alternative” [in Arabic] they are still thinking in terms of [in Arabic]. The fact that you have a disunited opposition, the fact that militarily we have no breakthrough, have really maintained this stalemate.

We have some changes coming up, starting with the Doha meetings that just occurred last week. We start to see this as maybe a shift, as maybe breaking ground in terms of unifying the opposition. But it’s still too early to say. The entity that has been created, the Coalition, is very fragile. It is headed by inexperienced individuals. The potential for repeating the mistakes of the SNC loom all too great.

Just briefly to tell you a little bit about the effects of the stalemate. As a result of this stalemate, both political and military, the regime still feels reasonably strong and in control despite its serious losses. The opposition, as I just mentioned, does not have the organization and the military capabilities to make a shift in its favor. So there is little room for maneuver here.

So what needs to happen now is we need to see some game-changers. For me, the principal game-changer will need to be the ability of the opposition to start to take major cities. For this to happen you need to start to introduce what I would call qualitative weapons. This is the type of weaponry that would be able to neutralize initially the airpower that is hitting them and then later on they will need to have something to take out the very heavy mainline battle tanks that are still to be fully used against them. If such a game-changer is to be introduced, and all indications are that we may start to see this very soon, then Aleppo is ripe to fall. That would be the first domino.

Speaking of dominoes, Aleppo is very critical because it is the anchor: it is the anchor that holds Dayr al-Zawr. If you know your Syria map you would know that Dayr al-Zawr is to the south and it controls what we call the Badia, the desert area. If Dayr al-Zawr goes, that is important because it controls the road that takes you to Palmyra, and from Palmyra into Damascus. Damascus will not fall from the north. The Hama-Homs road – if you’re thinking of Aleppo falling and then you will drive down through Homs and Hama straight to Damascus, that cannot happen. Homs and Hama are too well-defended. It’s too close to the heartland of the regime – it’s very difficult. It won’t come from the south, from Deraa, because the Jordanians don’t really want to open another front. And we all know what’s happening in Jordan the last few days; that’s even more reason for the Jordanians to not allow for a major front to open up on that front. The west, you have Lebanon and Hezbollah, that’s not going to happen. Which only leaves the east, and that means the desert road that will run from Dayr al-Zawr through Palmyra and into Damascus.

The regime fully  understands this. They understand the implications of such an event. So if Aleppo and Dayr al-Zawr fall, as I would expect them to fall sometime between now and Christmas if we have that qualitative input in terms of equipment, then the regime may find itself finally in a situation where it needs to negotiate. Until now the regime, in its own mindset, does not feel that it needs to negotiate because it has not suffered any major losses (i.e., the cities). But if the cities start to fall, then that might just begin to get them to think that they need to do something a little more.

It might also bring the Russians to the table because the Russians will now be looking at the situation and seeing a different map. That might also bring the Russians to the table. We may start to see such a shift. Negotiations also require an opposition partner that is able to negotiate, hence this current haste to create a unified opposition with a government-in-exile.

So this is all about checking boxes. If I think of the boxes: elections in the US, check, done; opposition united, check, done; military sort of united – we have these regional commands now – check, done; introduce some qualitative material – the domino effect begins – check. Then you come to the next point, which is the real meat on the ground: the negotiations. You need to bring the Syrian regime to a negotiating stance which up until now the opposition has not really been able to – and neither has the international community for that matter – been able to bring them to.

Finally, the role of the Gulf states, particularly Qatar and Turkey, who have been working very closely to unify this opposition. That’s where I think the role of the Gulf has been. They have invested most of their effort into the actual political opposition and to unify them. So the new Coalition that has just emerged is very much a Qatari-Turkish inspiration, if I may call it.

But we have other players in the Gulf too. We have the Saudis. I can tell you, from the news that I’ve heard, that the Saudis are not very happy. This new Coalition basically is not something that the Saudis are very happy with, particularly because the Saudis went the other route and invested in the military side. That’s where the Saudis put all their effort in. So you also have these two competing – do you push militarily and hope you can eventually insert enough military force on the ground to topple the regime militarily, or do you go the political route and create a unified opposition with enough military clout behind it to start the domino effect, to bring the regime back to the negotiating table – which up until now has not happened.

Kim Ghattas:  Is Assad still in power in a year?

Amr Al Azm:  I think we are going to see a two-year civil war. I know people in Washington don’t like to hear civil war but that’s essentially what we’re going to see. We will see a two-year civil war with a protracted stalemate followed by a Taif-like agreement, followed by a compromise, followed by, you know. The Assads are going to be out, for sure. I don’t think the Assad regime itself will survive. But without the Assads they will figure something out. That would be my assessment.

Kim Ghattas:  Thank you very much for your insights. Now from just across the border, I will hear from Saban Kardas, from TOBB University in Ankara.

Saban Kardas:  Thanks a lot. I was asked to talk about three different questions. The first one is Turkey’s approach to the Syrian conflict. The second one is the implications of the crisis for Turkish foreign policy, and lastly the implications for Turkey’s domestic politics. For each I would need at least 15 minutes but I will try to do my best to give you my opinions on those three in 15 minutes.

On the first question, how is Turkey approaching the Syrian crisis – what was the reading of the Turkish government when it approached the Syrian crisis? I guess we first try to understand Turkey’s overall approach to the Arab Spring, because as far as I can tell the way the Turkish government contextualized and the way it framed its approach to Syria was very much in line with its general reading of the developments in the Middle East in the last two years or so. So in this sense, the Turkish government’s overall view was that what was happening in the Middle East was a bottom-up demand for change and transformation in the region. It was a genuine demand of the ordinary Arab people and it deserved Turkey’s support. You see a very positive identification of the Turkish government with the masses on the streets. When you read closely the discourse of the government and governing party, they also see themselves in the process of transformation. So the historic trajectory of the Middle Eastern people in the context of the Arab Spring was very much related to the broader transformation that was taking place in Turkish domestic politics as well.

So from the very beginning Turkey had a position that was supportive of the people. In Tunisia there was not much room for Turkey to take a position. The developments led to a rather peaceful regime change. The critical case for Turkey was the situation in Egypt. There were several days of demonstrations. Prime Minister Erdogan was the first Middle Eastern leader to call on Mubarak to leave power – that was a very critical moment. It also created a sort of precedent in the upcoming confrontation between the regimes and the people, if you take sides with the people that are against – because whoever comes to power after the regime change will be the new rulers. So if you act early on, take a very proactive position, you can also weigh the future. There was this precedent which, I would argue, affected the way Turkey approached the Syrian crisis as well.

So in Syria, since the very beginning of the demonstrations in Deraa in the south, Turkey developed a critical reading. But in both Syria and Libya, in both cases Turkey was in a more difficult position. Previously Turkey’s relations with Mubarak were not as good but with both Syria and Libya, Turkey developed good relations. So in that sense breaking up with the regime in Syria and Libya was not as easy.

For a while Turkey pursued a policy of engagement, tried to mediate between the regime and the opposition forces. This policy continued, as far as I can tell, at least until August 2011. It was in Ramadan. The Turkish foreign minister also visited Damascus, spent several hours trying to convince Assad to introduce reforms. After that event, as far as I remember, Assad withdrew tanks from some cities, but even as the Turkish ambassador in Damascus visited at that time and a few days later the bombings started. This was the moment where Turkey lost hope in Assad’s ability to deliver reforms. After that point on we see Turkey increasingly, gradually starting to give up on Assad and trying to increase its support to the opposition.

But the relationship between Turkey and the opposition started much earlier, during the first half of 2011. Turkey allowed the opposition to hold meetings in Istanbul and Antalya early on. In March and April 2011 there were several meetings of the opposition groups. After August 2011, Turkey increasingly started to coordinate its policies with the Gulf countries. As we know the Qatar initiative is still ongoing. The Arab League plan, Turkey was very much supportive of it, also the UN process, the two resolutions.

Faced with the persistent power of the regime, Turkey later tried to reach out to Tehran and Moscow. This was also very important. Turkey was trying to undercut the support of the Syrian regime in international platforms. In February 2012 the Turkish foreign minister visited Tehran and Moscow. Those meetings were critical, as far as I can tell. They figured out that those two backers of the regime would not give up on Assad. After that period Turkey increasingly coordinated its policies with the West, especially the United States. Since then we see some policy coordination between Turkey and the United States but that coordination has also very problematic dimensions. We see reports that Turkey is not satisfied with the level and degree of US involvement, which we can discuss later in the Q&A session.

But after that, in the last year or so, Turkey has been increasingly at the forefront of the international coalition to change the regime. Turkey’s relationship with both Russia and Iran were also severed. So Turkey’s policy of trying to support the opposition also came with significant regional repercussions, because it had to sever relations with major neighbors. Russia and Iran are major suppliers of oil and gas to Turkey so there are significant costs to Turkey of supporting the Syrian opposition.

Before I move on to the second part of my question, I would like to add one observation about one point which was made by the previous speaker. This insistence on the unification of the opposition, why Turkey and Qatar are acting that way, as far as I can tell – at least from the Turkish perspective – it’s also an instrumental perspective from the Turkish point of view. Turkey wants to unify the opposition on a political platform so that it could insist on the United States and the West to be more forthcoming. One of the arguments used to justify the low degree of US involvement was the fact that the opposition was disorganized. By trying to present a unified front, Turkey hopes to also press on the West to be more forthcoming. This is the strategic rationale there.

So the second part of my presentation: the implications of the Syrian case for Turkey’s Middle East policies and Turkish foreign policy. To respond to that question we have to first remember the main contours of Turkey’s Middle East policy – what it was before the Arab Spring and how it has been affected by the Arab Spring and the Syrian case as well. I will not go into detail but as far as I can tell, when we talk about Turkish foreign policy before the Arab Spring we always talk about proactivism, especially in 2008-2010. In Washington and many European capitals the discussion was about proactive Turkish foreign policy. Sometimes people call it the new autonomism, sometimes they called it “zero problems with neighbors” policy. But overall it was a regional policy, it was a neighborhood policy. Turkey was trying to create a belt of stability and prosperity in its southern borders through proactive involvement. So it was an effort to create a regional order in the Middle East, centered hopefully around Turkey. Turkey would be in a central position to shape developments. So the Middle East policy of Turkey prior to the Arab Spring foresaw that Turkey would be at the center, would be in a position to develop autonomous, independent policies to shape events in the region.

Secondly, it would also involve regional solutions. Regional actors would get together and develop solutions to their own problems rather than the external international actors. Turkey’s Middle East policy was based on what I call liberal foreign policy instruments. Turkey was especially using economic interdependence, soft power, diplomacy, mediation, engagement policies to penetrate into the Middle East. It was very much based on a liberal approach to international relations. Especially, this notion of zero problems with neighbors was reflective of the fact that Turkey was operating its Middle East policy from a liberal understanding.

So the Arab Spring and the Syrian case was a major test for Turkey’s Middle East policy. It presented many challenges and it led to major revisions along the way. There are several major revisions. The first one: Turkey realized the limits to its power. Its ability to develop autonomous policies was severely tested. In some cases Turkey was able to get what it wanted but in many other cases, especially in Syria – as I mentioned earlier, initially Turkey tried to find a solution through its own engagement policy with Assad but it did not work, so Turkey realized the limits to its own power. Also the limits of the regional solutions paradigm was revealed. Turkey ideally would have loved to see a solution that would come through a dialogue between Turkey, Iran and perhaps other regional actors, not the involvement of the Western countries and the international powers. But that didn’t work. The Arab League plan did not really produce much of a solution. Turkey had to work with the international actors. In 2010 everyone here in Washington were talking about an axis shift – Turkey was deviating away from the West. But now in the context of the Arab Spring we see Turkey is coordinating and recalibrating its relationship with the West and the United States. There is this major transformation in Turkish foreign policy.

Also the liberal instruments were tested. Prior to the Arab Spring Turkey always used to talk about soft power, engagement, diplomacy and dialogue. But after the Arab Spring and the transformations in Syria, we see increasingly the hard security issues – military power, border skirmishes with Syria, deployment of Patriot batteries and missile shield radars and so on. Increasingly the hard power is on the agenda of Turkish foreign policy, which we can debate.

The domestic implications. At the beginning of the crisis, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan said something like: Syria is an internal issue for us. This was a very important statement. He still insists on the same statement, as far as I can tell. It creates enormous debate within Turkish domestic politics as well.

Why does the leader of Turkey see Syria as an internal matter? First, it was because of this positive identification with the Arab Spring of the ruling elite in Turkey. It could be ideological but also because the Turkish elite sees the transformation of the Middle East and the transformation of Turkish society as part of the same historic trajectory. So there is this positive identification. But also the security implications – what happens in Syria directly has implications for Turkish security as well, because of the future of the Syrian Kurds, the movement of refugees, the sectarian dimension. So the sectarian element of the Syrian conflict may have some ramifications for Turkey’s own domestic policies. This is one of the things that sometimes comes up in Turkish domestic discussions so the Turkish government has to act very carefully so that the sectarian element in the Syrian conflict will not spread to the Turkish domestic context.

This explains why Turkey has taken a very proactive position on the Syrian conflict, because of those direct security risks and possible linkages. Turkey was trying to avert the escalation of the crisis into a civil war of sorts very early on. That’s why Turkey has always been urging the United States to be more forthcoming and proactive.

Another way the Syrian conflict has been incorporated into Turkish domestic politics is that increasingly the domestic political discussions are centered on foreign policy issues in Turkey. It’s a very interesting case. Sometimes the foreign policy positions of the government become more important than bread-and-butter issues domestically. For instance, a couple of weeks back there was a motion in the parliament, a vote of confidence against the foreign minister, because of his Syria policy. Especially given the current constellation of powers in Turkish domestic politics, very much the opposition wants to capitalize on Turkey’s Syria policy, presenting it as a failure in order to weaken the government. So again, we see domestic politics also is intermingled with foreign policy. We can come back to that in the Q&A.

Geneive Abdo:  Good afternoon. I’ve been assigned a somewhat daunting task but I will try to present the view from Tehran on various levels.

I’d like to first go back to the beginning of the Arab uprisings in 2011, just to try to give you some sense of where Iran viewed its role in the region then compared to now. At that time, Iran was in a very good strategic position, if you consider the government in Iraq and its relationship with Turkey. Also domestically at home Iran was very successful in crushing completely an uprising against the regime which had occurred in 2009-2010. So in the view of Ayatollah Khamenei, when the uprising began he felt this was Iran’s moment – that the Arab world would finally offer Iran the opportunity to become this regional superpower that Iran had been attempting to create in the region since the 1979 revolution. I would just read you briefly some of the words that Khamenei said at the time. He characterized the uprisings as an Islamic awakening in February 2011. In March he went further to say that all regional uprisings will be in Iran’s favor because Iran does not make any sectarian distinction between Sunnis and Shi’as. He said: this is an Islamic awakening; we do not distinguish between Gaza, Palestine, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Bahrain and Yemen. We have supported Palestine for thirty-two years and they are not Shi’a. It is a protest, he said, of nationalism against oppression.

So this is how he viewed the uprisings: as a great moment for Iran. Now here we are two years later and the benefits for Iran are clearly more limited and much more complicated than Khamenei ever envisioned. We also see that we have endured almost eight years now of an Ahmadinejad presidency, in which he also made as his priority Iran’s being a hegemon in the region. So we have seen not only a disappointment for the Supreme Leader but also for Ahmadinejad.

Syria in particular is the most severe blow to Iran. The catastrophe for Iran in Syria comes in a different context than we saw two years ago. We have, as was discussed in great detail in the previous panel, an Iran which is increasingly isolated by Gulf states. Since the uprisings began I have made several trips to Bahrain and even the Shi’a in Bahrain who are leading the uprising, that Iran thought they could count upon to look to Iran for support, is trying in a very deliberate way to distance itself from being perceived as having any sort of support from Iran or being seen as being any sort of client of Iran – despite all the efforts that the Saudis and other Gulf states are trying to make exactly the opposite argument.

So the blow to Iran due to the Syrian conflict has two major aspects. One is that the Iran-Syria bilateral relationship has been Iran’s most important partnership in economic, military and diplomatic cooperation. The military aspects of the relationship now are key to Assad remaining in power and key to Iran having its continued access to Syria and to the arms flow to Hezbollah. Even if Assad’s regime survives, however, the relationship has changed for good. Iran sees this as the time for opportunity: the years that Iran has existed in a very successful Hezbollah-Syria-Iran axis are over and the regime knows that.

In addition, Iran had thought that in the case of an attack by Israel, it could count on Hezbollah and Syria if it were attacked. That is no longer the case. Syria is in absolutely no position to help the Islamic Republic and for Hezbollah, it’s far too politically costly in Lebanon to come to the rescue of Iran, given the Syrian conflict.

The second reason that the Syrian conflict is most costly to Iran is Iran is seeing its diminishing religious authority and influence in the region. The sectarian war has created a narrative between Sunni and Shi’a in the region in which sectarian is becoming pronounced, in countries such as Lebanon – where it is quite pronounced – and in the Gulf states, in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and Qatar. It’s reached the point that it’s not only the more fringe Salafist movements who are talking about their great animosity toward the Shi’a, but we also have the warnings from influential sheikhs, such as Yusuf Qaradawi in Doha, warning of the “Shia-ization” of the Middle East. So this growing antagonism toward the Iran-Assad/Shi’a axis is being used by Sunni clerics to claim power and legitimacy.

So as Iran sees its military power diminishing, its great ally collapsing and its religious authority being undermined, how is it responding to this? Before answering in more specific terms, I’d like to just place this in the context of Iran’s foreign policy very generally over the last thirty years. As I mentioned, Iran has always aimed to be a regional superpower, but there have been times – particularly during the presidencies of Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami – of a deviation from this much more ideologically driven foreign policy. Under Rafsanjani we had the policy of economic pragmatism. Under Khatami we had the policy of diplomatic inclusivity. So both of these presidents deviated from the kind of foreign policy agenda that we now see under Ahmadinejad and Khamenei.

However, in 2005, with the presidential election and the victory of Ahmadinejad, this brought to the political culture of Iran a new generation of political elites who had served in the Iran-Iraq war. This is what has changed the equation to some degree in terms of Iran’s overall foreign policy. We see now that to some degree Iran has reverted back to this kind of revolutionary zeal that characterized the early days after the revolution.

Militarily, Iran is driven by an ideological identity of fighting the so-called resistance (i.e., Israel). This is very much part of Iran’s identity today. This is also how Iran has sold its support for Assad domestically. Even though many Iranians are very critical of the fact that Iran is supporting the massacre in Syria, the way that Iran has packaged this domestically is that we have to support Syria because we have to continue to support the resistance and we are the front line against the resistance.

In order to carry out its support for Assad, Iran has not only supported the regime through the Revolutionary Guards – which has included weapons and training. It had been debated in the early days of the uprising whether or not Iran was intricately involved in Syria but in fact just last month the commander of the Iran Revolutionary Guards officially confirmed Iran’s involvement in assisting the Syrian government. It was the first public statement of Iran’s involvement. The commander, Major-General Ali Jafari, said that the Al Quds Forces were operating not only in Syria but in Lebanon. The Foreign Ministry the next day tried to create more ambiguity to this statement and claimed that Jafari’s statements were distorted by the media but then other leaders within the regime admitted very openly that Iranian forces were present in Syria, an attempt they said to prevent further massacres.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards – and this is very important – have also assisted the regime with technical equipment to monitor email, Twitter and YouTube. According to a lot of experts in technology, Iran is considered to be even more skilled than China at manipulating the internet. Iran sent in 2011 its own experts that had crushed the uprising in Iran in 2009-2010 to Syria, simply in order to teach Syrian officials and authorities how to monitor dissidents as they talked on their cell phones, as they communicated through social networking. According to The Washington Post in May 2011, a lot of Syrian dissidents and activists were actually arrested directly because of this assistance that Iran had given Syria.

It’s not surprising that the Revolutionary Guards in Iran are so intimately involved in the Syrian uprising. In doing so, politically at home in Iran this gives the Guards tremendous political power. It also sends a message, not only to any potential for uprising domestically at home but also it sends a signal – as far as the Guards are concerned – to the United States and to Gulf states that they will continue to support Assad at all costs.

Iran believes it is justified in conducting this support for Syria because it believes that this is actually a proxy war that’s going on in Syria. It’s a proxy war considering that Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar are basically doing the dirty deeds of the United States. This is how Iran views it. This is why Iran is more determined than ever to triumph over what they have termed their so-called enemies. Just last week, in a meeting that the parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani, had with the Syrian oil minister, he even declared that the so-called enemies have been defeated. He said that the “era of imperialistic imposition by oppressive countries over independent nations is over.” He framed the war in Syria as a triangle of foreign intervention which includes Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. So you can see how Iran views this conflict on various levels.

Two more points. Iran also sees itself, despite how distorted this may seem to us sitting in the West, as having leverage in negotiating a compromise, a resolution to the conflict. According to a report that a think tank within the parliament in Iran produced just two weeks ago, Iran really believes that if it continues its level of support for Assad, as the previous speaker indicated, at some point in time there will have to be negotiations and Iran will be in a perfect position to be the mediator in these negotiations.

The last point I would like to make is on the issue of sectarianism. This is another very worrying development as a result of the Arab uprisings for Iran. Over the last six months I’ve been conducting research in the region on this issue and I can say that the Syrian civil war has sparked a historical conflict over Arab and Islamic identity that we have not seen for many decades. The atrocities being committed against the Sunnis in Syria have allowed the Sunnis, particularly the Salafists, to create a narrative against all Shi’a. This of course is done to advance their own causes in the various countries where they are now rising in power, both politically and religiously, but nonetheless they are using the Syrian conflict to advance their own causes.

We see that the opinion of the Sunnis and Shi’a have changed. In a startling poll published in August by the Pew Forum on Religion in Public Life, most countries surveyed in the Middle East and North Africa – in those countries, at least 40 percent of Sunnis indicated they do not even consider Shi’as as Muslims. In many cases even greater percentages said some Shi’a practices were unacceptable in the Islamic tradition. In Egypt, for example, 53 percent said Shi’a are not Muslims.

Therefore, even if Assad remains, Iran has already lost its ability to claim with any credibility, as Khamenei’s statement indicated at the beginning of the uprisings, as being the guardians for both Shi’a and Sunni. This possibility has passed. In fact, as the Syrian war rages on, we will see Iran more religiously and politically isolated in the region and its goal of expanding its regional authority will become more complicated and more difficult to achieve.

Kim Ghattas:  Thank you very much for bringing us this context about Iran’s approach to the Syrian conflict. You mentioned the Sunnis and Shi’as and of course in Lebanon we have a large Sh’ia community. Hezbollah is carrying on there, trying to defend its interests. It is a Lebanese party but it is also doing the bidding of Iran. Randa, we are waiting eagerly to hear your take on whether Lebanon is going to be dragged into this war and how far will Hezbollah go to help Assad, and whether Iran will want to jeopardize its foothold on the Mediterranean.

Randa Slim:  Thank you, Kim, and good afternoon everybody. I have to be perfectly honest with you: I’m a little bit envious when I hear Amr and Saban have received these detailed emails from Kate asking them to address so many questions. My email from Kate was: impact on Lebanon and Hezbollah. That’s it. So I don’t know if that means I have less than 13 minutes because I have this one question to address. Anyway I am going to proceed and talk about it.

In terms of impacting Lebanon, as a given Lebanon will be impacted. It doesn’t take much for Lebanon to be impacted. Whatever happens in the region impacts Lebanon – good or bad, it impacts Lebanon. And usually it’s bad for Lebanon, or for some Lebanese political parties. As a Lebanese colleague and analyst, a friend of mine, reminded me the other day: the essence of being a Lebanese politician or political leader is to be a regional proxy. So there is this fight next door going on – it’s going to be very hard for Lebanese political parties to resist the temptation to get into it. And they are into it, all of them – Sunni, Shi’a, all shades and forms of Christian parties, Druze – everybody has a stake in the Syrian fight.

The question is whether Lebanon will be able to weather this crisis without plunging into wide-scale sectarian strife. So far we have not seen that kind of escalation happening, partly because all Lebanese political parties, without exception, are aware that the prospective losses from such escalation far outweigh the prospective gains. So when sectarian violence has occurred – and we have seen many episodes of it occurring recently, from Tripoli to Beirut to Sidon – usually we have seen all of these politicians rushing, like a confluence of interest among them, and trying to contain it and limit it geographically and contain its spread.

Let me first talk a little bit about the impact on Lebanon writ large and then the impact of Syria on Hezbollah and what Hezbollah is thinking of what’s happening in Syria.

In terms of impact on Lebanon, there are three levels of impact that we have seen so far. The first is at the level of the Syrian refugee crisis – and it is a crisis. It is a crisis that is happening in a state where its institutions, especially social service networks, are underfunded, understaffed, and where there is right now a lack of a political process, where different agencies of the Lebanese government can come together and put together a strategic plan that they can advance to the international community for how to deal with the refugee crisis. The number, as recently registered in Lebanon, of registered Syrian refugees is now 119,000, higher than the number of Turkey. That’s not the real total because many of these refugees do not register. There have been attempts pushed by the international community for the Lebanese government to get its act together and come up with a strategic plan that can be funded for how to deal with this crisis. Again, we are seeing not much activity going on on that score.

The main problem now facing the Lebanese government as far as Syrian refugees are concerned is shelter. Winter is coming and there is a problem with shelter. The great majority of Syrian refugees have been taken into Lebanese homes by Lebanese families, especially in the north. I have seen even Syrian families in the south, in Hezbollah strongholds. These are usually laborers who used to come and pick olives during the season; now they are back and they are hosted and housed by families there.

There is a sensitivity for the Lebanese government to establish camps. They feel like if they put camps for Syrian refugees it’s going to be a repeat of Lebanon’s experience with the Palestinian camps, so we will be stuck with another diaspora that will not leave Lebanon and will disrupt the dynamics inside the country. This is now what they are trying to come up with, how to provide shelter without having camps. Leave it to the Lebanese, they will be able to come up with some ideas about that.

The second level is the sectarian tensions. Geneive has talked about it. Mainly it is Sunni-Shi’a tensions. Here I am talking about at the communal level. This is now a communal divide, it is a fault line not only at the community level but also a main political fault line in the country. You have Sunni and Shi’as basically lining up along this divide: the Sunnis supporting the Sunni brethren and the revolution in Syria; the Shi’a and Hezbollah supporting Bashar al-Assad. Both parties are providing ideological support as well as material support to their co-religionists in Syria.

Granted, these tensions – the Sunni-Shi’a tensions – are not a product of the Syrian uprising. They have been in the making in Lebanon since at least 2005. What the Syrian crisis has done is deepened that divide and accentuated it. There are many reasons for these tensions. There is a reservoir of anger in the Sunni community that dates back to the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the late prime minister. Many Sunnis now believe Hezbollah was behind it, along with Syria. Then the May 2008 events when Hezbollah and Amal went into the streets of Sunni West Beirut and the Sunnis felt humiliated because of it. But there are also socioeconomic grievances. It’s no coincidence that most of the communal violence we have seen on the part of Sunni groups happened in the poorest Sunni districts in the country: in Bab al-Tabbaneh in Tripoli and in Tariq el Jdide in Beirut.

Then you have also the leadership vacuum in the Sunni community, especially the moderate leadership vacuum. As typical in times of civil strife, usually new opportunistic players emerge. This is no exception. It happened in the 1970s with the Shi’a community, with Amal emerging to displace a lot of the traditional leaders. Now we are seeing that happening in the Sunni community. We are seeing Salafi preachers like Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir, jihadi groups in north Lebanon, trying to occupy that vacuum. So far they have had a limited following. Their narrative has had limited appeal, especially among Sunni Beirutis. But as the conflict protracts we might see that happen maybe.

Finally, it is the political process, the political impasse. The recent assassination of the head of the information branch of the ISF, Wissam al-Hassan, prompted the opposition camp, the March 14 camp, to basically quit the political process, if we can put it this way, or to ask for the government to resign and to refuse to engage in any kind of activities inside the parliament where the government will be presented. The problem is that this is happening in a country where already capacities of the state to help parties negotiate their political conflicts have been diminished. There are really limited spaces where these negotiations can happen. There is no dialogue going on right now between the two main conflicting parties, between the Future Movement on one hand and Hezbollah on the other hand. There is no back-channel dialogue, there is no communication between them.

So we might see this crisis either be dealt with, as has been the case with the violence and diminish, or it might escalate. There are signs that the principle of the government resigning is now accepted by all the parties but now the negotiations have started on the shape of the new government and we will see where it goes.

These are the three kinds of impact I have seen happening in Lebanon today.

In terms of Hezbollah, where is Hezbollah when it comes to what is happening in Syria? I think from the beginning of the uprising in Syria, early on, the Hezbollah leadership predicted exactly what Amr has said. The regime will not fall militarily – that’s what they predicted publicly. Only a political solution is possible – they did not use the terms but that’s what they said, a political process. They predicted that there is a high likelihood that if the violence continues for a long time then we are going to see Syria divided into statelets. They talked about three statelets: Alawite, Sunni and Kurdish.

One does not sense a tone of panic in the Hezbollah leadership when it comes to Syria. Again, very much in line with what Amr has said, they still believe that the regime is not beatable yet. The military balance is not in favor of the opposition. Usually when going through a list of why, in their reasoning and calculus, the regime and this political status quo will stay, they say the regime’s military capacity is still strong; the opposition is too divided; Russia and China are there to present a firewall within the UNSC; and you have a lack of political will in the West to intervene. With that kind of analysis, they don’t see a change in the stalemate.

Now, there are different scenarios that they are preparing for. If you all recall July 18, when there was the bomb in Damascus which killed four senior figures, I think there was this turning point in their calculus. Before that they did not believe that the regime was vulnerable. I think after July 18 they started to think and prepare for the implications of life without Bashar, that there is a possibility – eventually, some time away, down the line – that the regime will fall or will change through this political process, and what does this mean for them.

However they look at Syria, the main framework they look at Syria through is how it affects their mutual deterrence with Israel. So their main concern is whether the mutual deterrence with Israel will hold post-Assad. They believe that Israel is not about to wage a fight with Hezbollah but they are concerned whether the Israeli strategic calculus will change if Assad is no longer there to provide them the secure strategic depth and the opportunity to regroup and rearm quickly, as they have done in 2006 after their war with Israel.

Their main core mission since their founding has been to provide the strategic retaliatory deterrent to Iran in its confrontation with the US and with Israel. As long as the regional dynamics are as they are today, which means we are not seeing a grand deal, a grand bargain, improvements in relations between the US and Iran, I don’t see Hezbollah engaging in any kind of adventurism, if we can put it that way, either domestically or on the front with Israel. I think they are going to be a status quo player, and Iran and Hezbollah will be very conservative in how they deploy their assets, the Hezbollah assets in the Syrian conflict. I don’t see them attempting a military takeover of Lebanon post-Assad. This will disperse their forces across Lebanon and make them more vulnerable to the Israelis. I don’t see them provoking a confrontation with Israel as a distraction from the events of Syria, as many Lebanese analysts have predicted. At a time when their main weapons conduit is so in turmoil, the last thing they want to do is enter into a war with Israel that will seriously undermine their deterrence capacities.

One final word which is being missed in the Western analysis, on what’s happening inside the Shi’ite community in Lebanon. The issue of deepening Hezbollah’s engagement to support Assad is not a settled issue inside the Shi’ite community. For the majority of Shi’ites, a war with Israel is always viewed and will always be viewed as a war of necessity. So there will be no debate with Hezbollah leadership as to whether they should wage the war or not. This is an easy sell for the Hezbollah leadership, when it comes to a war with Israel. Whereas when it comes to a war with Syria or deeper engagement in the Syrian war, I think it’s viewed by a large number of Shi’ites as a war of choice that will have high costs for the Shi’ite community down the line, especially if Assad is replaced by a Sunni majority regime that will be bent on making the Shi’a pay for their post-Assad policies.

So we are seeing recently, say, Hassan Nasrallah trying to sell that argument – if you have noticed in the speech before the last, trying to make this argument of why Hezbollah needs to engage, to protect the Shi’ite villages that are inside Syria but populated by Lebanese. However, this is still not a settled issue. But the more jihadi elements appear inside Syria – especially anti-Shi’a jihadi and Salafi elements – I think the easier the sell by Nasrallah and Hezbollah for the rest of the Shi’ite community. Thank you.

Kim Ghattas:  Thank you very much for bringing clarity to a country that is quite complex. Colleagues of mine always say: if you think you understand Lebanon then someone’s just explained it badly to you. But you have certainly done a great job bringing clarity to what is a very complex country and to the issue of Hezbollah’s role in Lebanon. Now we would like to hear from Ekaterina Stepanova, to bring us the perspective from Russia.

Ekaterina Stepanova:  Thank you. A couple of starting points. First, in the course of the last year, Russia’s policy on the Syria crisis has not remained static. It might have taken long to evolve, it might have been very slow to evolve, but Russia’s foreign policy in general has some immense difficulty in promptly reacting to and adjusting to qualitative, and especially relatively fast and not necessarily expected, international change. This is what we have seen in Syria in the past year and a half.

Nevertheless, although it took some time to evolve, it evolved from what originally was practically one-sided, unconditional support to the Assad regime to an approach which recognizes the need for political transition, which recognizes that this is a civil war which is unlikely to be won – there is a lack of prospects for any decisive military outcome – but which kind of declares a general preference toward a more manageable, negotiated solution. We are not discussing now how realistic that is but that’s the position now.

The main disagreements today, it’s important to underscore, are somewhat different from what they were even half a year ago – the main disagreements between key external actors that are not part of the region: the US and the West on the one hand and Russia and China on the other hand. These disagreements now are not about the need for political transition. That is not questioned by anyone. They are about the form, substance and perceived end product of this presumably Syrian-led transition. Basically it boils down to whether the resulting system would include elements of the present system, and which elements. Also of course there are basic disagreements about how external actors should push forward for such transition.

Second starting point: if Moscow’s behavior on Syria had led to perceptions about some fundamental change in Russia’s foreign policy, Russia’s new assertiveness and resurgence in the Middle East, its reemergence as a major power in the region in a more traditional sense, then these perceptions are misleading. I would argue that Russia’s policy and behavior on Syria are probably more of a detraction from how its own longer-term standing in the region has evolved.

In the Middle East, Russia is a power in decline. It will remain so for any foreseeable future. The old Soviet time – military, ideological, economic role – is simply gone, irreversibly. So even raising the issue of some geopolitical rivalry in the region as one of the possible explanations for Russia’s policy on Syria doesn’t make much sense, frankly. There is simply no capacity for any major geostrategic rivalry. But in parallel the new Russia developed some new interests, new ties and partners in the region, notably with Turkey and Israel, and also some new concerns. But they do not reverse the general pattern, which is decline.

Ironically, I would argue that this strange mix of traditional power decline with some new interests and opportunities might have even had some – at least until the Syria crisis erupted – some positive effects on Russia’s image in the region. In particular I refer to Russia’s relatively low-key profile, non-interventionist profile; its lack of ideological pressure; its unique position as one of the few major powers who do not depend on the Middle East for energy supplies, which allows a degree of maneuver; its historical record of support to many states of the region, including in the anti-colonial struggles; its remaining influence in the UN. I would even argue that it might be precisely the lack of any major strategic leverage or interest that has allowed Russia to develop – until recently at least – a degree of relative neutrality, even the luxury of relative neutrality. A relatively balanced standing between the Shi’a and the Sunni, secular nationalists (Fatah) and reformist Islamists (Hamas), and even to an extent between the Arab countries and Israel.

This relatively low-key but balanced standing was not immediately reversed as one Arab revolution started to erupt after another – not even by disagreements over Libya between Russia, joined by some states, and a conglomeration of NATO and Arab Gulf states. Somehow Russia stopped short of one-sided, unconditional support to Qaddafi even as Russia’s economic interests, especially potential contracts in Libya, were incomparably larger than those in Syria. So it was not until internal conflict became violent in Syria that Russia’s policy became an issue.

So the questions are, and we will try to briefly address them today: what brought Russia to the central stage? What made it pose as one of the very few external supporters of the Assad regime? And how and why has its policy evolved since then?

There are three main conventional explanations of why Russia supported Assad in the first place. One is surprisingly outdated perceptions about some indispensable, vital strategic interest that Russia allegedly has in Syria, referring mainly to arms sales, a base, or this geostrategic rivalry. The other two explanations are more adequate. One is bad timing: specific political pressures of the election season in Russia itself and its projection into foreign policy. The next explanation: traditional sovereignty and non-intervention concerns, particularly at the UN level, reactivated by the Libya intervention and especially its fallout.

I wouldn’t say that these three factors are negligible but even a combination of the three doesn’t give you the full picture. Strategic interests in particular are grossly exaggerated. All ties between Russia and Syria notwithstanding – military, economic, cultural, educational, whatever – the significance of Syria as a buyer of Russian arms should not be overestimated, especially in view of the very poor paying record of Damascus. The small naval facility at Tartus really has more symbolic than any real significance. Politically the Assad regime did not until recently particularly bother to pose as Moscow’s hardcore ally. It was very eager, much more eager, to reach out to the West, to open up, to diversify its range of foreign policy partners. In terms of other economic interests in the energy and communications sector, they are present in Syria but they are nothing compared to the huge volume of Russia’s cooperation with its main economic partner in the eastern Mediterranean, which is Turkey.

Even the impact of Russia’s turbulent parliamentary and presidential elections – the Russian government’s typical aversion to any form of social and political protest, the tendency to blame it all on external influences in the West in particular – even that does not explain frankly this special attachment to the Syrian regime. Nor does a mere general reference to authoritarianism – one state supports the other because they are both authoritarian. To me it doesn’t look like a sufficient explanation, because somehow this factor did not play a decisive role in Russia’s policy toward Mubarak or the disintegration of Qaddafi’s Libya. One final reservation here – another simplification or another delusion would be to think that a potential collapse of the Assad regime in Syria may have any direct impact on the positions of Russia’s regime. That is unlikely.

The main link may be less direct but more fundamental, in a way, and reflect more substantive, even identity-based issues – almost instincts, I would say. A collapse of the Assad regime would be not just a failure of an abstract authoritarian regime; it would be a failure of a national governance project with a set of very specific characteristics that distinguish Syria even from other authoritarian republican regimes in the Middle East. What are these characteristics? Political and economic dominance of neither a single charismatic populist leader/clan, as in Qaddafi’s Libya, nor of any broader party-based class – the Baath was not particularly a factor in this conflict – but the political and economic dominance of a narrow, relatively closed caste, a group of a distinct shared origin. In Syria’s case – sectarian origin. Coupled with a lead role for special security services over all other parts of the security sector and other branches of governments; coupled with no autonomous role for the military, in contrast to Mubarak’s Egypt. All this crowned by a general pretense at smart authoritarianism under normal conditions for much of the past decades but a very easy, almost natural slide into harsh security solutions and siege mentality at the time of crisis, when the ruling group feels threatened or its positions are threatened.

A collapse of a regime like that – also one which is a historical client if not exactly an ally – is a scenario that Russia’s own ruling caste, being what it is, has been almost instinctively reluctant to accept. In a way it is a matter of reflex. It is not entirely rational even. So explaining this final critical thing that makes the difference in Russia’s at least initially almost unconditional support to Assad, that may be easy in terms of instincts and reflexes rather than in terms of any pragmatic foreign policy concerns.

Q&A

Kim Ghattas:  We are going to open the floor to questions in just a minute. I’m going to use my prerogative as a moderator to ask a very simple and quick question, and I would ask each of the panelists to answer as briefly as possible. What if anything should the United State do now?

Amr Al Azm:  I think right now, having created this new Frankenstein Coalition, they need to show it some love.

Kim Ghattas:  That’s very simple. We’ll make sure President Obama is listening.

Saban Kardas:  I would go back to one point Amr made in his presentation about the stalemate and how to break it, what is the decisive move. This is where the United States has to be more forthcoming. This is, I guess, also the Turkish stance. Somehow there should be more resolute backing of the opposition. It might end up coming to the case of supplying more weapons, especially to change the military balance on the ground.

Amr Al Azm:  I agree.

Geneive Abdo:  Try to negotiate with Iran over the nuclear issue with the hope that this might give some sort of leverage on its involvement in Syria, even though that’s highly unlikely.

Kim Ghattas:  President Obama today in his first press conference in many months said he was looking towards reinvigorating that process of negotiation. So we will see what happens there. Randa, what about you?

Randa Slim:  Invest time and human resources in trying to see who’s who inside Syria right now. To get to know the lay of the land before we move into any kind of action.

Kim Ghattas:  Ekaterina, from the perspective of Moscow, what do you think the Russians are expecting?

Ekaterina Stepanova:  I’m certainly not in a position to say what the US should be doing. Until now, prospects for any direct intervention with a major US role have been very limited, primarily due to US genuine reluctance to intervene for its own reasons and not at all because of the constraining effect of, say, a Russia or China veto. But I think that greater internationalization of the Syrian crisis, including some form of international security involvement, cannot be excluded, as the military deadlock persists and as the humanitarian situation deteriorates sharply. I would say that this prospect would become even less hypothetical if and after the events in Syria take the worst possible course – not the one described by Amr, that’s probably the best possible course, but the worst possible course, which is what Lakhdar Brahimi calls “Somaliazation.” Basically, the conflict leads to almost total disintegration of governance, politics, society, economy. In that case, even a possibility of direct humanitarian intervention by a coalition of the willing may not be excluded, however much the United States – as we have heard this morning – will try to avoid it. The situation may reach a point where they will no longer be able to avoid it. Hopes that this “Somaliazation,” international humanitarian intervention scenario could be prevented by establishing a no-fly zone, charging NATO with managing and monitoring it to allow the National Coalition or a proto-government to function, then quell inevitable retaliation by Assad by surgical strikes – to me, that doesn’t look like something that will prevent further escalation and intervention. So I have no direct advice for the US at the moment.

Kim Ghattas:  The Obama administration certainly seems to be looking for advice. We’re going to open the floor to questions now.

Question:  Peter Humphrey, I’m an intelligence analyst. Amr Al Azm, I view the slaughter of Alawites post-Assad as inevitable – a Sabra/Shatila kind of situation. Is there any talk of a rapid reaction force to protect those people once Assad falls? Dr. Stepanova, is there any chance at all that we could get the Frankenstein coalition to promise not to eject the Russian submarine base at Tartus, that that might result in a change at the UN vote?

Question:  My name is Hassan, Global Bridges for Humanity. As I was hearing the discussion of the panel, it seems that there is a concerted effort to get the Sunni and Shi’a to fight each other without knowing what kind of implication this is going to have for all the people in the world. That area produces 20 million barrels of oil every day – that’s going to go up in smoke. So what is the panel’s suggestion? Should they promote this kind of thing or try to tell the people the complications or the things that are going to happen to the whole world?

Question:  My name is Dr. [indiscernible] Daoud, I’m a professor at American University. My question is for Dr. Amr Al Azm. In spending my time with the Syrian opposition recently in Cairo and Tahrir and so forth and witnessing the formation of the SNC last year in Cairo, my question to you is – you mentioned that you have been in exile from Syria for many years. This is precisely the problem in Syria, on the ground, not unifying the opposition – they have tried in Qatar and hopefully that will work – but essentially the mistrust of foreign exiles from Syria, for Syrians who have been living in Egypt. While the international community are supporting a possible regime change with Syrian exiles, how do you think it will approach the mistrust in Syria?

Secondly, my question is for Dr. Stepanova. If you could comment more on – I didn’t hear it being mentioned – the possible negotiations on a Syria-Russia gas pipeline. And secondly, can you also comment on the cultural influence of Russia in Syria. Particularly what I witnessed meeting many Syrians is that they are very trusting of the Russian media, more so than the Western media, particularly those who supported the Assad regime. So  think the influence of Russia goes deeper than many of the things you discussed.

Amr Al Azm:  Obviously the narrative that somehow the Alawites are going to be massacred was a narrative that was initially instigated and begun by the regime. In fact, right from the very beginning the regime has tried to turn this into a sectarian conflict, even though this wasn’t the case. I remember the early protests when people would walk out hand in hand saying “we are all brothers” and so on.

But as the violence increased, as the regime’s repression of these protests became extreme, and as more and more violence was brought to bear, it became increasingly hard to hold this together. I and many others started to monitor the level of sectarian rhetoric that we began to see emerging from our side, as an opposition, and some of it is quite unpleasant.

Ultimately, you can’t say no, this will never happen. There are already some parts of Syria that have been ethnically cleansed by one group or the other. These are unfortunately the outcomes of a sectarian-type civil war. But do not forget that this was very much instigated and begun by the regime and it will be up to us as an opposition to try and ensure that such a thing does not escalate, does not happen. That’s all I can say.

Regarding the other question, just a correction. I have not been in exile for very long. Even though I came to live in the United States in 2006, I have been going back and forth. In fact I worked as a consultant for the palace –

Kim Ghattas:  Everybody had hope about reform.

Amr Al Azm:  I know, we all had hope, right until 2011. In fact my contract ran out in March 2011.

Randa Slim:  Consider yourself lucky.

Amr Al Azm:  I know, very lucky, it was very convenient. They were very angry with me because I took that money and ran. But you’re right, there is a problem with this issue of exiles and the external opposition versus the internal opposition. In fact, even those who were inside who came out, within a few weeks or a month they also became external opposition and that created and opened up that gap. I think this is not easy to address and will continue. As the uprising goes on and on the old cadre will either have to leave or are arrested or killed and new cadre are constantly being brought out, new generations of leaders and activists. So you’re always going to have that.

What the new coalition has tried to do – and I don’t know if they’ve done it successfully or not – is to try to increase the presence and share of the internal opposition and make sure they have a voice. I think by having Sohair Atassi and Riad Seif, who are both still very much identified with the internal opposition rather than the external one – like Burhan Ghalyoun, like Tayfour, like those guys – and also even with Moaz al-Khatib, who still very much is considered to be a fresh face, are all intended to be seen as such. So we’ll see how that progresses.

Geneive Abdo:  It’s important to try to distinguish what is a direct cause from the conflict and what is being manipulated and sort of connected to the conflict. I think in Bahrain, for example, because of the long history of Shi’a oppression in Bahrain, there is this great sense that this finally, after many decades, this sectarian conflict now is coming to a head. I think in Lebanon it’s a lot different and I’ll just speak narrowly about the part of this that I’ve researched, which is to conduct interviews with some of the Salafi preachers. I would say that yes, a lot of these sheikhs have been in Lebanon a long time and some of them aren’t formally educated, so they very much are creating this kind of street movement and capitalizing on the Syrian conflict even though they never probably three years ago spoke in these kind of sectarian terms. But they’re using it for their own self-serving purposes to create a following. As Randa mentioned, there’s a Sheikh Assir who admits – he’s been in Lebanon, he’s had his mosque for many years, but he never was on television, he wasn’t a public figure.

Kim Ghattas:  Yes, it’s really as much about sectarianism as it is about politics.

Geneive Abdo:  It’s about politics but it’s become somewhat – the narrative that I think is being crafted for various useful purposes is a sectarian narrative.

Ekaterina Stepanova:  First, the gentleman’s question was, as far as I understood it, will Russia trade a UN vote to approve no-fly zones, if it would be asked in the first place – because I think they may do it without a mandate. But will Russia be ready to trade its UN vote if France and Britain would keep the Tartus facility – I think this is a very good illustration of what I was talking about, first of all of gross exaggeration. Have you seen this facility? Two storage houses. It’s nothing. Second, gross exaggeration of the strategic importance of this thing. Gross exaggeration of Russia’s leverage over the Syrian regime. I had no time to speak about how Russia’s policy evolved, because it did evolve, but if you want a constant, a thing that is unlikely to change – that is precisely Russia’s position on the use of force. Russia is unlikely to reverse its position on the use of force in Syria, at least as long as the Assad regime keeps fighting. Or, we may say, actively agonizes, which it can do for a very long time. So do not even count on major change here.

Then there was a question on cultural ties. Yes, we shouldn’t underestimate them. Part of Russia’s recent activity, also on the part of the opposition, meeting the former prime minister who defected in August – a lot of our activities which are less formal, for instance, an association of former diplomats, when they go talk to Syrian opposition leaders, they speak in Russian because most of these people were educated in Russia. There are tens of thousands of women who married Syrians and their kids are bilingual. So there is a major component here of society which I think leaves some hope for the future in terms of Russia not ultimately sort of losing Syria, no matter how events erupt. But this is certainly one of the major resources that Russia could build upon in what it believes – I think it sincerely believes at the moment that a negotiated solution is possible. I have serious doubts about that but this is the position of the Russian government at the moment, that they can negotiate a solution.

Question:  Phebe Marr, Iraqi historian. I do want to congratulate this panel, I think it’s been superb. Although I have a disclosure to make: I’m on the board of the Hollings Center, so I’m delighted to see it here at the Middle East Institute. A quick question, not so easy. The one country that has not been mentioned in all of this is Iraq. I wonder if we could go around from the Syrian, Iranian, maybe Turkish point of view and see how the gradual disappearance of Assad and so on, what kinds of pressures are likely to be put on Iraq. We all know there’s going to be a lot. I was fascinated to hear that the route to Damascus is through Palmyra and Dayr al-Zawr – that’s pretty close to the Iraqi border. You didn’t mention the Kurds too much but we all know the implications of that for northern Iraq and northern Syria and Iran. It’s a big topic but whatever you want to say about it.

Question:  [indiscernible], Professor at the University of Waterloo and Senior Fellow at Brookings. My question is to Professor Kardas. You spoke of this shared transformation in the Arab world and Turkey. Could you be more specific and explain what that is? And I’m sorry for the statement, but to Ms. Stepanova, it’s disingenuous to suggest there is Russian neutrality when there’s so much arms being shipped to Syria every day to replenish their machine. But the question I have for you is, is there Islamophobia in Putin’s policy? Does he see Syria as another form of Chechnya? I’d appreciate your thoughts on that, thank you.

Amr Al Azm:  I think Iraq really is between a rock and a hard place here. They have their issues with their own insurgencies and so having another insurgency next door to them is probably not a very happy place to be. They’re still trying to get to grips with theirs. There is the Iranian influence on the Maliki government and that is obviously also weighing very heavily on them. At the Arab League just before yesterday, the countries that voted against recognizing the new coalition were predictably Iraq and Lebanon – Lebanon because of Hezbollah and Iraq because of Maliki. So both Iranian influences pushing there.

I think that Iraq will continue to try to keep itself out of this conflict as much as possible. I don’t think the Iraqis want anything to do with this. I don’t see any impact from the Iraqis in the near future.

Saban Kardas:  About Iraq, the Iraqi experience for Turkey was in a sense a test case, because after the 2003 war when there was a risk of an all-out civil war, Turkey tried to work toward ensuring the national unity. So in this sense Syria presents a similar scenario, so the overall approach, the lessons learned from Iraq, applies for Turkey in the case of Syria as well. But the specific issue of the Kurds in Iraq and in Syria – if you look at the evolution of Turkey’s relationship to the northern Iraqi Kurdish administration, initially even before the invasion of Iraq the main concern of Turkey was the future of Iraqi Kurdistan. Initially Turkey was very much opposed to any sort of autonomy or federal administration but over time Turkey adjusted this policy. So especially from 2007 on we see accommodation of the new reality. People joke that although Turkey lost many friends, the most stable friendship Turkey has in the Middle East is now with the Iraqi Kurdish administration. So you see this transformation of Turkey’s policy to adjust to the new reality in the case of northern Iraq. The possible scenario of Syria splitting up or the Kurds of Syria gaining some form of autonomy or self-rule, it reminds us of the memories from the Iraqi case. Some people say Turkey will not tolerate it, some people do say Turkey may also demonstrate a similar level of adjustment. I am of the second opinion. If the situation in Syria takes a direction where the Kurds of Syria gain some sort of autonomy or self-rule, a federal structure, Turkey will also adjust. Turkey will not take a step that will undermine their political rights in the new Syria.

Regarding the transformation, what I was trying to say – here we should remember, most people when they talk about the Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, they just look at certain aspects of his argument. But his new vision about Turkey and Turkish foreign policy is part of a grander vision about where Turkey sits in the Islamic world and the world as well. There is this grand narrative about Turkey’s transformation so that it finds its proper place in the flow of history. He has formulated several ideas that everybody talks about – like the “zero problems with neighbors” policy – but it is part of a concept which he calls “central country.” The first principle is what he calls the balance between freedoms and security; the second principle is the zero problems with neighbors principle. So in that understanding, for a country to be stable and have a good standing in international relations, it has to first strike a balance between freedoms and security at home. Democracy is the best regime to ensure that domestically. If you have such a stable country, only then can you build a stable regional order. So this understanding is very much related to it.

So in the Turkish case, the transformation in the last ten years to a new – especially post-1980 transformation – was a case where increasingly the demands of the people were translated into the political area. So this political reform and democratization experience is very much what they have in mind when they talk about this balance between freedoms and security. They want a similar experience to be repeated in the Islamic world. Many people do criticize Turkey for not talking about democracy before the Arab Spring. Today Turkey is pursuing a sort of democracy promotion agenda, not exactly but still the language is very much in those lines. Before the Arab Spring, Turkey did not openly have any democracy promotion policy but still you see the elements of it. In 2003, the current Turkish president – he was prime minister or foreign minister at the time – he talked to the leaders of the OIC about the need for reforming the Islamic world. If we do not take necessary steps in time, it will be more painful to take the reforms. So this need that the Islamic countries have to deliver on the domestic front – they have to meet the demands of their people – was very much part of the discourse of the leaders of the current party, the current leaders of the country. So in that sense they see Turkey as part of the Islamic world and Islamic civilization, so the [indiscernible] of the foreign minister is very much tying Turkey to the overall trajectory of the Islamic world. This is where they see a very positive identification with the Arab Spring.

Kim Ghattas:  We just have a couple minutes to get the answer from Ekaterina about whether Russia sees what’s happening in Syria as another version of Chechnya.

Ekaterina Stepanova:  I don’t think that is the driving force for Russia’s policy on Syria. I think the link is even more fundamental, I’m afraid. On the regime affinity point. I could only say as much as I’ve said, given the format of this meeting. But if that were the basis for action, first of all the cases may not be that different in terms of fatality rates but they are really different in many other aspects. Chechnya was never part of civil war. The incompatibility was not about control of government, it was a separatist conflict over control of territory, relatively confined to a very small part of a very large country, with the rest of the country by and large continuing life as normal. That cannot be even closely, remotely compared to what you have in Syria, which is a full-scale, nationwide civil war. Then had that been the basis for Russia’s action vis-à-vis foreign states – I mean, every second state in Asia has a nationalist/separatist or separatist/Islamist insurgency. But in and of itself, that is not yet a pretext to rush firmly into support.

I think the link is more fundamental between the two. I’m not sure your using the term xenophobia in this context is correct, in its original sort of meaning.

Kim Ghattas:  Thank you, Ekaterina. I know we haven’t given Randa the opportunity to answer a question. Randa, do you have one more idea or one more statement you would like to give us?

Randa Slim:  Quickly, I hate to disagree with my friend Amr, but I think the opposition has really done a bad job in reaching out to the Alawite community. The chance of any kind of implosion of the regime rests on a critical mass of Alawites dissociating their physical survival from Assad’s political survival. What has prevented that from happening is partly definitely the regime but a lot of it also is the opposition having failed to develop a narrative and a strategy that can assuage the fears that truly exist in the Alawite community.

Amr Al Azm:  I agree entirely.

Kim Ghattas:  So we all more or less agree. I want to thank the audience for staying with us. This was a fascinating panel on Syria. The conflict continues and we will have to see whether it comes to an end very soon – with a political transition, or perhaps we will still see military intervention, or whether as Amr predicted we will have two more years of civil war. We certainly don’t wish that for the Syrians who suffer on a daily basis. Thank you all for being here.

Kate Seelye:  I want to thank our moderator and our panelists, and thank you all once again for bringing to a conclusion our 66th Annual Conference. We will see you next year.

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