Iran dealFormer senior Obama official: Inaction in Syria result of desire to keep Iran deal alive

Published 31 August 2016

The White House’s failure to stop the ongoing slaughter perpetrated by the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad stems from President Barack Obama’s “desire to accommodate Iran” so that last year’s nuclear deal will extend past his administration, the president’s former top Syria adviser charged.

The White House’s failure to stop the ongoing slaughter perpetrated by the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad stems from President Barack Obama’s “desire to accommodate Iran” so that last year’s nuclear deal will extend past his administration, the president’s former top Syria adviser charged in an analysis on Monday.

Frederic Hof, formerly Obama’s special adviser for transition in Syria and currently the director of the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, faulted the Obama administration for failing to have “defended a single Syrian civilian from the Assad-Russia-Iran onslaught.”

“In fact the administration’s policy toward Assad Syria (as opposed to ISIS Syria) rests on its desire to accommodate Iran — a full partner in Assad’s collective punishment survival strategy — so that the 14 July 2015 nuclear agreement can survive the Obama presidency,” Hof wrote.

Hof took exception to a recent defense offered for Obama’s Syria policy by White House press secretary Josh Earnest, who told reporters last week that “we’ve got a test case just over the border in Iraq about what the consequences are for the United States implementing a regime-change policy and trying to impose a military solution on the situation.” Earnest then added, “there are some people who do suggest that somehow the United States should invade Syria.”

Hof rejected Earnest’s “dissembling,” arguing that the press secretary “would be unable to name anyone counseling the invasion of Syria” if asked. He would also be unable to explain “why limited military measures designed to end Assad’s mass murder free ride—such as that offered by the 51 dissenting State Department officers—amounts to ‘regime-change’ and ‘trying to impose a military solution,’” Hof argued. (The fifty-one State Department employees released their letter critiquing the Obama administration’s Syria policy in June.)

Hof wrote that the president could open “a platform for useful debate” by acknowledging that the situation Syria is a “catastrophe,” but one that is a result of his having made “the hardest of calls” by prioritizing the nuclear deal with Iran over action against Assad. Hof also cast doubt on the idea that Iran would “abandon the nuclear agreement if its client gets spanked.” (According to Wall Street Journal reporter Jay Solomon, the White House decided not to strike Assad after he violated Obama’s “red line” on chemical weapons attacks in 2013 when Iran threatened to break off nuclear talks.)