Syria, A New Mine for the Obama Administration

The new American escalation against Syria hasn’t grown in a vacuum, and the vague suggestions from the mouth of Mohamed El Baradei, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), about the presence of an unauthorized Syrian nuclear program, also did not happen in a vacuum. The American raid on Albu Kamal on the Syrian-Iraqi border, using American aircraft and troops, did not happen in a vacuum. They are all well-conceived developments and operations that are directly related to the legacy George Bush’s administration wants to pass on to the new American administration under the leadership of Barack Obama.

Equally, the Bush Administration pressured the Iraqi Government to accept the security agreement before the end of the Bush administration’s term, and before the official date for withdrawing international forces from Iraq, which will be at the end of the current year.

Barack Obama’s new administration indicated, according to the president-elect and some of his advisors, that it will try to resolve the crises one after another, in order to improve America’s reputation in the world. Consequently, the Bush administration is intent on preventing the Obama administration to reach this goal. Especially in regards to the Middle Eastern region. And three burning issues in particular: The Iranian nuclear file, the Iraqi file, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

If we contemplate these files, we find that Syria is at the heart of all of them. Syria is Iran’s most important ally. It is Iran’s main and perhaps only crossing point into Lebanon and Palestine. Syria is the prime suspect in allowing volunteers to pass through and fight in Iraq against the Americans. Syria is the country accused of agitating the stability in Lebanon, and stability there means a political structure that gives the Lebanese powers that are subordinate to, or friendly with, Washington the ability to assume the reins of authority, and Lebanese political decision making. And especially to normalize relations with Israel. Syria is accused of supporting and sheltering the Palestinian parties that reject the American peace project between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.

That is why the escalation against Syria, and precisely at the time when the Bush administration is wrapping up its files in preparation to leave, reveals the intent and determination of this administration to entangle the Obama administration in a Syrian conflict with more than just American-Syrian dimensions. This is to make it difficult for this administration to approach it without the participation of other international parties, some of them partners in the Bush administration’s current project in the Middle East. Hence, there is emphasis on creating a crisis for Syria with the IAEA.

New information that diplomats are leaking is that “some of the samples contain traces of a certain uranium compound, but they are not enough to draw conclusions or prove what the Syrians were doing.”

Some said, “It was processed and not in raw form,” and “there is no indication that there was actual nuclear fuel or activity (production).”

In the end, these samples “merit further investigation.”

That is the goal… to set off a crisis about the presence of a Syrian nuclear file outside the framework of IAEA oversight, the same thing that happened with Iran.

A clue is that only intelligence information was provided, which consisted of some photographs that showed the Syrian reactors before Israeli aircraft destroyed them. This caused El Baradei to condemn the delay in presenting this information and the failure of the United States to inform the agency of it, before bombing and destroying the site.

In other words, the information and pictures presented are of a site that doesn’t exist, and what the agency wants is to confirm that it “was” a nuclear site. El Baradei couldn’t help himself saying: “That will make it difficult for the agency entrusted with overseeing implementation of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty to confirm the truth, because the body has vanished.”

What they want is to indict and prosecute Syria retroactively. And not only that, but to indict for an accusation that has no other source than American information.

Despite that, El Baradei hasn’t been able to avoid American pressure and was forced to comment on the information that was leaked in a vague manner, as he usually does, to give the Americans what they want and to preserve a semblance of professional objectivity. “There was uranium, but it does not mean there was a reactor. It’s not highly enriched uranium. It could have come in so many different ways. That’s why we’re looking at so many different scenarios.”

Vagueness is enough to open a Syrian file with the IAEA, and that is what the Bush administration wants now in order to keep the Middle East field full of high-explosive mines for the Obama administration, so that he will remain entangled in files that Bush was not able to resolve.

Mohammad Al Sa’id Idris