Iran’s Plan B: The Partition of Assad's Syria.

Iran’s Plan B: The Partition of Assad's Syria. (MEB).

US Senate committee on appropriation heard last Wednesday the responses of both Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey to a question from Senator Richard Durbin about the idea of establishing safe zones in Syria to protect civilians. Both defense officials rejected the idea, albeit with different nuances, from a cost evaluation perspective.

Prior to the hearing, Senator Durbin joined Senators Tim Kaine, Lindsay Graham, and John McCain in signing a letter to President Obama requesting the Administration to consider establishing humanitarian safe zones in Syria. The responses of both Secretary Carter and Gen Dempsey dim any chance of an already reluctant Obama to do anything in Syria other than the too little too late “train and equip” program.

However, what merits to be looked at, publicly or otherwise, is the substantial offers of assistance proposed by the US Arab allies and Turkey in the way of burden sharing of operations and expenses of the kind Sec Carter mentioned. Even if these offers were not sufficient in the President’s opinion, some effort could have been done to increase the share of those allies in the total operation. But the truth is that the proposal of establishing a No Fly Zone in Syria was resisted all along by the Administration, particularly the White House and the NSC.

Under pressure from recent advances of the opposition, Iranian Generals in Damascus decided to implement their plan B any way despite some objections from their Syrian counterparts. The Iranian plan is to pull out all Iranian military assets, personnel, Shia militias and Hezbollah units from the North of Syria and position them, instead, in Damascus and the South West. Assad forces will concentrate on Damascus and the North-West coastal areas.

The Iranian Generals’ selective areas of activities are divided into two axes or stretches of land. The first extends from Palmyra to Al Qusair on the borders with Lebanon. The second begins at the Sayeda Zaineb quarter in Damascus and the Maza Airport to the Northern areas of the Alawi coastal land (where Assad forces will be concentrated) passing through Zabadani and Serghaya and including Northern Qalamoun.

The decision was understood by both Sunnis and Alawis as a self-serving strategy that sacrifices a unified Syria for securing Tehran’s strategic goal of keeping an open corridor to Hezbollah in the South of Lebanon.

In his negotiations with Johan Kerry, Iran’s foreign minister Javad Zarif put forward the elements that Tehran requires in any future deal in Syria.

Among those elements is that Iranian interests in Syria should be respected, multi-party guarantees (international/regional) of a corridor to the Hezbollah strong hold in the South Lebanon, guarantees that any future Syrian government will honor Syria’s financial debts to Iran, commitments of never pursuing any Iranian individual or entity for crimes of war or demands of compensations, and respecting the rights, properties and investments of Iranian citizens settled in Syria lately.

These demands do not reflect realities on the ground. The proposed deal will stall, leaving only the de facto partition of Syria as the only available default line at this phase of the crisis that merits indeed to be called the “mother of all crisis”. The Russians, busy in Ukraine and with problems in their ties to Europe, opted to reducing their involvement.

Turkey and to a lesser extent Qatar will have the decisive say in the North. Saudi Arabia will have it in the South. 

While the question of the fate of Damascus is gaining prominence, few months from today, if not sooner, the Syrian capital will be a central battle field as the battle will be about the demarcation line. The opposition hopes to kick Al Assad and his allies out of the capital altogether. This will require more time however.

A divided Syria is slowly emerging from the dust and the smoke. But that will not make the crisis any closer to its end. And Neo Ottoman 'Hyena' Turkey will dispose of the 'remains'. Read the full story here.