Faced with US accusations that it’s raising the risks of a new Middle East war by supplying advanced missiles to Hezbollah, Syria is moving carefully to try to avoid wrecking the slow process of improving ties with Washington.
Syria has staunchly denied Israeli charges that it gave the Lebanese militant group powerful Scud missiles and it has also been trying hard to show that it is not looking for any sort of escalation, insisting there is no crisis, whether on the ground with Israel or in its relations with the US.
“Even if there is 1 percent risk of a war, we are working to eliminate that,” Syrian leader Bashar Assad reassured reporters while visiting Turkey last week.
Syria’s handling of the affair reflects Assad’s resolve to prevent the crisis from snowballing and throwing the country back into the international isolation it endured under the administration of former US President George W. Bush.
For Syria, a great deal rides on improved relations with the US. Damascus wants Washington fully engaged as a mediator in future peace talks with Israel in hopes of reaching a deal that returns the Golan Heights, lost to the Jewish state in the 1967 Middle East war.
Normalized relations with the US would also be a boost for Syria’s struggling economy, if it ended Washington’s sanctions on Damascus and signaled to the world the country’s rehabilitation.
The attempts at rapprochement have been frustrating for both sides. The US has been trying to push Damascus to leave its close alliance with Iran and stop its support for Palestinian and Lebanese militant groups, a step that Syria so far has refused to take.
Syria, meanwhile, sees the prospects of renewed peace talks growing more distant under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and is impatient with the pace of the thaw in relations with Washington.
The US has yet to send its nominated ambassador, Robert Ford, to Damascus to fill a post that has been vacant since 2005, and last week the administration of US President Barack Obama renewed sanctions on Syria for another year.
While the flap over missile allegations has hiked tensions, it has also won for Damascus something it values: attention.
The office of Israeli President Shimon Peres said Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed to deliver a message to Assad seeking to ease tensions. Medvedev met with Assad in Damascus on Tuesday, though he made no mention of the message in a joint press conference with the Syrian leader.
Netanyahu on Tuesday underlined that Israel wants “stability and peace,” and deflected blame to Iran, which he said is trying to provoke a conflict between Israel and Syria.
The Iranians “are spreading falsehoods in order to escalate tensions, and it has no basis,” he said.
The crisis began last month when Israel accused Damascus of giving Hezbollah Scud missiles. Last week, the head of Israel’s military intelligence research department, Brigadier General Yossi Baidatz went further, saying Syria had also supplied M600 missiles, a Syrian copy of the Iranian Fateh-110, with a 300km range — capable of hitting Tel Aviv if fired from southern Lebanon.
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