The Middle East Leader Who Should Be Ignored

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
21 July '10


The BBC has just broadcast a program entitled, “Syria's Bashar al-Assad: A leader who cannot be ignored.” This precisely echoes Syria’s main propaganda theme: it is the center of the Middle East, the leader of the resistance (to Israel and the West), the key to peace and the anvil of war.

This is rubbish. In fact, the title inspired me to think: Bashar “the giraffe” Assad is a leader who can—and up to a point, of course should—be ignored. He is the tail on Iran’s dog, an ally who won’t cross Tehran on any major issue. Bashar is intransigent on negotiations with Israel. He takes concessions from the West and gives nothing in return. He is being allowed to get away with recapturing Lebanon; sponsoring Hamas and Hizballah; and killing Americans in Iraq through insurgent terrorists he sponsors there.

U.S. attempts to engage Syria have failed. Syria is too weak to go to war with Israel. It has not even succeeded—despite numerous efforts—to revenge itself for Israel’s bombing of its plutonium reactor (build in partnership with Iran to help Tehran’s nuclear program) or the killing of two important people (one a Hizballah leader; the other a Syrian general who worked on the nuclear program and was liaison to Hizballah) in some of the most secure territory in the country.

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