Last week, the Obama White House moved to ensure Hezbollah’s ability to point 100,000 missiles at Israel. That’s not how they would describe it, of course. But it was the Obama administration—as U.S. officials are quietly letting on—and not Russia that invited Iran to participate in talks in Vienna to resolve the Syrian civil war. By doing so, the White House legitimized the Islamic Republic as a “stakeholder” whose interests in Syria must be respected. But of course, Iran has only one interest in Syria, which is to protect its ally, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, whose regime facilitates the transfer of missiles to Hezbollah.
The administration admits as much. As the head of the State Department’s Bureau of Near East Affairs, Anne Patterson told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, “What [Iran is] looking for is a Syria that protects their interests and particularly their access to Hezbollah.”
Why doesn’t this seem to bother the White House? Hezbollah is a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization. Its primary campaign is against Israel, while it threatens other regional actors traditionally regarded as American allies, like Saudi Arabia. It has plenty of American blood on its hands, as well. From the 1983 bombings of the U.S. embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut to the Iraq war, Hezbollah has targeted U.S. military and diplomatic personnel for more than three decades.
You might think that the government of the United States has an interest in severing the weapons supply line between Iran and a terrorist organization waging war against an American ally. But that’s old thinking. Obama is building a new Middle East on the foundation of the Iranian nuclear deal, which foresees a balance of powers among all the regional actors that will bring stability to a wildly volatile neighborhood. Everyone needs to be deterred, including American allies. So as the White House sees it, Iran’s supplying Hezbollah with weapons that it points at Israel is a necessary condition of Middle East peace.
The administration sought previously, in January 2014, to include Iran in talks over the Syrian war. Iran refused to accept the condition that Assad would have to leave. Saudi Arabia objected, and the administration walked the plan back, hanging the fiasco on U.N. general secretary Ban Ki-moon. Iran has not changed its position—Assad will stay, says Tehran. The Russians aren’t budging either—they, too, insist that the Syrian president isn’t going anywhere. The White House has long regretted Obama’s August 2011 demand that Assad step aside and has stated its willingness to let the Syrian dictator stay on for at least a “transitional” period.
What’s different now is that the administration has backed traditional allies into a corner with the Iranian nuclear deal. When Saudi Arabia reluctantly gave its support to the deal with Tehran, it conceded any political or diplomatic clout it had in resolving the Syrian conflict in its favor. The White House strong-armed Turkey as well, enlisting Kurdish parties at war with Ankara into its anti-ISIS campaign.
The other big change is Vladimir Putin’s military escalation in Syria. The administration had long argued that there was no military solution to the four-and-a-half-year-old conflict, only a political one. The reality is that Putin’s military solution has paved the way for a political solution, which the White House at least tacitly supports. It has no choice, really, since Putin calls the shots now. Kerry says he wants everyone who has a stake in Syria at the table, but the deck is stacked against those who want Assad gone, like Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Kerry’s goal in Vienna is to end the war, but to get Russia and Iran to agree, he’ll have to concede their key demand—Assad stays. Therefore, the administration’s role is to line up everyone behind Russia and Iran, to preserve Assad and thus Iran’s supply line to Hezbollah.
It’s worth noting that while Tehran has three seats at the table in Vienna (the governments it controls in Lebanon and Iraq as well as its own), Israel wasn’t invited, even though the Syrian war touches directly on Jerusalem’s national security. A soon-to-be-nuclear state putting missiles on Israel’s borders is a serious matter, but that’s not how the White House sees it—or Russia for that matter.
Israel’s absence from Vienna underscores a key fact that should give pause to those who believe Russia’s presence in Syria isn’t that big a problem, that Israel can do business with Putin, that Russia’s interests are not the same as Iran’s and therefore it’s only a matter of time before the two powers fall out. That’s delusional. Vienna is evidence that Russia and Iran’s interests are in alignment—Assad stays. But it’s not hard to see why American allies are fooling themselves, for the reality is much harder to believe. The Obama administration has legitimized Iran’s supply line to Hezbollah. By bringing Iran to Vienna, the White House has legitimized the Islamic Republic’s war against Israel.