Gwynne Dyer talks about the prospects for any ISG proposal that required enlisting the cooperation of Syria and Iran:
The problem is that the United States is demonstrating every day in Iraq just how ineffective its military power is. It looked so impressive before it was unleashed that the Iranian government secretly offered Washington a general settlement of all the differences between the two countries, very much on the U.S.'s terms, just before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
The cocky neo-cons rejected that offer out of hand -- and now leading Iranians just smile when warned that the U.S. might strike them, too. They know that the U.S. armed forces now regard an attack on Iran with such distaste that the Joint Chiefs of Staff might even resign rather than obey such an order.
So Iran's price for co-operation would be high: an end to the 27-year U.S. trade embargo, full diplomatic relations with Washington, a U.S. commitment not to try to overthrow the Iranian regime -- and acceptance of Iran's legal right to develop civil nuclear power under no more than the normal safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Would that mean that Iran becomes a "threshold" nuclear weapons power, able to build actual bombs on very short notice? Yes it would. Pay up or shut up.
And Syria's price? An end to the United Nations investigation into the Damascus regime's role in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri last year, U.S. acceptance of a larger role for Hezbollah in the Lebanese government, a U.S. commitment not to try to overthrow the Syrian regime -- and really serious U.S. pressure on Israel to negotiate the return to Syria of the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel for the past 39 years.
Don't want to pay that price? Then find your own way out of Iraq.
Can you say "The USA is hooped"?
Is the U.S. willing to pay the price?
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