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Peeling Syria Away from Iran Seen Unlikely

(AFP) Lachlan Carmichael - The Obama team will find it hard, if not impossible, to peel Syria way from hardline ally Iran, analysts say. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker last week, disclosed that the Syrian secret services have already resumed cooperation with the CIA and Britain's MI6. Aaron David Miller, who was a Middle East adviser in past U.S. administrations, said Washington can achieve modest objectives, such as intelligence sharing, but he set expectations low. Syria is a hard nut to crack, he said, because President Bashar al-Assad, from the minority Alawite sect, focuses foremost on ensuring his regime's survival - and that means having strategic ties with non-Arab and Shiite Iran. Its needs flow from its stakeholding in Lebanon via Hizbullah, which Iran has also backed. "As long as the Hizbullah-Iranian relationship is as close as it is, the Syrians, I think, will only alienate the Iranians at their own peril," Miller said. He said Assad's Syria, which has a majority Sunni Muslim population, sees Iran as a hedge against a Sunni-led Arab world that it mistrusts, while it also looks to energy-rich Tehran for economic support.
2010-02-09 08:15:46
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