In the Lion's Den_ An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle With Syria - Andrew Tabler [108]
So with peace talks on hold, secretary of state Hillary Clinton dispatched assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs Jeffrey Feltman on February 26, 2009, for talks with the Syrian ambassador to Washington, Imad Moustapha. The president was rumored to have given Clinton two instructions. The first was that his administration was elected on the idea of engagement with America’s adversaries and that Washington would work with Damascus as part of that effort. The second was that a victory by Hezbollah and its allies in the elections scheduled for June 7 should be avoided at all costs—therefore, engagement with Syria should not come at the expense of US allies in Lebanon.
Feltman was not the engager that Syria had in mind, given his previous tenure as ambassador to Lebanon during Syria’s forced withdrawal from the country following Hariri’s assassination in February 2005. Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Moallem had once quipped to UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon that “Feltman should leave [Lebanon]; I’m prepared to pay for his vacation to Hawaii.”9 In the first meeting with Moustapha, Feltman raised the issues of Syria’s “support to terrorist groups and networks, acquisition of nuclear and nonconventional weaponry, interference in Lebanon, and worsening human rights situation.”
Syrian-regime analysts immediately attacked Feltman in the press for using the “language of the neocons.” Following the meeting, however, both sides labeled the talks “constructive,” leading to another round of discussions in Damascus on March 7 between Feltman and National Security Council Middle East director Daniel Shapiro and Moallem. Following the talks, Feltman announced that both sides had found “a lot of common ground” and that instead of setting “benchmarks” for Damascus, each side was watching the future “choices” of the other.
Two days later, Assad stepped into the fray. In the ensuing twenty-three days, he gave six interviews to international media—this was unprecedented for a Syrian president over such a short period of time. Rather than dealing with the issues discussed during Feltman and Shapiro’s visit, however, Assad targeted Israel, offering it only a cold peace. He blamed outgoing Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert for the failure of recent indirect Syrian-Israeli negotiations and refused to talk about cutting ties with Hezbollah, Hamas, and Tehran. In another interview, Assad implied that he had been asked to mediate between Washington and Tehran. Then, in his first-ever e-mail interview with an American journalist, Assad told The New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh that he not only sought US mediation with Israel, but he also wanted direct contact with President Obama.
In the June 7, 2009, Lebanese elections, the pro-West March 14 coalition achieved an unexpected victory over the Hezbollah-led opposition. A little over a week later, US Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell—together with his new special coordinator for regional affairs and point man on Syria-Israel peace talks, Frederic Hof—headed to Damascus for a first round of talks with President Assad. The discussions focused not only on getting Syria involved in possible Middle East peace talks but also on repairing bilateral relations between the two countries, most notably over the issue of foreign fighters traveling through Syria to Iraq.
Unexpectedly, Syria reiterated its earlier demand that the United States lift its sanctions—measures that until then the Syrian government had claimed had had little effect on the country. Days after the visit, the State Department announced that the United States would return its ambassador to Syria. In Mitchell’s second meeting