Julian Pecquet : Il ritiro di Trump dalla Siria divide i falchi dell'Iran


Sintesi personale

Mentre le truppe turche hanno combattuto i militanti curdi la scorsa settimana, una battaglia parallela ma senza sangue si è disputata tra i falchi dell'Iran a Washington sulla saggezza del ritiro degli Stati Uniti dal nord-est della Siria.
La condanna bipartisan per la luce verde ,data presidente Donald Trump ad Ankara , contro gli ex alleati curdi degli Stati Uniti, è stata rapida e bipartisan. I funzionari dell'amministrazione, tuttavia, respingono le accuse secondo cui la mossa giova a Teheran e un gruppo di esperti sostiene che fa esattamente il contrario.
Per i  detrattori di Trump  il ritiro casuale degli Stati Uniti ha mostrato gli Stati Uniti come un alleato inaffidabile, spingendo  i suoi ex alleati curdi tra le braccia del regime del presidente siriano Bashar al-Assad e dei suoi sostenitori iraniani e russi.
L'erosione delle alleanze statunitensi è dannosa non solo per gli Stati Uniti, ma anche per Israele, sostiene Michael Makovsky, presidente e CEO dell'Istituto ebraico per la sicurezza nazionale d'America.
"I curdi  che hanno ostacolato l'espansione iraniana, si sono alleati ora con Assad per essere protetti , il che è funzionale agli interessi dell'Iran e mina quelli  israeliani . Israele ora deve affrontare più pressioni e minacce dall'Iran".
Alcuni falchi sostengono che l'alleanza degli Stati Uniti con una fazione curda militante, considerata  terrorista dalla  Turchia ,  è stata condannata fin dall'inizio. Ankara considera le Unità di protezione popolare (YPG) sostenute dagli USA come affiliate del Partito dei lavoratori del Kurdistan (PKK), che la Turchia sta combattendo da quattro decenni.
 Mark Dubowitz , uno dei falchi più critici , che ha definito la decisione di Trump una  "debacle completa".  e ha definito la Turchia  una teocrazia in stile iraniano in divenire. Michael Doran sostiene  che il ritiro di Trump offre l' 'occasione per ripristinare le relazioni con un alleato della NATO che è stato uno dei primi nemici di Assad. 
Quella visione non convenzionale di Washington ha reso Doran   una celebrità  per i media turchi.
Molti osservatori nutrono seri dubbi sul fatto che la Turchia si dimostrerà  un partner migliore nel contenere l'Iran rispetto ai curdi siriani. Proprio questa settimana i pubblici ministeri federali di New York hanno incriminato la seconda più grande banca statale turca, per  un presunto tentativo di eludere le sanzioni statunitensi sull'Iran.
In una condanna senza precedenti del presidente due terzi dei repubblicani della Camera hanno votato , mercoledì con i democratici, per approvare una risoluzione che ha esplicitamente sottolineato questo.
"Un brusco ritiro del personale militare degli Stati Uniti da alcune parti della Siria nord-orientale è vantaggioso per gli avversari del governo degli Stati Uniti come :  Siria, Iran e   Russia", afferma la risoluzione .
Hook ha respinto  tale tesi  insistendo sul fatto che "la decisione del presidente nei confronti della Siria non cambierà la nostra strategia contro l'Iran o la sua efficacia.. La presenza militare americana in Siria,  mira a combattere lo Stato islamico (IS, noto anche come ISIS), non l'Iran, mentre la politica di sanzioni degli Stati Uniti rimane pienamente valida.
Tuttavia, la presenza di truppe statunitensi è stata a lungo vista come un deterrente cruciale contro l'espansione iraniana in Siria.
Nel frattempo,l'Iran  si è fatta sentire . Il segretario del supremo Consiglio di sicurezza nazionale iraniano, il contrammiraglio Ali Shamkhani, ha  dichiarato :
" Il  governo degli Stati Uniti ha capito  di non avere più i requisiti di superpotenza . La sua incapacità di realizzare progetti strategici come: la divisione del Medio Oriente , l'accordo del secolo ,il cambio di regime in Iran , l' istituzione dell'Arabia Saudita come polizia regionale  ,la  guerra nello Yemen ,la  pace afgana , la crisi siriana", ecc. è sotto gli occhi di tutti".
As Turkish troops fought Kurdish militants over the past week, a parallel but bloodless battle played out among Iran hawks in Washington over the wisdom of the US pullout from northeast Syria.
Bipartisan condemnation of President Donald Trump's perceived green light to Ankara for its assault against former Kurdish US allies has been swift and bipartisan. Administration officials, however, reject accusations that the move benefits Tehran, and a handful of experts argue it does just the opposite.
For Trump’s legion of detractors, the haphazard US withdrawal has exposed the United States as a feckless ally while pushing its former Kurdish allies into the arms of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime and its Iranian and Russian backers.
“When we’re severing our partnerships with allies, they’re going to look elsewhere — they’re going to engage in self-help,” Jason Brodsky, the policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran, told Al-Monitor. “And that’s what we’re seeing right now.”The erosion of US alliances are detrimental not just to the United States, but to Israel as well, argues Michael Makovsky, the president and CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America.
“The Kurds, who served as an obstacle to Iranian expansion, have naturally allied now with Assad to help protect them, which serves Iran’s interests and undermines Israel’s,” Makovsky told the Jewish News Syndicate this week. “Israel now faces more pressure and threats from Iran.”
But some hawks argue that the US alliance with a militant Kurdish faction that Turkey views as terrorists was doomed from the start. Ankara considers the US-backed People’s Protection Units (YPG) to be an affiliate of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which Turkey has been battling for four decades.
“The PKK is locked between the Turks, hostile Kurds in Iraq, and wary Arabs,” Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, tweeted Oct. 13. “So the turn to Iran (and Iranian Iraqi assets) and Russia is preset.”
That view is at sharp odds with the main line at the foundation, whose chief executive Mark Dubowitz has been one of the most vocal hawks lambasting Trump’s decision, calling it a “complete debacle.” Dubowitz in particular has had harsh words for Turkey, denouncing it as an Iranian-style theocracy in the making.
For Michael Doran of the conservative Hudson Institute, that’s the wrong conclusion to draw. Instead, he argues, Trump’s pullout offers a welcome chance to reset relations with a NATO ally that was one of Assad’s earliest foes. 
“These guys, the YPG, they would rather be in bed with Assad and the Iranians than with the Kurds of Iraq,” Doran said at a Hudson Institute panel Tuesday. “That’s why we’re seeing this quick — this very speedy move where the Americans leave and the Russians and the Syrians move in because they have always been aligned with the Russians and the Iranians.”
"We borrowed a Russian and Iranian proxy, and it was strategically stupid," Doran added. "Everyone knows we’re leaving sooner or later. Turkey is going to be there forever, and the Turks know this as well. So we have to work through them, largely on their terms.”
That unconventional Washington view has made Doran a sought-after Turkish media darling, celebrated in the pro-government Daily Sabah, interviewed on the state-owned TRT channel and invited to speak by the Turkish SETA Foundation think tank in Washington.
But plenty of observers have serious doubts that Turkey would prove to be a better partner in containing Iran than the Syrian Kurds. Just this week, federal prosecutors in New York indicted Turkey's second-largest state-owned bank for allegedly trying to circumvent US sanctions on Iran.
“I don’t think Turkey has been an ally on Iran,” Brodsky said. “There’s also the broader Turkey-Russia rapprochement that we’ve been seeing in recent months,” notably with the purchase of the S-400 missile defense system.
In an unprecedented rebuke of the president, two-thirds of House Republicans voted with Democrats on Wednesday to pass a resolution that explicitly made the point that US foes stood to gain from the pullout.
“An abrupt withdrawal of United States military personnel from certain parts of Northeast Syria is beneficial to adversaries of the United States government, including Syria, Iran, and Russia,” the resolution affirms.
That view is widely shared in the Senate, where lawmakers of both parties tore into the administration’s point man on Iran this week as he insisted that the “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran remains unaffected by the developments in Syria.
“The biggest winner of this decision by the president, if he follows through with it, to abandon Syria is going to be Iran” and the Islamic State, Sen. Lindsey Graham. R-S.C., told Brian Hook at a contentious Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Wednesday.
Hook pushed back, insisting that “the president’s decision with respect to Syria is not going to change our Iran strategy or the efficacy of it.” The US military presence in Syria, he pointed out, is aimed at fighting the Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS), not Iran, while US sanctions policy remains in full effect.
Nevertheless, the US troop presence has long been seen as a crucial deterrent against Iranian expansion in Syria. In its final report released shortly before Trump’s announcement, the bipartisan Syria Study Group concluded that “none of those consulted by the Group believe that withdrawing US forces would make ISIS less likely to regroup, Iran less likely to entrench itself, or a negotiated settlement more likely.”
Indeed, some experts argue that a sanctions policy is largely toothless by itself.
“Withdrawal from Syria is at odds with the maximum pressure strategy on Iran,” Brodsky said. “Sanctions are only one part of the policy — there’s also military aspects and presence in the region. Withdrawing from the region undermines our leverage to affect or check Iranian misbehavior.”
Meanwhile, Iran has gleefully stepped into the fray. In a Monday op-ed for the Mehr News Agency denouncing the United States for “turning its back on its Kurd allies,” the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Rear Adm. Ali Shamkhani, dismissed the United States as little more than a paper tiger.
“The US governing body has realized that today, for any reason, it has no superpower requirements and returning to the peak era is impossible and out of reach,” Shamkhani wrote. “Its inability to execute strategic projects such as ‘partitioning the Middle East,’ ‘deal of the century,’ ‘regime change in Iran,’ ‘instating Saudi Arabia as the regional police,’ ‘Yemen war,’ ‘Afghan peace,’ and ‘Syrian crisis’ and etc. has been proved to all.”





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