How Syria dodged a neo-con bullet

By Jim Lobe
Asia Times

"WASHINGTON - Neo-conservative hawks in and outside the administration of US President George W Bush had hoped that Israel would attack Syria during summer's Lebanon war, according to a newly published interview [was posted here] with a prominent neo-conservative whose spouse is a top Middle East adviser in Vice President Dick Cheney's office.

Meyrav Wurmser, who is herself the director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Hudson Institute in Washington, reportedly told Yitzhak Benhorin of the Ynet website that a successful attack by Israel on Damascus would have dealt a mortal blow to the insurgency in Iraq.

"If Syria had been defeated, the rebellion in Iraq would have ended," she asserted, adding that it was chiefly as a result of pressure from what she called "neo-cons" that the administration held off demands by United Nations Security Council members to halt Israel's attacks on Hezbollah and other targets in Lebanon during the war.

"The neo-cons are responsible for the fact that Israel got a lot of time and space ... They believed that Israel should be allowed to win," she told Ynet. "A great part of it was the thought that Israel should fight against the real enemy, the one backing Hezbollah ... If Israel had hit Syria, it would have been such a harsh blow for Iran that it would have weakened it and [changed] the strategic map in the Middle East."......

"In a meeting with a very senior Israeli official, [US Deputy National Security Adviser Elliot] Abrams indicated that Washington would have no objection if Israel chose to extend the war beyond to its other northern neighbor, leaving the interlocutor in no doubt that the intended target was Syria," a well-informed source, who received an account of the meeting from one of its participants, told Inter Press Service (IPS) shortly after the conflict ended in August. A similar account was published in the Jerusalem Post at the time.

Abrams has been known to work particularly closely with both David Wurmser, Meyrav's husband, and Cheney's national security adviser, John Hannah, who in turn have long favored regime change in Damascus.

Indeed, both Wurmsers, along with former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle and former under secretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith, worked together on a 1996 paper, "A Clean Break", for incoming Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which called for overthrowing Iraqi president Saddam Hussein as the first step toward destabilizing Syria.

Wurmser and Hannah, according to the New York Times, argued forcefully - and successfully, with Abrams' help - against efforts by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to persuade Bush to open a channel to Syria in an effort to stop the fighting in its early days.

Given her husband's work for Cheney, Wurmser's remarks, which come as the debate over policy toward Syria both in Washington and in Israel is heating up, offer important insights into the thinking of the dwindling number of administration hawks, particularly those around the vice president, who is reportedly steadfastly opposed to any direct engagement with Damascus or Tehran......

....This month, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group called for Washington to engage Damascus and Tehran directly in regional negotiations designed to stabilize Iraq. Like some prominent Israelis, the ISG's co-chairman, former secretary of state James Baker, has argued that creative diplomacy could woo Damascus away from its strategic alliance with Iran. "If you can flip the Syrians, you will cure Israel's Hezbollah problem," he said recently, adding that Syrian officials - he met with the foreign minister in September - had indicated they could persuade Hamas' militant external wing to accept Olmert's conditions for direct engagement with the Palestinians......

...Indeed, Meyrav Wurmser, who is herself an Israeli closely identified with the Likud Party, expressed a sense of imminent defeat. Noting last week's departure of former ambassador to the UN John Bolton, a key neo-conservative ally, she said, "There are others who are about to leave. "This administration is in its twilight days," she said. "Everyone is now looking for work, looking to make money ... We all feel beaten after the past five years ..."

While she blamed Rumsfeld, the military and the State Department for the failure to achieve neo-conservative goals in Iraq and the wider region, she also attacked Israel's conduct of the summer's war, insisting that it provoked "a lot of anger" in Washington, presumably in her husband's office, among other places.

"The final outcome is that Israel did not do it [attack Syria]. It fought the wrong war and lost ... instead of a strategic war that would serve Israel's objectives, as well as the US objectives in Iraq.""