Syria, Turkey, and the Necessity of Regional Realignment
The surprising offensive of Turkish-backed rebel groups in Syria resulting in the fall of Aleppo in terrorist hands within hours of the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire has sent geopolitical shockwaves across the region, directly impacting Iran's national security calculus. Although we are at the incipient phase of this new chapter in Middle East conflict and the rebells' gains, particularly in Aleppo and the surrounding areas, might be reversed by Damascus and its Russian, Iranian and Iraqi allies, the mere fact the US airpower has been engaged on the side of the rebels is alone indicative of the proxy role of the rebels that include many pan-Turkish elements. Taking advantage of Russia's preoccupation with Ukraine and Israel's big scores against Hamas and Hezbollah, Ankara has seemingly seen fit to take a bold initiative against the Assad regime as part of its neo-Ottoman ambitions, previously demonstrated in the 2020 Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict.
Ankara's moves clearly show that the greatest national security threat to Iran comes from Turkey and not Israel, which ought to have its own misgivings regarding Erdogan's regional ambitions harking back to the Ottoman empire and its control of the Holy Land. A NATO outpost in the Middle East, Turkey is of course subservient to US strategy, which dictates weakening Russia's southern flank at a crucial time in the Ukraine war going badly for the NATO-backed Ukrainian government.
As far as Iran is concerned, the new crisis in Syria is also a crisis of opportunity to pursue a regional realignment with the conservative Arab states, above all Saudi Arabia and Egypt. A new Iran-Arab front is indeed required to check Turkey's unbridled ambitions. This means that already Tehran has committed a major foreign policy mistake by (a) not summoning the Turkish ambassador in Tehran and scolding the Turks over their sinister moves in Syria, and (b) dispatching the Foreign Minister Araghchi to Ankara under the guise of quiet diplomacy, when in fact the situation demands a chorus of diplomatic uproar against Turkey. Such errors, coinciding with the excessively conciliatory article of Iran's vice-president Zarif in Foreign Affairs, reveal a one-dimensional and inappropriate foreign policy approach by the Pezeshkian administration bound to harm the country's foreign objectives. The dialectic of Iran's complex foreign policy objectives has as a result turned into a 'negative dialectic' piling crisis-mismanagement, such as failure to sway Hezbollah to disentangle itself from the Israel-Hamas war early on, instead of fueling it with predictable disastrous results. Iran can ill-afford such costly mistakes that reflect a profound crisis of Iran's crisis-management. Turkey has revealed its true nature in Syria today and there is no hiding it. The only antidote is to form an anti-Turkey broad alliance throughout the Middle East.
* Kaveh L. Afrasiabi is a political scientist and author of several books on Iran's foreign affairs.