In the past month, two major agreements have come out of the Middle East: an understanding between the United States and Iran to contain Tehran's nuclear ambitions and an understanding between the United States and Turkey that allows Ankara to begin establishing a buffer zone inside northern Syria in exchange for allowing the United States access to Incirlik air base.
Both of these negotiations occurred in parallel, but the sequence was critical. Turkey and Iran are two major powers in the Middle East that Washington is relying on to balance against one another. The U.S. administration could not have proceeded with a deal to enable a Turkish intervention in northern Syria and provide a major boost to Syrian rebels against Iran's ally in Damascus without first following through with a deal with Iran. Now that Washington and Tehran are on a path toward normalization, the United States can deal with its Sunni partners in the region.
And so we come to the real challenge. The United States has set up the chessboard for Iran and Turkey. But can Washington reconcile opposing Iranian and Turkish interests in Syria to the point of ending the civil war and forging a power-sharing agreement in Damascus? That will be the aim for the weeks and months ahead, but there is no guarantee that the United States will get the results it is seeking.
The first big question is whether the United States can keep Turkish ambitions in check. Three goals are driving Turkey's growing military involvement in northern Syria. The most immediate goal is to protect Turkey against a legitimate jihadist threat. The second is to keep a direct military check on Kurdish autonomy. The third is to position Turkey's rebel proxies and political allies to remove President Bashar al Assad and shape a new government in Syria. The United States is obviously on board with the first. The second creates complications for the United States, given that Kurdish forces are still useful ground assets in the fight against the Islamic State. The third is where things get especially dicey in dealing with Iran.
U.S. discussions with Iran over a post-al Assad Syria will center on the question of maintaining institutional coherence — not repeating the Iraq mistake of dismantling the army and enabling a 180-degree sectarian flip. Maintaining Syria's institutions entails ensuring strong position for Alawites and other minorities in a power-sharing arrangement. Just how much power is shared with the Sunnis is an open question and one that Washington will have a tough time reconciling with Iranian negotiators. Iran will also find other ways to try to check Turkish ambitions for Syria, such as taking advantage of renewed Turkish-Kurdish hostilities to amplify the Kurdish militant threat inside Turkey.
And of course, Turkey is not the only one with a stake in Sunni-majority Syria. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other members of the Gulf alliance are going to have much less tolerance for a Syrian arrangement that leaves Iran with substantial leverage over Damascus.
From the Saudi point of view, this is not the time for compromise with Iran. Riyadh would much rather have negotiated a deal over Syria while Iran was still shackled by nuclear sanctions and while a U.S. military threat hung over Iran. Tehran is trying to broadcast in a variety of ways that it wants a cooperative relationship with its Sunni Arab neighbors: state visits by the Iranian foreign minister to Qatar and Kuwait (which have more pragmatic relationships with Tehran than Saudi Arabia does), public statements calling for cooperation on regional issues, and private communications claiming that Iran is pulling back its military involvement in Syria and Iraq to facilitate a common understanding.
But Saudi Arabia does not exactly trust Iran's intentions, especially when Riyadh is on high alert for Iranian subversive activity in the Arabian Peninsula. In Bahrain, a July 28 attack targeting local police was far more sophisticated than other attacks in the tiny Gulf country. We have noted Iran's limitations in providing the level of assistance needed for Bahraini Shiite groups to escalate their sporadic low-level attacks into a more serious insurgency. If the July 28 attack develops into a trend in Bahrain while Saudi Arabia grapples with both jihadist and Shiite dissidence at home, Iran will be seen as the prime instigator, not the credible negotiator.
Iran may be trying to project both images in the wake of the nuclear deal. On the one hand, it wants to negotiate at a time when it is in an elevated position, having worked out a deal with the United States. On the other hand, Iran wants to demonstrate it can still cause trouble for its Sunni adversaries should the need arise. Whether that trouble comes from Kurdish, Shiite or even jihadist proxies, the message will be heard loud and clear in Ankara and Riyadh. And that is the challenge the United States will have to overcome if it has any chance of forging a viable agreement on Syria.
