What if Iran had acted differently on Syria?

We spoke of how the Arab Awakening, dragged into an entirely different channel along with Syria, has come up against the threat of a sectarian heedlessness. However much the Free Syrian Army and the Syrian National Council insist that the uprising is not against Nusayrism or Shiism but against the Baath dictatorship and its terror, which is committing the crime of massacre, sectarian perceptions do not stop spreading. In this, the Baath regime's pouring plenty of sectarian rhetoric onto the barricade it has built while defending itself desperately has a far greater share.

The truth is that the role sectarianism can play in this environment is partly that of shelter material and partly that of a human shield. A shield that the other parties to the conflict shy away from striking, and that the Baathists do not shy away at all from putting forward.

They do not shy away from putting it forward at all, because in fact they attach no value to the sect or to its content, and they feel no concern about its values or its members being squandered. Just as the PKK, mingling among the civilian population and firing from there, provokes the security forces into committing a massacre, those who use sectarian discourse so recklessly in this affair are likewise provoking a massacre of values in this field. Just as the PKK has no concern about Kurdish civilians being harmed and not the slightest worry about their lives, the Baathists too in fact have no concern about the harm that Nusayrism, Shiism or Alevism will suffer in this process.

War is by its nature deception, misleading, but it is not a game without any rules or morality. There is no principle, no value that the Assad regime observes in war, let alone the values of Nusayrism or Alevism. If there had been a sign that the slightest concern was felt for these, it would have been impossible to understand how things came to this point. Yet if things have come to this point, religious-sectarian values or interests (maslahas) must not have been observed at all.

In fact, the claim that Iran's policy in Syria or Iraq is about its Shiism is an assessment that needs to be questioned. In my last piece I had said that the Arab Awakening is today, in Syria, subjected to a sectarian distortion because of Assad's exploitation of Shiism and Iran's playing along with it.

In saying this, of course, I had also added that drawing the matter onto a sectarian axis could be of benefit neither to Shiism nor to Iran. A reader of mine named Behram Hesen objected to what I said, explaining that Iran's political choices in fact have "already" nothing to do with Shiism. Truly, the examples Hesen gave are of the kind that complete what I left incomplete in my statements. "When it comes to Iran's regional policies, values are resorted to only to the extent that those values serve state interests," says Hesen, and then adds:

"Iran, which gives very serious support to the Sunni groups struggling against Israel in Palestine, supports Armenia against the people of Azerbaijan, nearly 70% of whom are Shia, in the Karabakh question. Iran officially does not accept the Nusayris as having the status of a 'rightful sect.' But because of state interests, it behaves as if it were on the same side as them in terms of identity. I am sure that if 'True Shias' who are not on the same front as Iran were committing the same massacres in Syria today, Iran's position would be the exact opposite of today's. Likewise, a Sunni Syrian administration supporting Iran would be regarded by Iran not as a murderer but as an administration 'fighting against terrorists.' In short, when it comes to Iran, Turkey should not, with historical reflexes, immediately think of a state that pursues a policy based on Shia identity."

These are interesting but accurate examples of how much the sectarian factor can be instrumentalized. Yet what we thought did not square with the historical and legendary depth attributed to Iranian diplomacy was not that Iran was acting out of sectarian motives. The stance Iran took at the beginning of the Arab revolutions was a stance parallel to Turkey's, and because of this stance it was gaining great prestige among the Arab peoples who would come to the fore in building the future.

Yet the policy it has displayed in Syria and Iraq has razed this prestige of Iran among the Arab peoples to the ground. The support it insists on giving Assad despite all his crimes truly has nothing to do with sect, but because of this support it both remains stuck in a sectarian perception, and bets on an option that will lose in the end, and in this way loses any chance of having a claim in the future of the Middle East that is being reshaped. As you can see, its support for Assad costs Iran very dearly. Within this price you need to put the rift into which it has fallen with Turkey in the front rows.

We wrote earlier, and yesterday Taha Özhan wrote in Açık Görüş: what would have happened if Turkey had supported the Baath regime, or had not followed its present policy, had acted passively or as a spectator? We can in fact hold up the mirror of the policy Turkey has followed in Syria from the beginning in part through Iran as well. Whatever the situation of Iran is today among the Egyptian, Tunisian, Libyan and other Arab peoples, such a comparison readily shows that Turkey, even if it had not supported Assad and merely stood by as a spectator, would be in a far worse situation. In fact, we can set our minds to a somewhat optimistic scenario too. On the contrary, if Iran had behaved differently in Syria, if it had not stood by as a spectator to Assad's massacres but had created pressure on him, what would Iran's situation be today in the Middle East, in Syria, even in Turkey.

From here you can find plenty of material for a comparative assessment of foreign policy or the depth of diplomacy.