Diane Rehm gets chatty on Syria, asks how assassinations of regime officials occurred

Diane Rehm

Diane Rehm interviewed Martin Indyk, Aram Nerguizian and Karim Sadjadpour on an episode of her National Public Radio show discussing recent events in Syria.  (Audio). She asks an intriguing question regarding the recent assassinations. It wasn’t the question itself that surprised me, it was that she asked it.

Rehm: Martin Indyk, we continue to hear those within Damascus throughout Syria saying, where is the United States? What is the United States doing? What more can it do?

Indyk: Well, I think that those who are calling for U.S. military intervention are likely to continue to be disappointed. The heart of the matter is that the president wants to run on a campaign platform of ending wars in the Middle East, not starting new ones, and that is broadly popular in the United States, which is why you don’t see many Republicans and not the candidate Gov. Romney himself coming out and calling for military intervention. Simply put, the American people are war-weary after 10 years of war in the greater Middle East.

Rehm: Mm hmm.

Indyk: And so that kind of military intervention is unlikely. So the focus is much more on helping to support the opposition, perhaps now training them, supporting Saudi Arabia and Qataris. They arm them — and working diplomatically so far with little success to try to split Russia away from the Assad regime, so that the efforts of Kofi Annan and the international community to try to put forward a post-Assad political solution will bear more fruit.

Rehm: Karim Sadjadpour, it would seem that the U.S. claims some 10,000 people have been killed. Humanitarian activists argue 17,000. How much can the U.S. do behind the scenes?

Sadjadpour: Well, I think what the U.S. can do is to help the opposition help themselves, meaning helping them with ammunitions, with weapons, with information, with intelligence. But as Martin said, there’s very little appetite to have U.S. boots on the ground. Certainly, I think, we know for a fact that they are similar to what we saw in Libya. There are CIA folks in Syria helping the opposition with logistics, with intelligence. But I think that in the aftermath of these recent assassinations in Damascus, there’s also a sense that this regime’s time is really running out, whereas a month ago, two months ago, it looked like this crisis could continue for another year. Now, there seems to be a consensus that, you know, Assad’s time can be measured perhaps even in weeks.

Rehm: Of course, the question becomes, how were those assassinations carried out? Was it the Israelis? Was it the Americans? How was it done?

Sadjadpour: Perhaps Aram knows more than I do. What I’ve read about the assassinations are is it’s conflicting because the Syrian regime claims that there were suicide bombings conducted by terrorists. But journalists who went to the scene didn’t see any signs of major explosions. And what the opposition has said, that it was an inside job, that one of the bodyguards of one of the senior officials that was killed planted a detonation device inside the room which then exploded. But I’m not sure if there’s clarity in terms of how it exactly happened.

Rehm: Aram.

Nerguizian: Well, I don’t argue with Karim. You don’t have a reliable set of narratives. What you have is it’s quite reminiscent of the Palestinians during the Second Intifada. You have competing groups all vying for legitimacy, all taking claim but with very little realistic forensic evidence that’s been made available to the public, no real sense of how the operation was conducted. We’re talking about individuals that do carry a great deal of symbolism in terms of their links to Assad.

It also plays into the communal direction. You have a Christian minister of defense. You also have a key Alawite and a Sunni-leading military figure. So it plays both ways. I think a lot of folks in Damascus were very interested initially in hearing how the regime would react, whether it would recoil and show signs of weakness, blood in the water, so to speak. They have seen to be kind of squeamish about an initial response in the first 24 hours and released only skittish information about the operation.

So it’s still an ongoing story. I don’t think we have a clear picture. There’s talk of involvement of Jordanian intelligence, potentially Turkish intelligence, but it’s all heresy at this point.

Rehm: Martin Indyk.

Indyk: I think that if we look at the longer term trends in this battle, we can draw some more interesting conclusions which is that, first of all, they were able to penetrate to the very inner sanctum of the regime and assassinate the president’s brother-in-law who is the brains behind the whole operation to suppress the opposition. And it’s part of a broader trend in which an uprising which started at — on the perimeter of the country has spread now to the two most important centers, Damascus and now in Aleppo. Today there’s fighting there. And that is why I think Karim is right, that what we are witnessing is the last months — I’m not sure about last days — of this regime.

(Hat tip MW commenter Kathleen)