By Barry Rubin
Remember Turkey? It used to hold joint military exercises with the United States and Israel. Now it holds them with Syria while refusing to hold even an air-sea rescue drill with Israel. Yet there's no real concern in the U.S. government that Turkey--or rather the neo-Islamist current government--may be changing sides or of U.S. technology becoming available to Iran and Syria in the future.
Consider this list, which is pretty undeniable in factual terms:
U.S. engagement with Iran: failure.
U.S. engagement with Syria: failure.
Iran/Syria engagement with Lebanon: success.
Iran/Syria engagement with Turkey: success.
Bottom line: The United States has failed to pull Syria away from Iran; Iran and Syria have pulled Lebanon and Turkey away from the United States.
Iran/Syria: 2; United States: 0
In Washington policy circles and to a large extent in the mass media, no one has noticed this little comparison of success.
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