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Iran Accepts Invitation to Join U.S. and Russia in Talks on Syria’s Future Iran Accepts Invitation to Join U.S. and Russia in Talks on Syria’s Future
(about 9 hours later)
LONDON — Iran has accepted an invitation to join talks with the United States and Russia this week on a possible political resolution to the Syrian civil war, state news media reported on Wednesday. TEHRAN — Iran on Wednesday accepted an invitation to attend a broad new round of negotiations to resolve the Syrian war, sitting with longtime adversaries including the United States and Saudi Arabia who once sought to bar the Iranians from any role in Syria’s future.
The talks would be Secretary of State John Kerry’s first formal negotiations with Tehran on issues beyond the nuclear accord reached in July. The inclusion of Iran in the talks represented the first time that the United States has chosen to formally engage the Iranians diplomatically on the Syria issue. It also came a little more than three months after Iran signed a historic nuclear accord with the United States and other powers that promised to end Iran’s economic isolation in return for limits on its nuclear enrichment, suggesting an effort to broaden the discussion beyond that successful negotiation.
The Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, and his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, discussed the talks, which will be held in Vienna, in phone conversations on Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, the semiofficial ISNA agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Marziyeh Afkham, as saying. Iran’s acceptance of the invitation to join the Syria talks in Vienna, an offer made by Russia after President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry dropped Washington’s past objections, reflected how rapidly the dynamics of the war have changed. Clearly worried about the military support that Russia and Iran are providing to prop up President Bashar al-Assad, the United States has concluded that the only hope for easing Mr. Assad from power is to find a political solution with his two sponsors.
Russia has urged the inclusion of Iran, the only other major power giving military support to President Bashar al-Assad, and top American officials have recently acknowledged that no serious discussion of a possible political succession plan in Syria could occur unless Tehran were involved. But Iran’s participation also appeared to signal how Iran is emerging from decades of American-imposed marginalization. Only two years ago, it was disinvited from joining Syrian peace talks because of pressure from the United States. Now, with Iran’s enhanced standing in the aftermath of the nuclear agreement, Mr. Kerry appears to be testing whether a broader basis for cooperation is possible.
France24 quoted Antony J. Blinken, the deputy secretary of state, who was in Paris in preparation for Friday’s talks, as saying he hoped Iran could play “a positive role in supporting a political transition in Syria.” When Mr. Kerry arrives back in Vienna, where the nuclear accord was struck in July, he will be facing a familiar negotiating adversary: Mohammed Javad Zarif, the American-educated Iranian foreign minister with whom he negotiated the nuclear deal and established an unusually close relationship.
Mr. Kerry leaves for Vienna on Wednesday. For Mr. Kerry, negotiating Iran’s role will be tricky. Russia and Iran are playing increasingly aggressive military roles in backing President Assad against an array of rebels, some supported by the United States and its Western and Arab allies including Saudi Arabia, Iran’s most powerful regional rival.
The United States’s position — denunciation of Iran’s support for Mr. Assad’s forces and for terrorist groups like Hezbollah — has until now precluded any support for Iran participating in the talks. Along with Russia and the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates are participating in this week’s talks. In a sign of the tensions that Iran’s participation could generate, Saudi Arabia reacted cautiously and suspiciously. “If they’re serious, we will know, and if they’re not serious, we will also know and stop wasting time with them,” the Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeiri, told reporters Wednesday at a Riyadh news conference with Britain’s visiting foreign secretary, Philip Hammond.
The change in the American position was signaled on Tuesday in a State Department news conference in Washington. The Syria war, which began in March 2011, has killed a quarter-million people, contributed to the biggest refugee crisis since World War II and become a breeding ground for the Islamic State and other extremist groups that threaten not only Syria’s neighbors but all the powers supporting one side or the other.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, had ruled out direct negotiations with the United States after the nuclear accord, which he tepidly endorsed. The result has been a gradual but undeniable shift in American strategy. Top American officials who once rejected any outcome that maintained Mr. Assad in power have recently acknowledged that no serious discussion of a possible succession plan in Syria could occur unless Iran was involved. And the Iranians in public have said he is their “red line,” saying replacing Mr. Assad is out of the question — though in private, they have said they were open to a transition to another member of Mr. Assad’s Alawite sect, closely aligned to Iran’s Shia, if one emerged.
“It’s very important because it shows that, following the nuclear agreement, Iran is now ready to cooperate on crisis management in the Middle East,” Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian diplomat and nuclear negotiator who now teaches at Princeton, said in a phone interview. “I’m not surprised, because the leader had said that if the deal were done fairly, with face-saving for all parties, Iran would agree to next steps on other issues. This is a big step forward.” Iran’s decision to attend the Syria talks, which Iran’s news media announced Wednesday, also sent an ambiguous signal at home. Just a few weeks ago, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said any new talks with the United States were forbidden. He described the United States as a persistent enemy of the Islamic revolution, and said that despite the nuclear agreement, it needed to be kept at a distance.
Mr. Mousavian added: “There are, practically speaking, two coalitions: one established in 2011 by the United States, with its allies like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and the other coalition, established recently, by Russia, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Hezbollah.” A resolution of the Syria crisis is impossible, he said, unless “all major regional powers and international powers agree to sit down together.” But participating in the multination Syria talks does not contradict Mr. Khamenei’s dictums, some Iranian analysts say.
Michael Axworthy, a historian of Iran at the University of Exeter and a former British diplomat, said of the Iranians’ participation in the talks: “It is quite significant. It’s new that they’ve come along, but it’s also new that the other countries involved have contemplated working with them.” “Our leader has banned the bilateral relations between Iran and America or any negotiation aimed at resuming relations,” said Hamidreza Taraghi, a political analyst in Tehran considered close to the ayatollah. “Case-by-case negotiations or finding solutions for regional problems on a multilateral basis is all right.”
He added: “In the aftermath of the nuclear deal, it was important for Khamenei to signal to his supporters that this was not an unraveling of Iran’s hard-line position on the U.S. and Israel. Now that he’s done that, it becomes possible to take further steps.” So, while publicly siding with the hard-liners, the Supreme Leader may well be giving more negotiating room to President Hassan Rouhani, who has advocated more open engagements with the rest of the world. There has already been an unspoken cooperation between Iran and the United States in Iraq, where both are fighting the Islamic State.
Russia’s intervention in the conflict, with the launch of airstrikes last month against rebel forces that are fighting Mr. Assad, may also have changed Tehran’s political calculus, Dr. Axworthy said. In the long run, he said, “they don’t trust the Russians any more than than they trust the U.S.” “We should thank President Rouhani for his efforts in reaching out to the international community, and the nuclear deal,” said Farshad Ghorbanpour, a political analyst close to the government in Tehran. “Now we are seeing the rewards: We are playing an increasing active role in the international arena.”
Mr. Blinken, in his interview with France24, reaffirmed the American view that Russia’s intervention has not significantly changed the situation. “They cannot win in Syria,” he said. “They can perhaps prevent Assad from losing, but they cannot win. There is a recognition on all sides that there is no military solution in Syria. That is a recognition that is now growing on the Russians.” That role is something that Iran has desperately sought: Diplomatic weight and respect that bolsters its claim that it, not Saudi Arabia, is the most influential power in the region. “It’s very important because it shows that, following the nuclear agreement, Iran is now ready to cooperate on crisis management in the Middle East,” Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian diplomat and nuclear negotiator who now teaches at Princeton, said in a telephone interview. “I’m not surprised, because the leader had said that if the deal were done fairly, with face-saving for all parties, Iran would agree to next steps on other issues. This is a big step forward.”
The last round of talks in Vienna ended last Friday without a resolution, although Mr. Kerry and Mr. Lavrov emphasized common ground: their shared fight against the Islamic State and other violent extremist groups, and a desire to keep Syria as unified and for Syrians to decide the future of their country. Cliff Kupchan, an Iran specialist and chairman of the Eurasia Group, a Washington political consultancy, said that given Russia’s recent intervention in Syria to support Mr. Assad, it was clear he would remain in charge for a while, which meant Iran would be attending the Vienna talks from a position of strength.
While Mr. Zarif played a central rule in negotiating Iran’s nuclear deal with the United States and five other world powers, the extent of his influence over Iran’s policy on Syria is less clear. Still, Mr. Kupchan said in an email, “as U.S.-Iran contacts spread to a broader array of issues, it will be harder and harder for Iranian conservatives to quarantine cooperation.”
Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the commander of Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force, is believed to have a considerable role in shaping Iran’s involvement in the four-year-old civil war in Syria. The Vienna talks, which begin Thursday, will start with Russia and the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. Iran will join Friday; it is not clear if the Iranians and the Saudis will be in the same room at the same time. Just last month, Mr. Zarif said that “unfortunately, our Saudi neighbors are not prepared to discuss these issues with us.”
ISNA reported that three deputy foreign ministers — Hossein Amirabdollahian, Abbas Araghchi and Majid Takht Ravanchi — would accompany Mr. Zarif on his trip to Vienna. Mr. Zarif has made no secret of his disdain for the American strategy in Syria, suggesting there is not much of one. “What has the United States done to stop ISIS?” he asked at a public event with the University of Denver, his alma mater, in New York a month ago, referring to the Islamic State militant group.
The last round of talks in Vienna ended last Friday without a resolution, although Mr. Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, emphasized common ground: their shared fight against the Islamic State and other violent extremist groups, and a desire to keep Syria as unified and for Syrians to decide the future of their country.
Iran’s participation in Syria talks is something United Nations mediators have sought for years — and faced opposition from the White House for just as long. The most notable moment came in January 2014, when Ban Ki-moon, the secretary-general, announced at a hastily called news conference that he had invited Iranian officials to take part in peace talks in Geneva. The Americans objected immediately, and by the next day, Mr. Ban backtracked. He told reporters that Iran was no longer invited.
Mr. Ban welcomed the news on Wednesday of Iran’s inclusion in the talks, his office said in a statement. “He has long felt Iran should have a role in discussions on Syria,” it said. “Countries that have influence over the Syrian parties need to be part of the discussion and, of course, this includes Iran.”
While Mr. Zarif played a central role in negotiating Iran’s nuclear deal, the extent of his influence over Iran’s policy on Syria is less clear. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the commander of Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force, is widely assesses to have a considerable role in shaping Iran’s involvement in the war in Syria.
Iranian news media are now reporting deaths of Iranian “volunteers” in Syria on a daily basis, another reflection of Iran’s increased entanglement. On Wednesday, the Mehr news agency reported on the killing of Puya Izadi, a volunteer paramilitary from Isfahan province. The Fars news agency said an Iranian identified as Mehdi Ka’ini was killed by “terrorists in Syria.” But in line with the government’s ambiguity over its precise role in the conflict, Iranian news media never give details on how these Iranians are killed in Syria.