The New York Times has published an article by Robert Worth headlined "Drawing a Line on Syria, U.S. Keeps Eye on Iran Policy," devoted to a possible US strike on Syria and the situation surrounding the Iranian nuclear programme.
"As the Obama administration makes a case for punitive airstrikes on the Syrian government, its strongest card in the view of some supporters of a military response may be the need to send a message to another country: Iran. If the United States does not enforce its self-imposed “red line” on Syria’s use of chemical weapons, this thinking goes, Iran will smell weakness and press ahead more boldly in its quest for nuclear weapons," the article reads.
"But that message may be clashing with a simultaneous effort by American officials to explore dialogue with Iran’s moderate new president, Hassan Rouhani, in the latest expression of Washington’s long struggle to balance toughness with diplomacy in its relations with a longtime adversary," the author writes.
"One thing is clear: the statements by Iran’s leaders have shifted from earlier this year, when high-ranking Iranian officials said a foreign attack on Syria would be treated as an attack on Iran itself. There may even be some relief at the prospect of more direct American involvement in the Syrian conflict, which has occasionally been cast as “Iran’s Vietnam,” some analysts say," Robert Worth.
"The reality is that Obama’s military action will make the Syrian tragedy his and not Iran’s,: the author quotes Farideh Farhi, an Iran scholar at the University of Hawaii, as saying.
