Paul Miller poses some interesting questions for Syria/Iran hawks:

Now let’s return to our interests at stake in Syria. Our involvement in Syria would essentially be a proxy fight in our broader campaign against Iran. But there is a danger in choosing to make Syria a battlefield. We might sink time, money, troops, and energy into regime change in Syria; meanwhile, Iran successfully completes and weaponizes the nuclear cycle. Syria would be a pyrrhic victory. We run the risk of confusing a sideshow with the main event. The main event is Iran and its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Will intervening in Syria prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons? Who is an intervention most likely to slow down: Iran, or the United States?

Since I think the “broader campaign against Iran” is misguided and the likelihood that Iran “completes and weaponizes the nuclear cycle” in the near future is not very great, I don’t find this to be very compelling. That said, Miller’s argument is helpful in challenging the Iran hawks’ assumption that intervening to depose Assad is of obvious strategic benefit to the U.S. According to their own assumptions about Iran and its nuclear program, Iran hawks have to take seriously that Iran’s response to Assad’s overthrow could be more detrimental to U.S. interests as they define them than “allowing” Iran to retain influence in Syria through Assad.

It should also give everyone pause that every significant political change that the U.S. has brought about or encouraged in the region since 2003 has increased the influence of Iran and its proxies rather than undermined it. Deposing Assad would seem to be obviously harmful to Iranian interests for all the reasons usually given, but many of the same people now urging intervention in Syria believed the same thing about invading Iraq and promoting democracy in the region. The Iraqi government has fairly close ties to Tehran, the Hizbullah-aligned coalition currently governs Lebanon, and Iranian warships have been allowed to pass through the Suez Canal for the first time in over thirty years. It’s fair to say that most Iran hawks’ judgment of what is and is not a strategic setback for Iran has not been very good.