Whatever happens in the anti-Assad protests, Iran is likely to lose some of its easy access to Syria, its key Arab ally. If Assad survives, he will have to establish some distance from Iran to appease Sunni protesters, U.S. officials believe. And it he’s toppled, Syria is likely to be ruled by a Sunni-dominated regime that will be more hostile to Iran. ~David Ignatius

These claims seem superficially plausible, but I wonder if either of them is true. Would distancing Syria from Iran appease Sunni protesters? Are there many Sunni protesters objecting to Assad and the regime who would be appeased by this? I don’t see why this would happen. Probably the only way that Syrian protesters of any sect or religion would be appeased by Assad’s moving away from a close relationship with Iran is if they perceived Iran’s government as instrumental in helping to suppress the protests. There appears to be some evidence that Iran has been aiding Assad in the crackdown. According to U.S. officials, Iran has been giving Assad and his allies tips on how they were able to contain and repress the Green movement, and providing some supplies to aid in the crackdown. This claim may not be true, and it may be an effort to deflect attention away from reported U.S. support for the opposition.

Regardless, it doesn’t follow that the protesters’ success would translate into meaningful foreign policy changes. There was a similar assumption about the success of the Green movement, when it was quite clear that the Green movement was not interested in accommodating Western governments on nuclear issues or support for proxies in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. The Green movement was interested in completely different, primarily domestic concerns, and to the extent that its leaders have distinguished themselves from Ahmadinejad it has been to stake out less accommodating, more inflexible positions on the nuclear issue.

The Western expectation that such changes are likely to take place if a regime is toppled from within is based on a few assumptions that may not apply here. The first assumption is that the foreign policy orientation of an authoritarian government does not reflect the interests or goals of the majority of the population in a given country. This is informed by our experience with propping up authoritarian regimes whose foreign policy alignment with the U.S. does not reflect the preferences of their population, but it doesn’t follow that because a government is authoritarian its foreign policy orientation is something imposed on a nation that would otherwise prefer a different policy.

Another assumption is that when an authoritarian government falls, its replacement will be willing and able to carry out significant changes in the state’s foreign policy orientation. This underestimates the staying power of military and intelligence institutions, and overestimates the ability of nascent governments to overturn decades of foreign policy habits. Pakistani dictators come and go, but the return of elected civilians to government does not change the enormous influence the military retains. Even in Turkey, where the military cannot intervene in domestic politics as easily as it once did, there are red lines on security issues that any civilian government, especially an Islamist one, cannot cross without jeopardizing its hold on power. On top of all of this, a new Syrian government would not want to give Iran an incentive to try to destabilize it, which a decidedly pro-Western or anti-Iranian shift would do.

The most important assumption is that the collapse of an anti-American authoritarian government under pressure from internal protests will yield a less anti-American government. This makes the basic mistake of conflating democratic or reformist aspirations for pro-Western/pro-American attitudes regarding security and regional issues. As we saw with the example of the Green movement, demands for reform were not linked with a significant change in Iranian foreign policy, and the Iranian opposition’s leaders were eager to identify with both Iranian nationalism and the principles of the Islamic revolution to make it harder for their critics to cast aspersions on their loyalty.

The idea that Assad would move away from Iran if he survives the protests seems like a good example of mixing up what U.S. officials would like to see happen with what Syrian protesters want. Moving Syria out of Iran’s orbit is something that the U.S. clearly desires, and anti-Assad protesters are presumably not enamored of U.S. policy in the region, so I don’t think we should assume that putting distance between himself and Iran would satisfy many protesters. Their principal demands concern the way that the Syrian government acts toward Syrians. If anything, being part of the so-called “resistance” bloc is something that has aligned the Syrian government with most of the population, so presumably this is one of the last things that Assad would want to change. That doesn’t definitely mean that Syria wouldn’t distance itself from Iran in the future, but that the reason for doing so would not have much to do with appeasing protesters. As ever, the question is whether or not other governments can provide incentives that are sufficiently enticing for Syria to distance itself from Iran, and right now the answer seems to be that they cannot and will not be trying.

The last claim that a Sunni-dominated Syria would be more hostile to Iran seems more credible, but I wonder if this overlooks something. Following Mubarak’s downfall, Egypt and Iran have begun cultivating diplomatic ties for the first time since 1980. Egypt has been Iran’s rival for regional influence for at least the last thirty years. If Egypt is pursuing some degree of normalization of relations with Iran following the end of Mubarak’s rule, it doesn’t seem all that likely that the rise of a majoritarian Sunni government in Syria would mean a Syria that is more hostile to Iran. The Egyptian military government has made some gestures on foreign policy to appeal to the population, but this is because the regime under Mubarak was at odds with Egyptian public opinion. It isn’t at all clear that the majority of Syrians wants to move Syria out of Iran’s orbit, as this would imply that Syria is reducing its role as part of the so-called “resistance” bloc.

P.S. Paul Pillar identified some of these flaws in Western calls for Syrian regime change a month ago:

There is underestimation of how much worthwhile business could be conducted with the incumbent regime, however distasteful it may be. There is overestimation of how much the policies of the country in question are specific to the incumbent regime, and thus overestimation as well of how much change in those policies would ensue from a change of regime. There is also a general failure to think much about who or what would replace the current regime.

Pillar went on to make some good observations about Syrian interests in supporting Hizbullah and Hamas that transcend sectarian identity.

Update: Peter Harling argues that regime change is not yet what a great many Syrians want:

Many Syrians — even among those without sympathy for the regime — still resist this conclusion. Their arguments should not be ignored. They dread the breakup of a state whose institutions, including the military, are weak even by regional standards. They fear that sectarian dynamics or a hegemonic religious agenda could take hold. They suspect Syria would cave in to foreign interference. And they distrust an exiled opposition that is all too reminiscent of Iraq’s.

As usual, we should be wary about rushing to the conclusion that protesters speaking in the name of “the people” are actually representative of most Syrians.