Exclusion of Iran US key mistake on Syria: Analyst

The US has made a major strategic mistake by preventing Iran from taking part in the upcoming Geneva conference on the Syrian crisis, a political analyst tells Press TV.

“Structurally, the United States has made several serious strategic errors. The first error is that they have excluded a regional power from the conference and that is Iran,” said Alfred Lambremont Webre, a peace activist and international lawyer, in a Friday interview.

Washington’s other mistake, he said, is its efforts to push the scattered Syrian opposition to attend the conference, noting, “These are moves that the US may have made in its self-interest but it was not in the interest of the conference process.”

“If there is any calculation in the United States or some unseen power attempting to move toward World War III, one of their best options is to push the conference parties prematurely so as to appear to make it fail,” Webre pointed out.

The analyst cited Syrian opposition figures as saying that US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford wants the Geneva conference to end in failure as a tactic to win more influence for Washington in the Arab country’s future developments.

He called on the US and all the external parties involved to “just back off and let the internal parties decide among themselves and bring Iran to the table because Iran is the dominant regional power and Iran is what is going to make this conference work in my opinion.”

On November 25, 2013, the United Nations set January 22 as the date for the Syria peace conference. The event is scheduled to be held in Switzerland in two parts. On January 22, the opening session of the event will be in the Swiss city of Montreux and then it will be moved to the UN office in Geneva on January 24.

Syria has been gripped by a deadly crisis since 2011 with the Western powers and their regional allies – especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey – supporting the militants operating inside the country.