After days of taking controversial stands by both US secretary of state and Iranian regime on whether to have Iran in in the Geneva conference for peace in Syria, the story comes to the end; Iran is eliminated.
the New York times reported on Friday Jan 10th: ” Iran will not participate in peace talks on Syria that are to be held this month in Switzerland, a senior State Department official said Friday.
“No, they’re not coming,” said the official, who cannot be identified under the department’s protocol for briefing reporters.
Iran, a staunch supporter of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, has been sending arms and members of its paramilitary Quds Force to help in his government’s military campaign against the opposition.
Along with other Western nations, the United States has said that Iran should not have a formal role when the peace conference opens on Jan. 22 unless Tehran accepts that the goal is to work out arrangements for a transitional governing body that would run the country if Mr. Assad could be persuaded to give up power.
On Sunday, Secretary of State John Kerry raised the possibility of a compromise that would allow Iran to informally “contribute from the sidelines” even if it continued to back the Syrian government. Amplifying on Mr. Kerry’s comments, two senior State Department officials said the next day that Iran could improve its chances of being invited in an informal role if it showed it was ready to use its influence with Mr. Assad to get the army to stop bombarding Aleppo and open humanitarian aid corridors to areas that have been besieged by government forces.
But American officials said Friday that there were no indications that Iran had made such an effort, let alone publicly embraced the American view that the peace conference’s aim should be to organize a post-Assad transitional administration.
“We see nothing that they’ve done,” the senior State Department official said. “You could, I suppose, draw the scenario that you could have dramatic changes in which they would come, but we’ve seen absolutely no evidence of that.”
