"...The Obama administration will face an uphill climb in its apparent drive to improve U.S.-Syria relations. According to the U.S. intelligence community's publicly released 2009 threat assessment, the al-Asad regime, despite its professed desire for better relations with Washington, has maintained its interference in Lebanon, support for Palestinian terrorist groups, and close ties with Iran; further, it has "increased substantially" its military support for Hizballah. It is in this inauspicious environment that the new administration must formulate its position on the IAEA's investigation into Syria, with the knowledge that aggressively pursuing the case could derail any outreach to Damascus, while deemphasizing the investigation could impair the administration's national security agenda on multiple fronts...."
WINEP, here
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