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As Turkey, NATO, and the United Nations all struggle with an appropriate response to Syria's continued flouting of international rules, Iran is now offering its services as a peacemaker.
Turkey's president lashed out at Syria today, saying Bashar al-Assad's government "has no more legitimacy" following last week's incident when a Turkish military plane was shot down by Syrian forces. Turkey invoked a rarely used provision of the NATO treaty to call a meeting of member states to discuss a response. Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the military will alter its rules of engagement to consider any Syrian force near its border to be a threat, while his deputy prime minister insisted the hostile act "would not go unpunished." Even after calling the act unacceptable, however, other NATO countries have shown no interest in striking back.
Enter the Iranians, who announced through their foreign ministry that "We will use our good relationship with the two countries to resolve the issue." The United Nations is also turning to Iran, with envoy Kofi Annan proposing that Tehran's diplomats be invited to high level meetings on the crisis. A long-time ally of Assad, they maybe the only country that put the right amount of non-lethal pressure on his regime.