20 January 2006
Syria
and Iran, an axis of upheaval
If you ask Druze leader Walid Jumblatt what he's worried about these days, he'll mention the growing rapprochement between Iran and Syria, which this
month will reportedly spawn a bilateral strategic cooperation agreement. That, and the fact
that Hizbullah will derive new vigor from the
revivified amity between Tehran-Damascus (enabling it to better resist calls
to disarm), partly explains why Jumblatt
has been so publicly
hostile to the party in recent days, after
trying to mediate between it and
the parliamentary majority a few months ago. But behind these parochial concerns, new regional alignments are taking shape and what
happens with Iran and Syria lies at their very
heart.
How will regional change affect Lebanon? The aborted effort by Saudi Arabia and
Egypt to sponsor a Syrian-Lebanese
deal last week showed how vulnerable both Cairo and Riyadh
are in facing a Syrian regime fighting for its survival. The
Saudis are apparently afraid that Syria
might sick Al-Qaeda on them - and the disclosure
last week that Syria had infiltrated
radical Islamists into Lebanon (a scenario officials in Beirut take very seriously)
did little to reassure them that
President Bashar Assad would avoid
provoking regional instability to save himself.
As for Egypt,
all Assad has to do is
mention the Muslim Brotherhood for President Hosni Mubarak to break into a cold sweat. If the Baath were to collapse in Damascus in favor of the Brotherhood,
Assad may have warned, how would the Egyptian regime
be able to contain its own Brotherhood,
which did alarmingly well recently in parliamentary elections? Worse, if Assad were ousted,
how would the project to promote Gamal Mubarak - another son slated to inherit power from his father - fare?
Not well; in fact Bashar's failure would probably
be a killer blow to Gamal's
chances.
So, the Lebanese can
expect little from the butter-legged
Arab "powerhouses"
who fear the unknown of Assad's departure far more than they do the persistent instability the Syrian president has visited on them and the region
since he decided last year to extend the mandate of President Emile Lahoud. This has led the two
countries into a flagrant contradiction, where they routinely
call on Syria to cooperate with the United
Nations investigation into Rafik
Hariri's assassination, even
as they know the truth would likely
mean Assad's downfall. Their calculation seems to be that
Syria must buy time for the investigation to lose its momentum through
divisions in the international community.
However, that doesn't quite
explain why the Saudis allowed
former Syrian Vice President
Abdel-Halim Khaddam to appear on Al-Arabiyya at the end
of 2005, only to later spike his interviews with Saudi-owned newspapers. There seems to be dissonance in Riyadh, and that
suave paragon of Arabic diplomatic immobility, Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal, may have reasserted control over the kingdom's
Syrian policy, after it was
momentarily taken over by Bandar bin Sultan, the former ambassador to the United States. In a Financial
Times article published this
week, Prince Saud was familiarly wary of change when mentioning his new proposal to reduce Lebanese-Syrian tensions: "We
have enough problems as it is. It's about time we resolve the
ones we have - Palestine,
Iraq - instead of establishing
more." On the basis of what
the Saudis were willing to accept last week, however, it is
Lebanon, not Syria, that can be
expected to come out of the process the
more displeased with its results.
More important, however,
is how the five permanent members of the Security Council
address the Iranian-Syrian-Hizbullah triad. Here, there are a number of possible permutations that
may either strengthen the Syrian regime and
Hizbullah, or weaken them and ensure
that pessimists, like Jumblatt, are wrong. Much will
depend on how the permanent
five deal with Iran's nuclear capability. The reason is
this: what they decide on Iran may lead to tradeoffs
involving Syria.
For example,
if the Russians specifically go along with the U.S.
and the European
Union-3 - Britain, France, and
Germany - and vote on a resolution punishing Iran at the Security
Council, Moscow may demand, in exchange, greater flexibility from the U.S. and
France on Syria. That doesn't necessarily mean Russia would
undermine the UN
investigation, but it might
seek to lift the accelerator on punitive UN action, or merely
stronger Security Council resolutions addressing Syrian noncompliance in the Hariri case.
Absent tougher measures, Assad would have more latitude to
string the new investigator,
Serge Brammertz, along, wasting time while awaiting more propitious
international circumstances.
Conversely,
if Russia and China hinder the Americans,
British and French on Iran at
the Security Council, they may
have to compensate by approving,
or merely abstaining, if the UN decides to tighten the screws
on Syria. Iran is worth more to the Russians and Chinese
than Syria is, but it is
also viewed as a greater threat by the Bush administration. Despite this, the U.S.
must prepare a fallback
position where Russian and Chinese obstruction on Iran can be cashed
in elsewhere, particularly
on Syria. Now that former Coalition Provisional
Authority head Paul Bremer
has revealed in a recently-published
memoir that Assad sought in 2003 to provoke a Shiite uprising against the American-led
coalition, the Bush administration could make a strong
domestic case that the Syrian regime
has proven itself to be beyond the
pale.
One might
have to factor in another development. If Syria and Iran formalize a strategic relationship soon, the Bush administration will interpret this as a return to the Damascus-Tehran axis of the 1980s
- no less "evil" than the one outlined
by George W. Bush in his 2002 State of the Union address. Saudi Arabia and
Egypt would be caught in the
crossfire between the Americans on the one hand, and Syria and Iran on the other. This could considerably complicate Arab efforts to save Assad's skin, since the Saudis and
Egyptians won't readily want to run afoul
of the U.S.
The greater likelihood is that there
will be no clear-cut outcomes. The Russians and
Chinese will give Syria sustenance
whatever happens, because autocracies tend to band together; the U.S.
and France will push as hard as they can on the Hariri investigation,
because that alone can decisively trap Syria. The
Arab states will try to help Syria, but probably won't resolve the inconsistency of propping Assad up while also demanding
he collaborate fully with the
UN inquiry. Compromises will
have to be made on all sides,
but where these will lead is
unclear. Iran's friendliness
to Syria might help Assad; or it might
seal his doom.
Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR.