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Maybe it’s reading too much into today’s interesting demarche by French President Chiraq when he made a public declarationto answer terrorist attacks with a nuclear response. But the timing of Chiraq's over-the-transom statement may have been aimed at Damascus and Iraq.
The meeting of French [and US] nemesis Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad with Iranian President Ahmedinejad today in Damascus resulted in a joint statement that does not bode well for regional stability.
Syria and Iran both risk showdowns with the U.N. Security Council — Damascus over a U.N. inquiry into the murder of a Lebanese ex-prime minister and Tehran over its nuclear plans. "We support the right of Iran and any state in the world to acquire peaceful technology," Assad told a joint news conference after the talks. "Countries who oppose this gave no convincing reason, regardless of whether it is legitimate or not."
The United States and the European Union's three biggest powers, Britain, France and Germany, said this month Iran's resumption of nuclear research meant it should be referred to the U.N. Security Council, which could impose sanctions.
French threat of nuclear retaliation for terrorist acts could be seen as being made with the concurrence of the other EU powers and the United States as well. But these partners with the French on opposing Iranian nuclear development are not expected to publically support Chirac’s unilateral declaration.
The background of the Syrian/Iranian Entente is tangled in history and Syrian domestic politics.
Syria is Iran’s closest Arab ally. The two
countries have had close relations since 1980 when Arab Syria sided with Persian Iran against Iraq, a fellow Arab nation, in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq border war. However, preponderantly Sunni Arab Syria is ruled by a clan-based 12% Alawite Arab minority which has close Shi’ite ties both historically and theologically. Similarly, the Hezbollah of South Lebanon supported by Syria are Shi'ite in origin. Assad is looking for foreign support as his popularity diminishes inside Syria. Assad was the first head of a foreign state to visit Iran after
Ahmadinejad, a religious conservative, took office.
Iran's new president seized that opportunity to vow closer cooperation in the face of U.S. pressure and is returning the visit at a time when Assad finds himself particularly isolated.
Both accused by Washington of sponsoring terrorism, Syria and Iran are the main backers of Lebanon's Hizbollah group, itself under pressure to disarm under a 2004 U.N. resolution.
Another aspect of this tight Al-Assad/Ahmedinejad alliance is that Syria sits on the 35-nation Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which meets on February 2 for a vote to refer Tehran to the Security Council. Its support of Tehran is sure to bolster the ranks of countries opposed to the decision to refer Iran to the Security Council over its nuclear activities.
Al-Assad is under siege at home where he is being abandoned by many top officials of the Baath party which has ruled the country for over three decades. He has had to contend with several high-profile defections, most notably former vice-president
Abdel Halim Khaddam who, from his exile in Paris, has implicated the Syrian leader in Hariri's killing.
More worrying for the president is the growing dissent from elements within the powerful and feared Mukhabarat secret services and the military which have propped up both Bashar's and his father Hafez al-Assad's regimes. Some experts predict that the security apparatus is plotting to dethrone Bashar who they regard as young and inexperienced.
Finally, Bashar is trying to gain support from a previously persecuted sector of the Syrian political scene by releasing several opposition activists from detention.
As the Washington Post reports:
The release of the activists was seen by many as an attempt to rally Syrians behind a beleaguered government that has come under intense international pressure over a U.N. investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri almost a year ago. Many Lebanese and other foreign leaders have blamed Hariri's killing on Syria, which subsequently withdrew thousands of troops that had been stationed in Lebanon since 1976.
Seif, 60, could become a unifying presence in Syria's fragmented political opposition. In October, while in prison, he signed his name to the Damascus Declaration, a statement released by various opposition figures, including religious leaders, demanding broad democratic change. And unlike Vice President Abdel Halim Khaddam, who announced this month that he would form an opposition government-in-exile, Seif is not tainted by accusations of corruption but rather is known on the streets of Damascus as an honest businessman who treats employees with unusual generosity.
The bizarre nuclear threat by Chiraq appears to escalate the already complex Levantine thriller as the nuclear bid by Iran ups the ante in this deadly high-stakes game.
And Assad’s simultaneous opening toward domestic democracy and strengthening of ties to Iran makes the chessboard in the Middle East more three-dimensional.
And have the brainboxes in the State Department and CIA figured out what happens if the Alawite minority Ba'athists in Syria somehow fall from power? Do the Sunni Arab majority take over and repudiate the Hezbollah Shi'ites in Lebanon. Do they revamp Syria's relations with the Sunni minority in Iraq for better or for worse?
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