• The last option  - Nizar Abdel-Kader
The two countries may create a new, dangerous alliance encompassing Hizballah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the PFLP General Command.

• The only remaining anti-Israel front  - Yossi Alpher
Our analysis may tell us something about the prospects of a future alliance between Iran and a Shi'ite-dominated regime in Iraq.

• An alliance of doubtful utility  - Karim Sadjadpour
A more nuanced approach by Washington, coupling carrots with sticks, might lead one or both sides to reconsider.

The last option
 Nizar Abdel-Kader

The first attempt by Iran and Syria to create a strategic alliance was in 1980: Syria, alone of the Arab states, took the side of non-Arab Iran when it was attacked by the now toppled regime of Saddam Hussein.

The most recent effort to strengthen these strategic ties came during the visit of the Syrian prime minister, Naji al-Otari, to Tehran on February 15, one day after the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister.

The proposal for such a Syrian-Iranian front was made by Otari in an attempt to counter new pressures on Syria by the US and the international community, with whom relations soured after the Hariri assassination, in addition to the pressures created by the massive Lebanese rallies demonstrating against the Syrian presence in Lebanon. Nevertheless Kamal Kharazi, the Iranian foreign affairs minister, minimized the front's importance, observing that its creation was not "their primary objective".

Downplaying the strategic alliance, however, came at a time when Iran and Syria, both staunch opponents of the United States and Israel, were under increased international pressure. Both countries are accused of working together to derail the peace efforts between the Palestinians and the Israelis by providing assistance to Hizballah, Hamas, and other radical groups. While the Iranians are suspected of conducting secret research to acquire a nuclear bomb, Syria, for its part, is undergoing extensive international scrutiny aimed at hastening its withdrawal from Lebanon. Both Damascus and Tehran are also accused by Washington of backing Iraq's insurgency by leaving their porous borders open to Arab and "jihadi" Muslim fighters.

In the past two decades, Iran and Syria have enjoyed close strategic relations based on their bilateral interests. Hafez Assad concluded several important treaties of cooperation with Iran covering the political, economic and military fields. The depth of this alliance is indicated by the creation of a "Higher Iranian-Syrian Joint Committee" whose purpose is to ensure policy cooperation between the two states in virtually every area, including developments in Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territories.

The Tehran-Damascus strategic alliance continued to develop under Bashar Assad, and the two countries are prepared for even greater coordination. In Iranian President Khatami's words, the principles formulated by the late Syrian leader have "always been bilateral and have steadily improved".

As two strategic allies in the turbulent Middle East, Tehran and Damascus hold common views on a wide range of regional and international issues, including their hostility to the US occupation of Iraq and to Israel.

Both countries systematically backed Hizballah in resisting and fighting Israeli occupation of a portion of South Lebanon known as the "security zone." In order for violence to be an effective tool of its diplomacy, Syria maintained firm control over Hizballah at the strategic level, ranging from coordinating military operations to indirect mediation with the Israelis through the April 1996 understanding.

After the Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon in May 2000, observers expected Hizballah to focus on economic reconstruction in the South. However, after a short lull it launched a new war at Sheba Farms. Meanwhile, Syria prevented the deployment of the Lebanese army in the South. With growing pressures calling for a Syrian military withdrawal from Lebanon, the Syrians found in Hizballah (and other proxies) favorable allies.

Opposition to Damascus has been growing among all sectarian communities in Lebanon, as evidenced in a recent rally of one million citizens. Yet following Assad's decision to withdraw all his troops by April 30, Hizballah's unqualified support for Syrian influence has continued, while Iran has remained silent.

The complications of the assassination of Hariri and the Syrian withdrawal, along with the complexities of the Iranian nuclear issue, have created a tense situation in Lebanon and in the region. No wonder the news about the "unified front" between Syria and Iran gives rise to concern among many regional parties and the US. The Bush administration has defined both nations as its antagonists in the Middle East and relations with them have become extremely tense, including the possibility of enforcing international sanctions against them. In addition, Iran is facing US and Israeli military threats against its nuclear installations.

Under such pressures, and in the absence of active dialogue with the US, the two countries may exercise what they feel is the only possible option remaining open to them: to create under the auspices of Tehran a new, dangerous alliance encompassing Hizballah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the PFLP General Command, as a spearhead of resistance to US interests and to Israel.- Published 7/4/2005 (c) bitterlemons-international.org


Nizar Abdel-Kader is a political analyst/columnist at Ad-Diyar newspaper in Beirut. He has authored four books on Lebanon and regional political and strategic issues.

The Iran-Syria "common front" announced in Tehran in mid-February, the day after the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, is not new. Senior Iranian and Syrian officials have spoken of a "strategic partnership" for years.

>From an Israeli standpoint, the Iran-Syria alliance, coupled with Hizballah and the Palestinian Islamist groups that the alliance supports, constitutes the only active hostile front in the Middle East. It is also an anti-American front, with Tehran and Damascus both interfering in Iraq. And it potentially endangers other regional states like Jordan and the Gulf emirates. Iran, though not Syria, is the only country in the Middle East that still rejects the idea of peace with Israel.

An examination of the Iran-Syria alliance is particularly relevant now because, problematic as that alliance is, it may tell us something about the prospects and workings of a future alliance between Iran and a Shi'ite-dominated regime in Iraq. This may not appear to be a likely prospect in the near future. But if Shi'ite Iran could find common cause for the past 25 years with a Shi'ite/Alawi minority regime in Syria, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that it could do so with the only majority Shi'ite Arab regime in the Middle East, in Baghdad.

The most convincing version of the origins of the Iran-Syria alliance also has an Iraqi Shi'ite aspect. It goes back to the 1970s, before the Islamic Republic of Iran came into existence, when Musa Sadr, a dynamic emissary to the downtrodden Shi'ites of southern Lebanon and a scion of the renowned Sadr family of Shi'ite Iraq, conferred "Muslim" status on President Hafez Assad of Syria. Assad, an Alawite, had drafted a constitution for Syria that determined that the president of the country be a Muslim. Representatives of Syria's Sunni majority saw an opening to dethrone Assad by arguing that the Alawites, who split from Shi'ite Islam a thousand years ago, were not Muslims. Sadr, backed by the Shi'ite hierarchy then centered in Najaf and Karbala (where Ayatollah Khomeini lived in exile), solved Assad's problem by declaring the Alawites Muslims, and in so doing laid the groundwork for an alliance.

During the mid to late 1970s, Shi'ite southern Lebanon and Syria provided refuge to several prominent leaders of Khomeini's revolutionary "international" underground, like Sadeq Gotbzadeh and Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr. Once Khomeini took power in Iran in 1979, and particularly after the Iran-Iraq War began in 1980, the alliance became more formal and military in nature and was directed against Saddam's Iraq and toward support for Hizballah in Lebanon.

Today the two allies are far from equal, with Syria undoubtedly the weaker and less stable partner. Iran seeks to develop nuclear weaponry, while Bashar Assad's regime is, under duress, pulling out of Lebanon and declaring its intention to "democratize". Though the two partners feel threatened by the US presence in Iraq, they are working there at cross-purposes: Iran's strategy is to allow the US to develop a Shi'ite-dominated regime, while Syria provides support to the Sunni remnants of Saddam's Baath regime.

On the other hand, both countries (along with Turkey) share a fear of the spillover effect of possible Kurdish independence in northern Iraq, and both undoubtedly wish to ensure a dominant role for Hizballah in Lebanon and a minimization of American influence there. Some Middle East actors, like Jordan's King Abdullah, project the specter of a Shi'ite "crescent" embodying Iran, Iraq, Syria and Hizballah in Lebanon, that threatens the entire Sunni Middle East.

Israel, which for understandable reasons considers itself a target of the Iran-Syria alliance, has two strategic concerns in this regard. One is Iran's nuclear program. An attempt by the Bush administration to eliminate it by force could activate the alliance: Iran, with Syrian connivance, could seek to retaliate against Israel by means of a Hizballah attack, firing thousands of rockets supplied by Iran into northern Israel. Meanwhile Israel is exploring ways to enhance its strategic deterrent vis-a-vis Iran by moving closer to NATO and obtaining US security guarantees.

Israel's second concern is Palestinian Islamist terrorism, fostered and supported by Hizballah with Iran's active backing and Syria's acquiescence. The current de facto ceasefire renders this last threat dormant, though it is not clear for how long.

The obvious way to neutralize the Iran-Syria alliance is to target the weaker link: Syria. The US is doing precisely this, by organizing international pressure on Syria to leave Lebanon. If Syria can also be persuaded to cease supporting the insurgents in Iraq and Bashar Assad indeed cleans up his regime--some Arab commentators are suggesting he could or should "pull a Qadhafi"--then Israel could enter into renewed peace talks with Syria, with one objective being to isolate Hizballah and break the alliance. This would have the effect of isolating Iran, whose nuclear program would then remain the only serious strategic threat from within to the Middle East.- Published 7/4/2005 (c) bitterlemons-international.org


Yossi Alpher is coeditor of the bitterlemons.net family of internet publications. He is former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University.

Few strategic alliances in the modern Middle East have stood the test of time as long as that between Iran's Islamic regime and Syria's Baathist regime. In the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq and the momentous assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, solidarity between the two countries has been ostensibly bolstered. Upon further examination, however, the alliance's durability looks increasingly uncertain, and its fate could well be determined by decisions made in Washington.

The bond between the two countries began in 1980, after Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army invaded an Iran in the throes of revolution. Despite their Baathist roots, the mutual enmity between Hafez al-Assad and Saddam Hussein led Syria to be the only Arab state to side with Iran during the eight-year war.

Throughout the war years and beyond, Iran has provided Syria with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of heavily discounted oil, while Syria has in turn helped facilitate Iranian patronage of Hizballah. When the war came to a halt in 1988, their strategic partnership continued, with both countries' opposition to Israel being the uniting factor.

There are ample reasons to suggest, however, that the utility of the alliance may have run its course. For starters, given that the Tehran-Damascus pact was born of a mutual opposition toward Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the removal of the Iraqi dictator and the post-war emergence of a Shi'ite-led, Iran-friendly, democratically elected government in Baghdad strips the alliance of its initial raison d'etre.

At the moment, a tough-talking Bush administration and the presence of 140,000 US troops in Iraq provoke the same, if not greater, concern among Syrian and Iranian officials as Saddam Hussein's army, and have seemingly caused Iran and Syria to close ranks. The eventuality of a decreased US presence in Iraq, coupled with increased Iraqi autonomy could change this, but would ironically require greater US cooperation with both Iran and Syria in an effort to help bring about stability and security in Iraq.

The assassination of Hariri has put an even greater strain on the Iran-Syria alliance. From Tehran's perspective, the anti-Syria demonstrations in Lebanon may force the Iranian regime to make a particularly difficult decision. Iran places great importance on its standing in the Arab and Muslim world as a freedom-fighting bastion of anti-imperialism, and the Islamic regime is particularly romanticized among Lebanese Shi'ites, many of whom are grateful for Tehran's patronage of Hizballah and speak with deference about "Sayed Ali", Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Given the fact that a majority of Lebanese--including Lebanese Shi'ites--disapprove of the Syrian role in their country, some among Iran's political elite are increasingly aware that siding with Syria would be the equivalent of going against the popular will in Lebanon. In light of this, one senior Iranian official told me that Tehran "wouldn't necessarily discourage Hizballah from siding with the opposition". Iranian President Mohammed Khatami issued a similar statement, saying, "what the people of Lebanon accept we will respect".

The prospect of a US-Iran rapprochement--though seemingly highly unlikely at the moment--could further compel Tehran to cease its strategic partnership with Damascus. According to one senior Iranian diplomat, in the context of an accommodation between Iran and the US, Tehran would--in return for US security and economic assurances--be willing to alter its approach toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as redefine its relationship with Hizballah. Maintaining a strategic alliance with Damascus would make little sense to Iran in this context.

The uncertainty of the relationship is not solely from Tehran's end. Syria too understands that in the face of increasing demands from the United States, a further pronounced partnership with Iran is more likely to augment rather than assuage international pressure. When Tehran affirmed its support for Damascus immediately following the assassination of Hariri ("We are ready to help Syria on all grounds to confront threats", said Iranian Vice-President Mohammad Reza Aref), Syria's ambassador to the US, Imad Moustapha, quickly attempted to downplay his country's links to Tehran. "We are not the enemies of the United States", Moustapha was quoted as saying, "and we do not want to be drawn into such an enmity".

But while pressure from Washington has seemingly added strain to the Iran-Syria relationship, by simply issuing threats to Damascus and Tehran without offering commensurate behavioral incentives to each, Washington could likely push the sides closer into each other's arms. A more nuanced approach from Washington, which couples the threat of sticks with the offer of carrots, could likely lead one or both sides to reconsider the efficacy of the relationship. This may not take place immediately or abruptly, but just as the Iraqi invasion of Iran led to the commencement of the Syria-Iran alliance, the emergence of a friendly Shi'ite-led government in post-Saddam Iraq and the assassination of Hariri may lead to its eventual dissolution.- Published 7/4/2005 (c) bitterlemons-international.org



Karim Sadjadpour was a visiting fellow at the American University of Beirut during the 2003-2004 academic year.