SYRIA

rough first draft–really rough.

I’ve come to you, O Egypt
And have brought with me exhaustion
For loving [you] is exhausting.

Fairuz, "Misr 3Adat" (My translation.)

INTRODUCTION

There’s a lot of speculation on how close Israel and Syria are to a peace treaty. Despite a Syrian gesture to Lebanon to allow it to open up its own negotiations with Israel, the Lebanese and Palestinian Arabs are worried that they would be left behind. They are flabbergasted that Syria would negotiate separately with Israel, a la dope head Sadat.

MY (GOLDEN) HYPOTHESIS

Here’s my hypothesis:

Syria is going along with its talks with Israel, in Turkey, as a means of pressuring its ally, Iran.


IRAN’S DICTUM IS AS TIGHT AS NETANYAHU’S RECTUM

Syria is getting impatient with Iran. It wants its ally to shed its exclusively Shia realm approach in Iraq. Syria is using negotiations with Israel as blackmail to force the issue with Iran.

Iran, by managing the Shia realm, is keeping Iraqi Arab forces out of the Iraq game. As the harmful idiot occupation nears its gasping end, due in good part to self-inflicted bankruptcy and wishful dreams in Afghanistan, and Syria feels less threatened by the idiots who are harmful, its impatience with its ally is increasing. It needs an accommodating sign from Iran. None yet has been made. There are those in the Iraqi Shia realm who are Arab nationalists. Foremost among them are Muqtadha and the Sadrists. And those outside: Lebanon’s Hezballah, too, packs an intense doze of Arab nationalism. Syria wants a course in Iraq that accommodates it and these two forces. But neither the Sadrists nor Hezballah can veer off the Iran dictum, without Iran’s permission, for a few of reasons:

-- They do share with Iran many a precept about Israel, its aggressive nature, its make-up and that of it diaspora, as base and as mobilized constituency respectively, for the harmful idiots to assail any attempt to bring together Arabs and/or Muslims -- to keep the Arabs and Muslims down;

– They are aware that Israel, through its diaspora, wants to force the harmful idiots to go through Israel AKA diaspora on oil policies in Arab and Muslim lands -- as a way of buttressing the relevance of Israel in the Arab and Muslim oil countries, and of the diaspora in American politics; and

– Iran provides funding, relatively advanced weapons and training, and technological expertise. These fulfill more than just a defensive need against the Israel/harmful idiots’ extensive arsenal. These provide Hezbollah and Syria with technological advances and know-how that buttress the Arab identity. The alternative would be the Saudi ruling elite’s sea of technological knowledge and concomitant ruling elite pride. Ha. Ha. Ha. (You’re killing me; be serious, pleeeaase.) Ditto for the bright servant of the people Egyptian ruling elite.



IRAN THREATENS SYRIA’S STABILITY BY INPUNING ITS ARAB NATIONALIST CULTURE

Propelling Syria’s blackmail against its ally is the fact that Syria features an Alawite ruling elite (perceived as Shia in Saudi propaganda) governing a predominately Sunni country. True, repression is a tool to keep the Sunni public (the politicized, that is) in line; but, of more importance, is that ruling elite’s Arab identity and nationalism. One makes a serious mistake if one thinks for a moment that Syria’s culture isn’t Arab nationalist, through-and-through -- regardless of the fact that a religious/geographical minority predominates in the security and army establishments. (When once I used to visit Lebanon, once, before I’ve taken refuge in Fortress Washington D.C., I’d talk to Syrian soldiers and be impressed again-and-again by the fact that these guys, some of them peasant boys, were totally Arab nationalists.)

That’s one more reason why the Syrian government is impatient with its Iranian ally. If the Sadrists are unleashed, likely many of the Syrian Sunni would join hands with them -- and, eventually, even the Iraqi Arab Sunni. That would foil the attempts by the Saudi ruling elite to drive the wedge as wide as possible between the Sunni and Shia, a wedge that’s more threatening to Arab Syria’s stability than it is to either Saudi Arabia or to Iran. Bringing out Iran-sponsored Arab nationalists (e.g., the Sadrists) would act as a brake to the sectarian scheme and boost immensely the legitimacy of Syria’s government. (Saudi intelligence, with the knowledge of the harmful idiots, would fund explosions against Shia to foil the Syria-mediated united Arab front and delay its formation. But, hey, what’s a few hundred dead Shia to Saudi intelligence?)

IT’S NOT THE PERSIAN GULF, NOR THE ARAB GULF. IT’S THE ISRAELI GULF. YES IT IS.

Syria’s blackmail of its ally is made all the more necessary by the fact that the Saudi ruling elite, and that of the Gulf (especially the UAE and Bahrain -- the latter’s recent signing of a security coordination agreement with Iran notwithstanding; such agreements many times are not worth the ink spent on them) have now been hiring Israeli generals and Israeli intelligence officers to run the security establishments in those countries. These had flown in on the wounded wings of the harmful idiots. In other words, an alliance between Israel and the ruling “Arab” elite of those countries could further isolate Syria in the future, since Israel is gaining influence over the ruling elite of the richest Arab countries. (The fear of Iranian influence is more acute in the Gulf than in the Levant.)

A SAUDI-ISRAELI (SUNNI) REGIME IN SYRIA. . .WILL NOT BE

Not that isolating Syria, and eventually producing a Sunni government there, would be to the advantage of the Saudi ruling elite. Highly likely it would not. But intelligence services which run foreign policy in these countries aren’t exactly hubs for geniuses. (Ditto for ours, under the thumb of Israel’s boys, who have so genius-like gotten my fingerprints and my DNA. Now they’ll stick a crime on me or a baby whose mother will claim the baby’s DNA is mine. My fighting attorney: www.HarryWessel.com) And so, the dumb ones at Saudi intelligence might celebrate a victory should the Syrian government be toppled. But it’ll be fleeting. If oil prices are low, the new Syrian state (after years of chaos) would still be allied to Russia and Iran with one difference: It'll provide the two with a much better weapon against the ruling Israeli elite of Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf Israelites.

IRAN’S COUNTER-BLACKMAIL TO STOP SYRIAN-ISRAELI NEGOTIATIONS

Iran’s counter-blackmail against its Syrian ally likely is found in Hamas’s effort to lure the Israelis into invading Gaza and spilling Arab blood. (The Israelis now are into yet another effort to wash their hands of the Sabra and Shatila massacres. Elie Hobeika, who headed the Lebanese Forces at that time, was their man through-and-through and had executed the massacre; During the execution, Hobeika was in the Israeli army headquarters at the Beirut airport, and he and Israeli officers were reported to have been laughing it off while their men were hunting for “terrorists”–while the Israelis were dispatching flares onto the camps to help out their proxy army in spilling the blood of their Arab brothers.) If the Israelis do go into Gaza, the Syrian government likely would have to step back from its flirtation with Israel.