Axis Role In All ME War Zones.

There is a role for the Iran-led axis in every crisis zone in the Middle East, including Iraq, the Gaza Strip, Somalia, Algeria, etc. The Syrian military intelligence, headed by Assad's brother-in-law 'Assef Shawkat, is said to be working with al-Qaeda which upholds a Neo-Salafi ideology and is the most fanatic and violent strain in Sunni Islam.

Al-Qaeda now is active in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and other GCC states, Somalia, Algeria, etc. Its objective is to overthrow all existing regimes in the Muslim world and then revive the Sunni caliphate which died with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. But al-Qaeda wants this to be a Neo-Salafi caliphate which it says should rule over the whole world. How the Assad regime can survive while working with al-Qaeda as well as with a Shi'ite theocracy in Iran is an open question.

Assad is said to suspect that the UN tribunal in the killing of Hariri and other Lebanese VIPs will turn out to be a sort of "Sword of Damocles" suspended over his head by a single horse-hair - as in the legend - paralysing all movement by the fear that his regime might fall. A second Syrian preoccupation, shared by Tehran's theocracy, is that a hostile regime in Lebanon might, with international support, seek to disarm Hizbullah.