Iran Hopes To Control The Levant; Syrian Influences Over Lebanon Will Decline.

*** If Syria Is Letting Iran Know That The Future Of Hizbollah As An Armed Militia Force In Lebanon Will Be Decided By Damascus, Rather Than By Tehran, Then The US-Iranian Dialogue In Baghdad Over The Future Of Iraq Will Be A More Complex And Lengthier Process Than The Americans Have Thought; And The Shi'ite Theocracy Is Not Capable Of Disarming The Ja'fari Group If The Latter Sees No Interest In A New Version Of Pax Americana

*** Hamas Has Failed To Accept The Arab Peace Plan Of March 2002 Which Israel's Likud Govt. Has Rejected; A Kadima-Led Govt. Would Also Reject This Plan

NICOSIA - The Shi'ite theocracy of Tehran seems to be hoping that its planned dialogue with the US Ambassador to Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, will end up stabilising Iraq with America, in return, giving support for Iran to assume some degree of control over the Levant and the Persian Gulf. It was not until it was forced to withdraw its military forces from Lebanon in 2005 that the Ba'thist regime of Damascus believed it had the qualifications to control the Levant. Iran thinks it is more qualified than Ba'thist Syria to assume the role of peace-keeper in the Levant, including Lebanon.

Iran and Syria are strategic allies, having had this bond for many years. But now the Arab world is in decline and Iran is emerging as a regional power more resourceful than Syria in helping to maintain peace in the Levant. Tehran is hoping it will have a similar role in the Persian Gulf.

At any rate, where the US is concerned, the Shi'ite theocracy of Iran will be on probation in American efforts to stabilise Iraq and make of it a model for a remoulding of the Arab world in line with what Washington can live with. But US expectations of Iran may not be what the Shi'ite theocracy can deliver, not only in Iraq but in other parts of the Levant (see sbme4-Iraq-8-USiranApr3-06).

The US wants a democratic, pro-West Iraq with a market economy, and open to the new globalisation trends. President George W. Bush has vowed to turn Iraq into a model for all Muslim states. That is competition with Iran which claims its own system is the ideal one for Muslims.

The Tehran theocracy, however, wants to lower American expectations of Iran and is only willing to give the US an option for exiting Iraq peacefully, according to a highly-placed APS source in the Iranian capital. In the process, Iran will accept the US military presence in the Persian Gulf and Central Asia, Afghanistan to be included. But in this respect the American military presence must reflect "a strategic partnership" with the theocracy to be worked out as part of a global package to include "nuclear energy for peaceful purposes" in Iran.

For Iran to guarantee the peaceful nature of its nuclear programme, the source says, the US and Tehran must be bound by a treaty making the Persian Gulf free of nuclear weapons. This should include the US military units deployed in the region, such as cruisers, aircraft carriers and the other naval units.

Tehran is concerned that a Shi'ite-dominated democracy in Iran may inspire a democratic revolution in Iran as well. With the centre of Shi'ite theological authority shifting to Najaf, Iran's theocrats may risk losing the religious card they have played for the past 27 years.

Despite its sense of religious modesty, the theocracy in Iran likes to think of itself as being a major power in the region able to help bring about, as well as maintain, peace in the Levant and the Persian Gulf. That it would accept being a second lieutenant to the US in these areas, however, is a question difficult for anyone in Tehran to answer at this time.

Iran did not do much to oust Saddam's Ba'thist dictatorship. But Khalilzad's invitation for talks in Baghdad has bestowed on Tehran a stature which only a liberating power would have. This is similar to the invitation which Hafez al-Assad had received in 1974.

In Damascus, political analysts say the Shi'ite theocracy of Iran is not as qualified as Syria in controlling Lebanon and the rest of the Levant. They argue that the web of intrigues around that US invitation, developed by Hafez al-Assad, is beyond Tehran's capacity to comprehend and act according to relevant requirements.

The 1974 invitation, for Assad's Ba'thist dictatorship to control Lebanon, was part of a complex military disengagement accord between Israel and Syria over the strategic Golan Heights, which Assad's forces lost to Israel in the June 1976 war. Before Israeli troops took the Golan Heights, Assad's forces during the early phase of that six-day war had advanced to the outskirts of Nazareth - deep into the Jewish state.

How and why Assad's forces had to retreat from the Nazereth area and lose the Golan Heights in June 1967 is a mystery, or question, which remains unanswered to this date - almost six years after Hafez al-Assad's death. It was said at the time that Gen. Assad had built up his career on "military defeats", and one Communist commentator then said of him: "Beware of a man who has built up his career on military defeats". And, according to that commentator in a talk with APS in late 1974, it was thanks to what happened to Golan that Assad was able to take power in Damascus in 1970. Assad's was a "house coup d'etat" - which he then called a "corrective movement" - against the civilian wing of the Ba'thist dictatorship. It was a military coup, but Assad was a Ba'thist ideologue as well as an exceptionally-good strategist.

The 1974 invitation was made by then US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. It meant that the peace process - which was yet to start in earnest between Syria and Israel - was to be mortgaged in advance, with Lebanon to be used as collateral by the Ba'thist regime of Damascus. That meant Syria had control over the surface of a "tamed Lebanon" - or else a "tamed part" of Lebanon - while Israel had control over Lebanon's air space. The price was to tame Lebanese Christian and Muslim parties, plus right-wing and leftist groups, as well as various leftist and rejectionist Palestinian groups - all armed to the teeth and ready for civil war, which did break out in 1975.

It did not take long for the Christian groups - feeling they were being overpowered by a coalition of Lebanese Muslim/leftist and Palestinian groups - to ask for Syrian help. Syrian military forces entered Lebanon in April 1976 and were to stay there for 29 years. Syrian control over Lebanon was to be absolute; Lebanon's democratically-built institutions were all to be dismantled and in their place was to be Syrian-built ones, which were to include security and intelligence networks all moulded after the Syrian model.

Hafez al-Assad played the game well - the Golan had been peaceful since 1974 - but only until late March 2000, when Israel's then Labour Prime Minister Ehud Barak took him by surprise as the latter said the playing was over. That was in Geneva at a summit meeting with then US President Bill Clinton, who ended the talks abruptly by shaking Assad's hand and saying there was no more need to discuss a proposed Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights.

What shocked Assad then was the fact that the differences had been narrowed down to a small piece of territory on the Sea of Galilee's coast.

It was a double shock, as Barak said Israel was leaving South Lebanon unilaterally. That was to deprive Assad's regime of a frontline against the Jewish state from which the Ba'th regime was fighting through the Shi'ite militias of Hizbollah. Although Assad died in June 2000, less than a month after Israel withdrew from the whole of South Lebanon which it had occupied since the early 1980s - it had occupied a narrower strip of South Lebanon from 1978, which was what Assad had wanted to justify his "proxy war of attrition" - the shocks of late March 2000 gave him sleepless nights which caused his demise.

Before he died, however, Assad gave his first surviving son Bashar the card of Sheb'a Farms, a piece of farm lands partly owned by Lebanon and partly owned by Syria but registered at the UN as being under Syrian sovereignty. The farms have been occupied by Israel since it took the Golan Heights in June 1967. Syria had encroached on the Lebanese part before that war and Gen. Assad had been one of the men behind that move. Apparently, he had foreseen that Sheb'a Farms could one day serve a Syrian purpose, a purpose which served Bashar who became president in July 2000.

So after Israel withdrew from Southern Lebanon in late May 2000, with the UN later having verified the border and concluded that the withdrawal was complete, the Lebanese said that was to be the end of Hizbollah as an armed militia. Hizbollah was formed in Damascus just after Israel invaded Lebanon in mid-1982 as an Iranian-sponsored force and political party. Its task was to resist Israeli occupation of any part of Lebanon held by the Jewish state. Once it was given the Sheb'a card, Hizbollah declared that its liberation war did not end as it was now resisting Israeli occupation of that piece of real estate - claiming that territory was Lebanese.

It took until 2005 for various Lebanese groups - Christians and Muslims, Sunnis and Druze - opposed to Syrian control to accept the Hizbollah claim, a claim backed by Syria as well as Lebanon's other Shi'ite party Amal. But their acceptance of the claim was conditional on both the governments of Syria and Lebanon formally notifying the UN in writing that Sheb'a Farms were under Lebanese sovereignty. Until now, however, the Ba'thist regime of Damascus has refused to do what the UN has required for the Sheb'a Farms to be declared Lebanese.

Syrian officials, from Vice President Farouq al-Shara' to Foreign Minister Walid al-Mu'allem, have repeatedly declared in public that Sheb'a Farms are Lebanese. But, despite repeated calls by the Lebanese government for Damascus to give the farms Lebanese sovereignty, in a UN-defined procedure, Syria has refused to do what is necessary for Hizbollah to keep its armed militia and maintain its "war". Does it mean Syria now is subtly letting Iran know that the fate of its Lebanese proxy, Hizbollah, is to be decided by Damascus rather than by Tehran? If so, then the US-Iranian dialogue in Baghdad will, if anything, be a complex and lengthy process.