SYRIA - The Regional Perspective & US-Iranian Bargaining.

Today, the US and Iran's Shi'ite theocracy are getting prepared for a dialogue over the future of Iraq -which should mean the future of Syria, Lebanon and the other parts of the Levant. Amir Taheri, a prominent Iranian journalist critical of the theocracy, on March 25 wrote: "What Tehran and Washington are really interested in is to find out each other's true intentions in Iraq" - with both having gained from the April 9, 2003, demise of Saddam's Ba'thist dictatorship of Baghdad. The US has eliminated an enemy it had wounded but not killed in February 1991, "something which Machiavelli had warned against almost five centuries ago".

With Iraq likely to have a pluralist regime in which Shi'ites are a majority, Iran may no longer face a coalition of Sunni Arab regimes determined to challenge it in the Levant. But while US and Iranian interests in Iraq converge up to a point, Taheri wrote, "the two powers have diametrically opposite visions when it comes to the future of Iraq, indeed of the entire Middle East". The US wants a democratic, pro-West Iraq with a capitalist economy, and open to the new globalisation trends. US President George W. Bush has even spoken of turning Iraq into a model for all Muslim countries. And that, of course, is indirect competition with Iran which claims that its own system is the ideal one for all Muslims.

"Iran", Taheri said, "wants an Iraqi regime that adopts at least some aspects of Khomeinism if only to prove that the Islamic republic in Tehran is not a historic anomaly. The Tehran leadership is...concerned that the emergence of a ...[Shi'ite-]dominated democracy next door may well inspire a democratic revolution in Iran as well. With the center of ...[Shi'ite] theological authority clearly shifting to Najaf, Iran's rulers may risk losing the religious card they have played for the past 27 years. The crucial question in regional politics now is whether Iraq, and beyond it the Middle East, will be reshaped the way the US wants it or remolded as Iran's Khomeinist leaders have dreamed of since 1979. It is against that background that it is important to know what Iran would actually bring to the table when, and if, the promised talks materialize. Iran has already scored a point simply by being invited by the US for talks".

Although Iran did nothing to oust Saddam, the US invitation "bestows on it a stature that only a liberating power would normally have. For example, at the end of World War II no one invited Switzerland or Poland, as neighbors of Germany, to discuss its future. Iran has scored yet another point by positioning itself as a power speaking for the Iraqi people. The leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), Abdul-Aziz [al-]Hakim has helped Iran's maneuver by issuing a verbal 'invitation' to enter the talks almost as a protector of the people of Iraq. The fact that Hakim and his party have been supported by Iran for more than a quarter of a century does not diminish the importance of that move".

Tehran knows that the US and its allies are in Iraq under a UN mandate which will run out in December; and that mandate cannot be renewed without the consent of the newly elected Iraqi parliament and government. Bush is under pressure from both Democrats and Republicans to bring the Iraqi episode to an end. "So", Taheri added, "when the Americans and their allies start to leave, as they are certain to do later this year, Iran would be able to pretend that it was its efforts that ended the 'occupation'.

Strategically, Iran sees post-Saddam Iraq as a corridor through which it can communicate with Syria and Lebanon which "it considers as part of its broader glacis". Taheri wrote: "...once Tehran's influence is established in Iraq as it is in Syria and Lebanon, Iran would be able to project power in the Levant for the first time since the early 7th century when the Persian Empire under Khosrow Parviz drove the Byzantines out of Mesopotamia and what is now Syria. It is no accident that scholars in Tehran have just rediscovered the set of agreements which Iran had signed with the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century. Known as the Erzerum treaties, these documents give Iran a droit de regard (the right of oversight) over Iraq's principal ...[Shi'ite religious] centers of Najaf, Karbala and ...[Kathemiya - now a suburb of Baghdad]. The agreements also enable Iran to take 'appropriate action', a code word for military intervention, if it felt that its security, or the access of Iranian pilgrims to 'holy places', was being threatened by the presence of foreign hostile forces in southern Iraq.

"If implemented those agreements could lead to the emergence of an Iranian administration in the 'holy cities' and an Iranian veto on key aspects of Iraq's foreign policy. Iran has already used those agreements to persuade the new Iraqi government to sign an agreement under which more than 600,000 Iranian pilgrims would be able to visit Iraq each year with little control from the Iraqi authorities. The second set of documents that Tehran is now dusting up is known as the Algiers Accords, negotiated and signed in Algiers, Geneva, Tehran and Baghdad between 1975 and 1976. These give Iran and Iraq shared sovereignty over the Shatt al-Arab estuary that constitutes Iraq's principal outlet to the open seas. The agreements, signed by Saddam...as a tactical ploy to end Iranian support for the Kurds in the 1970s, would, if fully implemented, give Iran a chokehold on Iraq's foreign trade, including oil exports.

"Iran does not want the US to fail in Iraq. It wants the US to succeed in eliminating all possibility of a new Sunni-dominated regime being installed in Baghdad. But Iran wants the US to succeed at the highest possible cost, both in blood and treasure.

"It is a mystery why Washington wants to give Tehran a place at the high table in Iraq. It is certain that the Islamic republic will continue doing whatever it can to make life difficult for the US-led...[forces]. The supply of...more lethal explosives smuggled into Iraq from Iran, partly via Syria, is unlikely to dry up. Nor is Tehran likely to end the training programs launched by its Lebanese Hezbollah clients for Iraqi militants. The decision to involve Iran in Iraqi affairs is likely to anger the...[US's] regional allies who have never discounted the possibility of an Irano-American deal that might leave them in the lurch.

"The Arab states will...be concerned about the possibility of Iraq's Arab identity being diluted as a result of Iranian intervention. The US may have made this strange move because of the experiment in Afghanistan where talks with Iran did help speed up the defeat of the Taleban and the creation of a new regime in Kabul. But Iraq is not Afghanistan... The invitation to Iraq is...likely to encourage Iran in its defiance of the ...[UN] on the nuclear issue. After all if Iran is treated as a major power in one domain it cannot be 'bullied' as a weakling in another".

Taheri concluded with this: "Has the Bush administration made its first major mistake with regard to Iraq? It is too early to tell. But this decision may be even worse than a mistake; it may be unnecessary. And, as Talleyrand noted almost 200 years ago, in politics doing something that is not necessary is worse than making a mistake".

The real US agenda behind the proposed American-Iranian dialogue is different, however, although Washington may allow Tehran to assume some form of control over the Levant. But this would be temporary and conditional on Iran making sure that Hizbollah and the Palestinian rejectionists in Syria and Lebanon are disarmed, while the regime in Damascus has been changed considerably.

The longest period of uninterrupted rule over the Syrians by a foreign power was during the Ottoman era (1516-1918). Syria then had an area twice the size it is at present - including what is now Jordan and major parts of Israel and Lebanon.

The turning point in Syria's modern history was the intervention of Britain and France which, under the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916, carved out spheres of influence in the region that led to the British and French mandates. This was to alter the structure of society in a way which is still evident today.

France, whose mandate covered present-day Syria and Lebanon, applied a policy of divide and rule on the Syrian side by splitting it up into four autonomous administrations covering Damascus, Aleppo, the territory of the Alawites and the mountains of the Druze community. The division reflected existing social demarcations, but it also served to enhance them. At the same time, the French mandate put in place mechanisms which allowed for elevation in social position of poor minorities, notably including the Alawites. That was done through the army and through opportunities for better education offered to rural groups, such as the Alawites. This channel was used by the Alawites to gradually work their way into the ruling elite.

The Alawites are followers of a breakaway Shi'ite sect. Until the early decades of the past century, they were an impoverished rural community often providing servants to the wealthier Sunnis of Damascus or Aleppo.

With the beginning of the French mandate in the 1920s, the Alawites got a chance to get education and, more important, join the armed forces in large numbers. With their support Hafez al-Assad , an air force general, was able to execute a coup in the Ba'thist regime in 1970. When he died in June 2000, it was said the next presidency under his son Bashar would not last long.