The Golan Deal & What Went Wrong With The Lebanon Prize.

The man who conceived that 1974 deal was Gen. Hafez al-Assad, who was in charge of the Syrian armed forces when the Golan fell to the Israelis during the June 1967 war. It took four years for the general to take power in Damascus - in a coup d'etat he called a "corrective movement" against the civilian wing of the ruling Ba'th Arab Socialist Party - and another three years to shake things further in the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Less than a year later came the Golan deal; and in 1975 came the civil war in Lebanon. By end-April 1976 Lebanon had fallen under Syrian control as Assad's troops had entered the country to fight the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) groups and their Lebanese allies - a leftist coalition supposed to be allied to his regime. But that phase of the Syrian control was shaky and did not prevent an Israeli invasion of Lebanon in mid-1982 - though Hizbullah was created in its wake.

In 1988/89, Syria's control was challenged by then Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) Commander Gen. Michel Aoun who by then had become the country's PM as President Amin Gemayel's term ended. Assad swiftly took advantage of the August 1990 blunder of his Iraqi Ba'thist rival Saddam - the latter's invasion of Kuwait. In September Assad met with then President George Bush Sr in Geneva for a deal: Syria would join the US-led coalition to liberate Kuwait and, in return, Assad's forces would crush Aoun's "rebellion", which he did in October 1990 as the Lebanese general fled to the French embassy in Beirut and later was flown to Paris.

Aoun's blunder at the time was that he had sided with Saddam. The price was Lebanon falling under full Syrian control with US blessings. Israel agreed to that deal because Assad had kept his promise: not a single bullet was ever - and will ever be - fired from the Syrian side of the Golan disengagement zone. Gen. Assad died in June 2000 and was succeeded by his son Bashar, who kept the Golan deal as a top priority for his regime - not even the Iran-led axis would break him loose from that engagement. In mid-2000, Assad was only 34 years old (see his profile in omt13SyriaWho'sMar24-08). Now Gen. Aoun is part of the Iran-led axis.

The worst of an ensuing series of Bashar's blunders was the way he read 9/11, George Bush Jr's reactions to it and their implications for his regime. Armed with Israeli protection, the young Assad upgraded a strategic alliance with Iran engineered by his father since 1979, and after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq joined the theocracy in efforts to undermine the American occupation next door. He could have lost Israel's protection had it not been for the blunders of Bush Jr's administration in Iraq: the Jewish state could never stomach the type of chaos into which Syria could fall in the event of regime change in Damascus.

However, Israel now is facing a far more dangerous line-up of enemies: an eschatological theocracy in Iran with nuclear and regional ambitions, an equally eschatological Hizbullah in Lebanon, together with an Assad regime having been degraded from a senior to junior partner in the Iran-led axis, having Hamas now acting as an eschatological organisation in Gaza - all surrounding the Jewish state. With this set of faits accompli, the Iran-led axis can block anything the Arab allies of the US want of the Damascus summit and its aftermath.

The Iranian theocracy, however, is facing huge internal problems. Isolated internationally by the US and its Western allies, the theocracy is being challenged even by the grand-children of its founder Imam Khomeini, 'Ali Eshraghi, his sister Zahra, their allied grand ayatollahs, etc. Iran's isolation is increasing by the day and this is undermining Tehran's ability to maintain its nuclear and regional ambitions - both exceedingly expensive - which are beyond its financial means. What remains to be seen is whether the cold war between Iran and the US-led alliance will turn hot before Bush Jr's term ends in early 2009.

With the Iran-led axis continuing to advance, on the other hand, Tehran is blocking any settlement in Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Iraq, the GCC region, etc. For example a Yemen-arranged Fatah-Hamas meeting in San'a' on March 22 ended inconclusively because Hamas, part of the Iran-led axis, did not accept proposals agreed to by Fatah, part of the US-led alliance. Fatah on March 22 accused Hamas of intending to establish an "Islamic emirate" in the Gaza Strip somewhat in line with the eschatological ideology of Iran's theocracy.

The same was the case of Lebanon's Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, head of the Shi'ite Amal movement and part of the Iran-led axis who on March 21 reiterated that he would not call the House to convene in a session as long as PM Fou'ad Siniora's government - part of the US-led alliance - remained in office. Berri said: "The absence of any legitimate executive authority prevents the convening of parliament", whose planned election of a new president had been blocked for more than a year (see news8-LebSyrHizbIranFeb18-08). Berri said March 14 Forces should accept a Syria/Iran-inspire formula whereby the Hizbullah-led opposition would have veto power in a new cabinet in return for electing a president.

On March 20, the March 14 Forces described the continued closure of parliament as "a clear and explicit violation of the constitution", adding: "Freezing Parliament's activity further downgrades the democratic regime and disrupts institutions under flimsy pretexts with the aim of collecting benefits for the Syrian and Iranian regimes at the expense of Lebanese independence". The March 14 coalition emphasised its "determination" to restore power to the parliament and announced it would not tolerate the disruption of national institutions or the decline the presidential position and "would take all necessary constitutional and political steps to attain our objectives".

Lebanon has been gripped by its worst internal crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war with rival political factions unable to elect a successor to former President Emile Lahoud, a puppet of the Assad regime, who stepped down at the end of his term in November. Parliament was scheduled to meet on March 25 to elect a president after 16 previous attempts had been postponed. On March 22 sources from both camps said Berri will again postpone a House session.

EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana has repeatedly called for greater pressure on Syria to allow the election of a president in Lebanon, warning of a "dramatic" crisis unless that happened this month. In unusually blunt criticisms, Solana says Damascus is using proxies in Lebanon to prevent the election of LAF Commander Michel Sulaiman, while the pro-West March 14 majority in parliament was whittled away as MPs were being assassinated. Officials from France and other EU states have been making similar statements against Syria and Iran.