Who Controls The Syria-Iran Alliance?

In recent summonses issued by the Ba'thist regime of Syria against Lebanese MPs, Druze leader Walid Junblatt and Communications Minister Marwan Hamadeh, and Lebanese journalist Fares Khashan, Lebanon was defined as "qutr", which in Ba'thist language means part of a homeland. Syria occupied a piece of Jordan for many years and only gave back that area after pressures, mainly from the US. In the 1960s the Ba'thist regime gave Palestinian groups a base in Damascus and later helped them move from Jordan to Lebanon in the understanding that Greater Syria was the central power behind the Palestine cause.

All this is coming to an end, however. Syrian troops in April 2005 were forced to leave Lebanon after 29 years of occupation. In the strategic alliance between Iran and Syria, worked out in the early 1980s by President Hafez al-Assad , Damascus used to lead and Tehran had to follow; now, with Tehran defying Washington and its allies over its nuclear ambitions, Iran is in control and Syria follows its lead.

Gulf News on June 6 quoted Syrian Information Minister Mohsen Bilal as saying Lebanon's ruling group, an anti-Syria coalition of Christian, Sunni and Druze MPs, was sowing seeds of hatred. The coalition, the March 14 Movement, spearheaded the mass demonstrations against the Syrian presence in Lebanon after the Feb. 14, 2005, assassination of former PM Rafiq Hariri in Beirut. Two months later and under intense US-led pressures, Syria withdrew from its smaller neighbour. Bilal said: "Shame on them. They are denying a history of three decades of Syrian sacrifices in Lebanon". (Bilal became minister earlier this year. Prior to that the trained surgeon, educated in Italy and the US, served as Syria's ambassador to Spain for five years).

Bilal said: "Heads of...the March 14 bloc cannot wipe clean Syrian achievements in Lebanon... During the three-decade-long presence in Lebanon, Syria sacrificed up to 12,000 men to achieve stability in the civil-war ravaged community. Syrian troops stayed there when troops from other countries, including the US, who came to help end the war, failed to achieve their goals". He singled out Junblatt for being at the centre of this anti-Syria movement..."