Is the Syria-Iran Alliance Beginning to Crack?

In her testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier this year, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke of a new strategic alignment in the Middle East. “On one side,” she said, are the many “reformers and responsible leaders, who seek to advance their interests peacefully, politically and diplomatically. On the other side are extremists, of every sect and ethnicity, who use violence to spread chaos, to undermine democratic governments, and to impose agendas of hate and intolerance” (January 11). Back then, Secretary Rice lumped Syria in with Iran as one of the two governments who were clearly on the other side. “Despite many appeals, including from Syria’s fellow Arab states,” she said, “the leaders in Damascus continue to destabilize Iraq and their neighbors and support terrorism.”

So when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made her April pilgrimage to Damascus in order to present Syria’s terrorist-in-chief with a foreign policy alternative to Ms. Rice’s, you can see why it angered President Bush. He said it sent “mixed signals” and would “lead the Assad government to believe they’re part of the mainstream of the international community, when in fact they’re a state sponsor of terror.”

Seven and a half months later, Bashar Assad accepted the president’s invitation for Syria to join with the international community in Maryland in order to discuss peace in the Middle East. Upon hearing the news of Syria’s last-minute decision to attend, Nancy Pelosi must have been grinning from ear to ear.

Assad sent his deputy foreign minister to the summit—but it wasn’t as a show of goodwill toward the United States or because he hopes for peace between Palestinians and Jews. Neither did he base Syria’s attendance solely on the inclusion of the Golan Heights as a conference topic, as was widely reported.

Syria attended the conference to distance itself from Iran.

Ideological Divide

Following Tuesday’s summit in Maryland, several reports suggested that Palestinian statehood was merely a front for the real purpose of the meeting—isolating Iran. On Wednesday, theTrumpet.com linked to a New York Times story quoting a Palestinian official who admitted that Arab officials didn’t come to the summit because of any love for the Jews, or even the Palestinians, but “because they need a strategic alliance with the United States against Iran.”

Israeli President Shimon Peres endorsed this particular view in a radio interview on Tuesday, saying the most interesting aspect of the conference was the joint participation of 16 Arab states—most of which do not even recognize the State of Israel. “Iran, threatening and frightening with its radical policies, is the reason for this,” said Peres.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was also well aware of the meeting’s primary agenda. Not unlike President Bush’s reaction to Pelosi’s trek along the road to Damascus, Ahmadinejad’s response to news that a Syrian delegation was en route to Annapolis was angry: “Participation in this summit is an indication of a lack of intelligence of some so-called politicians. … I am sorry that some people around us plan to participate in the conference which only helps to support the Zionist occupiers.”

Of course, the Annapolis spat does not mean Iran and Syria are on the brink of permanent divorce. But there are multiple reasons to suggest that the alliance might eventually break. Right now, allying itself with Iran is temporarily convenient for Syria. Both nations sponsor terrorism, deny Israel’s right to exist and are sworn enemies of the United States.

But these strategic ties are not rooted in ideology. Iran’s population, for example, is predominantly Shia Muslim and is ruled by a theocratic government where the religious leaders hold all the power. Syria is more than 70 percent Sunni, though its ruling Alawite clan is considered a Shia sect. But the Assad family ascended to power in Syria by a military coup and has worked to build a modern secular state under the rule of a military dictatorship. Quite unlike the mullahs in Tehran, the Assad regime in Syria has suppressed fundamentalist Arabs—brutally so at times.

Ruled by the Ba’ath Party since 1963, Syria’s close proximity to Iraq also made for a convenient safe haven for Saddam’s cronies who fled from U.S. forces at the start of the Iraq War. These distinct differences put Syria and Iran on opposite sides of the fence with respect to the Sunni-Shia conflict in Iraq today.

The common link the two nations have in Hezbollah is also rooted in strategic interests, not ideological, as Stratfor pointed out on Wednesday (emphasis mine throughout):

Though Tehran and Damascus have a deeply rooted strategic alliance, their interests often collide when it comes to deciding how Hezbollah is utilized as a militant proxy. So, while Iran wants Hezbollah to focus on the larger objective of bolstering itself as a model Islamist movement capable of defending Shiite interests in the wider region, Syria uses Hezbollah primarily to score tactical gains in its “Godfather”-like political feuds in Beirut.

Joshua Landis, a Syria specialist at the University of Oklahoma, said this week that the leadership crisis in Lebanon may have been one reason Syria chose to attend the Annapolis talks. According to the Globe and Mail, Landis said the “sudden acceptance by all sides of Gen. Suleiman [to replace Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, who stepped down last week]—just one day after Annapolis—suggests that the U.S. had agreed to Gen. Suleiman’s presidency as part of a deal to get Syria to attend the peace conference …” (November 29). Stratfor explains how these back-channel negotiations with the U.S. are putting further strain on the Syria-Iran alliance (November 29):

… Iran is not comfortable in the slightest with the idea of Syria inching toward talks with Israel and the United States. These fears likely have been compounded by the sudden turnaround in Lebanon, where the pro-West opposition and the United States have pretty much agreed to granting Syria’s wish in having Lebanon’s army chief, Michel Suleiman, take the presidency. Unless Syria’s negotiations with Washington are held in concert with Iranian negotiations with the United States over Iraq, Tehran does not want Damascus in the negotiating picture.

The recent tension over Annapolis has definitely revealed cracks in the alliance between these two state sponsors of terror. The question is, where is all of this leading?

New Strategic Alliance

There are two fascinating passages of Scripture which, when examined together, point to a split between two distinct camps in the Islamic world, one of which is headed by the Islamic Republic of Iran—the number-one state sponsor of terror.

The other camp stands against this Iran-led “king of the south” and later forms an alliance with the German-led European Union. The Bible indicates that Syria may well be in this latter camp of so-called moderate Arab states. This is why the rift between Syria and Iran might be so important.

But much more significant is that the Bible says these “moderate” Arab states will ally themselves with Europe for the specific purpose of attacking the United States and Israel!

On at least one point, Secretary Rice was correct: a new strategic alignment is taking shape in the Middle East. The problem, though, is that both sides will be dominated by extremists who use violence to advance their interests.

To learn more about these world-jolting alliances and how they will impact your life, download our free booklet The King of the South.