DAMASCUS - Since former president Hafez al-Assad came to power in 1970, the
Syrian government has managed to rally the street behind its foreign policy.
Time has proven the regime correct since all the steps it took in foreign
affairs, which seemed questionable to many at the moment, turned out to be
wise.
For example, Syria's military involvement in the Lebanese Civil War in 1976
concerned many Syrians, especially since Damascus was siding with the country's
Christians against the Palestinians - the sacred cow of Arab nationalism. This
turned out to be wise policy after the conflict ended in 1990 and Syria
benefited greatly - economically and in terms of political leverage and Arab
prestige, from its presence in Lebanon.
Then came Syria's support for the Iranian revolution in 1979. The
secular Ba'athist regime of Syria was allying itself to turbaned clerics who
were pledging to export the Islamic Revolution. The public was
none-too-pleased, and was even more disappointed when Syria supported Iran in
its war against Iraq - a fellow secular, fellow Ba'athist Arab state, in 1980.
The Syrians believed that the Iran-Iraq war was the wrong war with the wrong
enemy and that it would play directly into the hands of Israel by weakening
both Baghdad and Tehran. The Syrian regime supported Iran but did not send arms
and money to Ayatollah al-Khomeini, the way other Arab countries did to support
Saddam Hussein. Other examples followed, including the Gulf War of 1991. Again,
Syria challenged conventional wisdom. Rather than siding with Iraq, as Jordan's
King Hussein and Yasser Arafat did, Syria joined Operation Desert Storm to
liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein.
The reward was great - surprising all Syrians who opposed involvement in Desert
Storm. Syria was courted and treated like a superpower, by both presidents
George H W Bush and Bill Clinton, and given an okay to keep its forces in
Lebanon, especially after Lebanon's then anti-Syrian leader General Michel Aoun
made his fatal mistake by siding with Saddam Hussein.
Today, after many years of doubt, the Syrian street no longer questions or
opposes the government's foreign policy. This is either out of a sincere
conviction that this regime cannot go wrong in foreign affairs, or many years
of indoctrination of the Syrian people. Or, a combination of both. The street
loves Syria's allies and hates its enemies. They hated Egypt's Anwar al-Sadat
and loved Gamal Abdul-Nasser. They love Hasan Nasrallah of Hizbullah, Mahmud
Ahmadinejad of Iran and Khaled Meshaal of Hamas. They despise George W Bush,
Walid Jumblatt and Saad al-Harriri.
When Syria opposed the war on Iraq in 2003, the Syrian street rallied behind
the government, for obvious reasons, arguing that the war was based on lies
regarding Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaeda.
The Syrians, government and public alike, claimed that the invasion was
outright colonialism and aggression, no different from the European invasion of
the Middle East after World War I. After that it took little effort to convince
the Syrians how much of a mess Iraq had become under the Americans since the
sectarian strife, security breakdown and post-Saddam mass graves are clear to
everyone.
Syria insisted that it was not aiding the Iraqi insurgency by turning a blind
eye to terrorist infiltration from the Syrian-Iraqi border. But even if Syria
was involved with the insurgency, very few Syrians would have objected. The
counter-argument was that Syria was doing its best to monitor its 605km border
with Iraq, and that total security was impossible. This border was used by
Saddam Hussein to send car bombs into Syria in the 1980s and Syria was unable
to maintain a 100% secure border - even when its own security was at stake.
Today, Syria's foreign relations are based on a conviction that relations with
the United States are no longer repairable so long as Bush is at the White
House. Relations with France, the Syrians believe, are also strained so long as
Jacques Chirac - an ally of the Harriri family in Lebanon - is in power in
Paris. And so long as Chirac is around, Europe is not a priority on Syria's
agenda. Mostly the Syrians have decided to ignore the West and head east. They
want to create economic and political alliances with Malaysia, India, China and
Russia, feeling that when the Western world sees that it has lost Syria, it
would recalculate its relationship with Damascus. First on the list of the
countries that Syria is reaching out to is Iran.
Syria's relationship with the Iranian regime is a topic of international
concern, and many in the West - particularly in the United States, are
questioning the wisdom behind such an alliance. Many say that it was cemented
under President Ahmadinejad after he came to office in 2005. This is incorrect
since Syrian-Iranian relations have been very strong since 1979. They were no
less strong under Ayatollah al-Khomeini in the 1980s, and Ali Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami in the 1990s and 2000s.
To understand why Syria and Iran are close today, one must understand the
history of Syrian-Iranian relations. Syria was the only country to welcome the
Iranian Revolution that toppled Shah Reza Pahlavi in February 1979. President
Hafez Assad sent a cable of warm congratulations to Iran's new 76-year old
leader Ayatollah al-Khomeini, who returned to Iran on February 1, 1979, and
dispatched his information minister Ahmad Iskandar Ahmad to Tehran, with a
Koran gift to the revolution's leader. In August 1979, then foreign minister
Abd al-Halim Khaddam went to Tehran and said that the Iranian Revolution was
"the most important event in our contemporary history". He proudly added that
Syria had supported it "prior to its outbreak, during it, and after its
triumph".
Khaddam was speaking about the hundreds of revolutionaries who had been backed
by Syria against the Shah since the mid-1970s. They included future defense
minister Mustapha Chamran and future foreign ministers Ibrahim Yazdi and Sadiq
Qotbzadeh. Qutbzadeh, for example, had worked from Paris (with a Syrian
passport) in the Iranian underground, disguised as correspondent for the
state-run Syrian daily al-Thawra. Asad needed Iran to curb the influence of
Saddam Hussein who had seized power in Iraq in July 1979, five months after the
Islamic Revolution. Khomeini had spent 13 years in Iraq (1965-1978) in the holy
city of Najaf, where he worked with the Shi'ite underground against the regimes
of presidents Abd al-Salam Aref, Abd al-Rahman Aref and Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr.
In October 1978, Saddam expelled Khomeini from Iraq, accusing him of wanting to
overthrow the regime, triggering an all out war with the Shi'ites. Syria gave
him asylum, but he refused, setting up a base in Neuphle-le-Château near Paris,
where he led the revolution on two fronts, against Saddam in Iraq and the Shah
in Iran. The Shah fell four months later, but Khomeini did not live long enough
to witness the fall of Saddam in 2003. Saddam was terrified by the Iranian
Revolution, while Asad wanted him to see Iran as a friend and as a potential
ally for the Arabs. All Saddam could see was a monster at his doorstep, fueling
a Shi'ite uprising in his own backyard. The real threat, Asad would often tell
him, was Israel not Iran. With Asad's attention fixated on Israel and Saddam's
fixated on Iran, the two men drifted further apart in 1979-1980.
On September 22, 1980, Saddam invaded Iran, based on false reports he had
received on Iranian weakness, believing that he could topple Khomeini in a
breeze. These reports were given to Saddam by Iran's enemies, mainly Saudi
Arabia, the US, Jordan's King Hussein (who opened his port of Aqaba to Iraqi
war supplies), and Iranians in exile still loyal to the Shah. The official
reason for war was to reclaim the Shat al-Arab waterway, which Iraq had given
to the Shah in 1975. Asad was enraged by the war, considering it the wrong war,
with the wrong enemy, at the wrong time.
Israel, however, supported it greatly, claiming that one way or another, this
war would destroy a traditional enemy of Tel Aviv, either Khomeini's Iran or
Saddam's Iraq. Gulf states, fearing Iran's growing influence, eagerly supported
Saddam with money and arms, and so did the US. Asad argued that the war would
exhaust both Iraq and Iran, benefiting nobody but Israel. He also worried,
according to his biographer Patrick Seale, that Iran would be defeated by
Saddam's strong army. He did not want to be cornered by two triumphant enemies:
a victorious Saddam on one front and a victorious Israel on the other.
Quickly, Asad went to the Soviet Union, whose leaders, glad to see an end to US
influence in Iran, were also early supporters of the Ayatollah. He issued a
joint statement with Brezhnev supporting "Iran's inalienable right to determine
its destiny independently and without any foreign influence". Syria airlifted
Soviet arms to Iran, via Greece, Bulgaria and the Soviet Union, and in January
1981, resumed direct flights between Tehran and Damascus - a symbolic departure
from the daily flights of the Israeli El Al airline between Tehran and Tel Aviv
only three years earlier.
Saddam responded to the Syrian-Iranian honeymoon with force. In August 1980,
the Syrian Embassy in Baghdad was stormed by the Iraqi Army and most of its
staff was expelled, accused of smuggling arms to the Iranians. On October 12,
1980, Saddam closed his embassy in Damascus, further pushing the Syrians into
an alliance with Iran. Asad opposed the war, but wanted it to end in Saddam's
defeat. He closed Syria's borders with Iraq in 1982 and signed a trade pact
with Tehran which gave the Syrians oil at very good prices. The honeymoon
continued after the war ended in 1988 and after Asad's passing in 2000. When
the relationship was created by president Hafez al-Asad, many had doubted its
wisdom, but Seale wrote in his classic account: The Struggle for the Middle East
that Syria's 1979 alliance with Iran was "a striking demonstration of political
foresight and strategic flexibility".
The history in Syria's friendship with Iran paid off when Syria came under
international pressure after the assassination of Lebanon's former prime
minister Rafiq al-Harriri on February 14, 2005. The world asked Syria to leave
Lebanon, but Iran would not make such a move, prompting Syria's Prime Minister
Mohammad Naji al-Otari to visit Tehran in the midst of the international crisis
over Lebanon and proclaim an alliance between Damascus and Tehran.
Syria and Iran have much in common. They have a mutual friend and ally in Hamas
in Palestine and Hizbullah in Lebanon. They have a common enemy in the United
States. They are both committed to the Palestinian cause. At a grassroots level
in the Arab and Muslim world, the masses are pleased at Iran's success story
and support for Damascus. Why should Syria oppose Iran, or not cement its
relations with Tehran, if the Iranians are being good and supportive of Syria?
The Syrian street sees the relationship as a natural and much needed response
to the US and Israel's offensive against Damascus. After all, here is
Ahmadinejad - a man who one year ago was a political nobody - defying and
challenging the US, much to the pleasure of the ordinary Syrian. Washington
does not really know what to do about him. Nor does Europe. Nor does the United
Nations. Ahmadinejad is not playing the victim, like most Arabs have been doing
since 1967. He insists that he is the victor in this undeclared war with the
US, speaking to Americans in the same defiant language they use when addressing
him. The Iranians are showing the world that Syria remains a regional power to
be reckoned with, one that cannot be ignored, relative to Lebanon, Iraq and
Palestine.
One question arises: if Syria does not ally itself with Iran, what country in
the neighborhood is an alternative? The Syrians, at daggers end with the US
since 2003, are surrounded by a pro-American regime in Jordan, an anti-Syrian
regime in Lebanon, an American regime in Iraq, and Israel. With such a
neighborhood, Syria naturally sides with the Iranians. Gone is the Arab
nationalist regime in Egypt. Gone is the Soviet Union. With such an anti-Syrian
neighborhood, Iran, it is believed, is the only true friend to the Syrians.
