{"id":6333,"date":"2012-07-19T23:13:29","date_gmt":"2012-07-20T03:13:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/?p=6333"},"modified":"2012-07-19T23:13:29","modified_gmt":"2012-07-20T03:13:29","slug":"as-chaos-grows-in-syria-worries-grow-on-the-sidelines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/as-chaos-grows-in-syria-worries-grow-on-the-sidelines\/","title":{"rendered":"As Chaos Grows in Syria, Worries Grow on the Sidelines"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>TEHRAN \u2014 Gone is the talk here that last year\u2019s Arab Spring was a gift from God.<\/p>\n

Now some in Iran are even starting to worry about how much might be at stake if President Bashar al-Assad\u2019s government in Syria, long a client state of Iran\u2019s, collapses \u2014 which after a fifth day on Thursday of heavy street fighting in Damascus no longer sounds inconceivable.<\/p>\n

The fall of the Assad government would remove Shiite Iran\u2019s last and most valued foothold in the Arab world, and its opening to the Mediterranean. It would give Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab states their long-sought goal of countering Iranian influence in the region, finally splitting the alliance between Tehran and Damascus that has lasted for decades. And it would further erode Iran\u2019s role as a patron of the Middle East\u2019s revolutionaries, a goal that moderate Arabs and the United States have long sought.<\/p>\n

Already the militant Palestinian group Hamas, long dependent on Syria and Iran, has thrown its support behind the Syrians in the streets seeking Mr. Assad\u2019s overthrow.<\/p>\n

Worse might follow, from Tehran\u2019s point of view. Iran and Syria\u2019s last revolutionary ally, the Hezbollah party that dominates Lebanon, would lose one of its main sources of weapons and financial support. And Lebanon\u2019s fragile sectarian balance might be torn apart, raising the threat of another civil war there.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Hezbollah quickly responded to the government\u2019s worst day so far to make its strongest declaration that it would not abandon Mr. Assad.<\/p>\n

In a televised address on Wednesday night, the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, offered eloquent condolences for the deaths of the three high-ranking Syrian officials killed earlier in the day. \u201cThese martyr leaders were comrades in arms in the conflict with the Israeli enemy, and we are confident that the Arab Syrian Army, which overcame the unbearable, will be able to persist and crush the hopes of the enemies,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He credited Mr. Assad and his government with the victory that Hezbollah claimed against Israel in the 2006 war in Lebanon and with saving Gaza during the 2009 Israeli incursion. \u201cThe most valuable weapons we had in our possession were from Syria,\u201d he said. \u201cThe missiles we used in the second Lebanon war were made in Syria. And it\u2019s not only in Lebanon but in Gaza as well. Where did these missiles come from? The Saudi regime? The Egyptian regime? These missiles are from Syria.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a stunning testament, said Fawaz A. Gerges, director of the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics. \u201cFor Hezbollah, it is a point of no return now,\u201d he said. With the speech, \u201cHezbollah made it very clear that there is an umbilical cord between the Syrian regime and Hezbollah, and this umbilical cord is existential. They are, as he said, comrades in arms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iran, too, has been staunch in its support of Syria, whose ruling Alawite minority belong to a branch of Shiite Islam, the predominant faith in Iran. Tehran continues to provide Mr. Assad with economic and public support, and it might be sending military assistance as well.<\/p>\n

But some voices inside Iran are worried about the awkward position imposed on anyone who supports Mr. Assad against what seems like an increasingly popular and widespread uprising.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are supporting some uprisings and ignoring others,\u201d said Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, a Middle East analyst based in Tehran. \u201cArab people do not believe us anymore. We come across as antagonists, following our political agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran was once a model for the region, but the Arab world\u2019s revolutionaries now look to Egypt, he said, with its experiment in democratizing an Islamic society. \u201cInstead of gaining influence, we are witnessing the emergence of new powerful countries that in the future could pose a challenge to us,\u201d Mr. Shamsolvaezin said.<\/p>\n

A year ago, Hossein Alaei, a former admiral in the Revolutionary Guards, predicted on the Web site Irandiplomacy that \u201cideally\u201d Mr. Assad would survive. \u201cBut this ideal might not be fulfilled,\u201d Mr. Alaei wrote. \u201cWe should think of other ways to protect our national security.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s unrelenting support for Syria has cost it other friends in the region, as the Arab Spring gives aspiring young rebels a model other than the revolution of Iran\u2019s elderly ayatollahs. Most Arabs are Sunnis rather than Shiites. Beginning in February, the leadership of Hamas, which had long enjoyed a friendly exile in Damascus and military support from Iran, began moving to Qatar and other havens and publicly expressed support for Syria\u2019s revolutionaries. With Iran hampered and hurt financially by Western sanctions, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have proven to be more helpful and better-financed allies.<\/p>\n

The Nasrallah speech tried to make it seem \u201cas if nothing had happened since then, as if the Arab Spring did not happen,\u201d said Sami Nader, an analyst and a professor of international relations at St. Joseph University in Beirut.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the most important transformation in the history of the Arab world,\u201d Mr. Nader said, \u201cand it is proving that Islam and democracy are compatible.\u201d<\/p>\n

The speech was in effect an acknowledgment of how completely Hezbollah depends on the Assad government\u2019s survival. \u201cHe is telling them he is not going to leave Assad alone,\u201d said Sarkis Naoum, a columnist for An-Nahar in Beirut, \u201cthat by protecting Assad he will be protecting his party, himself and his community, and also the interests of Syria and Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Naoum said he worried about what would happen in Lebanon if the Syrian government collapsed, or descended further into sectarian conflict. Many sectarian fault lines in Syria \u2014 Alawites and Christians versus Sunnis, for instance \u2014 are mirrored in Lebanon, which has large Christian, Alawite and Sunni minorities of its own. Already, there have been conflicts between Alawites and Sunnis in northern Lebanon. Hezbollah has refrained from any action that would threaten strife, but that may change, Mr. Naoum suggested.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it feels threatened by chaos in Syria, or even Assad\u2019s regime collapses, it will have to take action inside Lebanon, at least to paralyze those who are working with the rebels, especially in the north,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a lose-lose situation for Hezbollah,\u201d he said. \u201cEither they stay on what most Arabs would say is the wrong side of history, or they abandon an ally that links them with the rest of the Shiite world and find themselves isolated.\u201d<\/p>\n

An Assad victory would change that thinking, of course, and Mr. Nasrallah professed confidence. \u201cWe are confident that the Syrian Army, which has had to cope with the intolerable, has the ability, determination and resolve to endure and foil the enemies\u2019 hopes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

That, too, is the prevailing official view in Tehran, which has its own example of successfully repressing popular dissent, after the 2009 elections. \u201cHave no doubt, Assad\u2019s regime will survive,\u201d said Hamid Reza Taraghi, an Iranian foreign policy expert and a politician whose views are close to the Iranian government\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Mr. Shamsolvaezin was not so sure. \u201cWe were popular some years ago, but our ethical decisions have made a crisis for us,\u201d he said. \u201cWe hoped all in the region would turn away from the U.S. Now, we should be careful they do not turn their backs on us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomas Erdbrink reported from Tehran, and Rod Nordland from Cairo. Mai Ayyad contributed reporting from Cairo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TEHRAN \u2014 Gone is the talk here that last year\u2019s Arab Spring was a gift from God. Now some in Iran are even starting to worry about how much might … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6333"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6333\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}