Iraqis stir pot in Syria

TEL AVIV — While the United States, France and Germany pledged to take more severe measurestopunishSyrianPresidentBashar Assad for his cruel crackdown on his opponents, a new geo-strategic reality is quietly emerging in the Middle East.

 Under strong Iranian pressure and without a public announcement, Iraq has reversed its attitude toward Syria and now supports Assad’s rejection of Turkish and western pressures. In a public speech on Saturday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he had "lost patience" with Assad. He reminded the Syrian dictator of the fate of Saddam Hussein and of "a leader who was brought to court on stretchers and had to listen to his indictment while in bed and inside a steel box."

 Erdogan also said Assad should be punished for the crimes he committed against his people.

 The Turkish prime minister is sending his foreign minister, Ahmet Davotuglu, to Damascus today to verify the situation.

 "Everything will be clear on Tuesday," Erdogan said. "We will know then if Assad honestly means to implement the reforms that he promised to implement so many times."

 The Iraqi reversal of its attitude towards Syria also explains the sudden decision of Saudi Arabia to withdraw its ambassador from Damascus and the decision of the Gulf Co-operation Council to harshly criticize the Syrian regime.

 As for the U.S., in an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, Sen. Robert Casey called openly for an end to Assad’s regime.

 Casey is chairman of the U.S. Senate’s foreign relations subcommittee on the Middle East. In his article, Casey wrote "the Syrians should not have to bear the brutality of Assad’s regime any longer."

 On the face of it, there should not be such harsh western criticism of Assad. Last Thursday, the Syrian president issued a decree allowing opposition political parties in Syria. This past Saturday, Syria vowed to hold "free and transparent" parliamentary elections by the end of the year.

 As to the cruel suppression of the opposition in Hama, Assad was equally murderous in Dera’a, Homs, Idlib and many other places, and now he’s preparing a similar crackdown in Deir El-Zor, where a quarter of its 500,000 inhabitants have fled the city.

 The sudden harshness of the criticism lies in the fact that in the undeclared competition between Iran and Turkey over Syria, Iraq had tipped the balance against Turkey. Davotuglu’s 61st trip to Damascus in the last six years is meant to verify if this is the end of the Turkish-Syrian honeymoon or if it can still be saved and at what price.

 The U.S. and western Europe are skeptical about Davotuglu’s mission. They believe Assad has exhausted his right to the benefit of the doubt and he should no longer get away unpunished with murdering his people.

 Turkey and the West were also alarmed by reports Lebanon’s Hezbollah and members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards shot and killed Syrian army soldiers who tried to defect to Lebanon.

 The Iraqi change of policy toward Syria began last July when, under Iranian pressure, Assad supported the renomination of Nouri el-Maliki as Iraq’s prime minister. Maliki promised a Syrian commercial delegation that, like Iran, he will send Iraqi oil to Syria at a very reduced price. Together with other economic benefits, Iraq’s "donation" to Syria could total US$10 billion. In the long run, Iraq also intends to reactivate its Kirkouk-Banias oil pipeline instead of the current Kirkouk-Turkey line.

 There is also the "religious colour" of the regimes in both Syria and Iraq. Bashar Assad is an Alaouite, a sect of Shiite Islam, which also rules Iraq and Iran. The end of Bashar Assad’s regime would most likely bring a Sunni Muslim to power in Damascus.

 Finally, during the current Syrian crisis, Iraq — unlike Turkey — closed its borders to Syrian refugees, thus forcing them to choose between surrender to Assad or death.

 This new development in Iraqi-Syrian relations is a source of concern not only to the Persian Gulf countries, but also to Jordan and Israel. It also undermines American security interests in the Persian Gulf. If consolidated, this rapprochement would create a direct link between Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

This sudden Iraqi-Syrian rapprochement comes at a very critical moment for the Obama administration. At the end of the current year, the U.S. is to evacuate all of its troops from Iraq. Negotiations for keeping 12,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq to train the Iraqi army are not successful yet. Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki consulted with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who opposed such a program. Iranian Shiite ally in Iraq, Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Shiite militia is equipped and trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, threatened violence against a continued presence of American troops on Iraqi soil.

 In such an alarming situation, could anyone blame Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries for their grave concerns?

 Samuel Segev is the Free Press Middle East correspondent.