Syria is the only Middle East
regime allied with Iran (although Iran's influence in Iraq is rising). Located
between Iraq to the east and Lebanon and the Mediterranean to the west, Syria
is a conduit for Iranian influence in Lebanon and Palestine, and imperialist
strategists talk of the possibility of Iranian influence stretching through
Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to the Mediterranean.
"Iran sees the Syrian government
as the front line of defense against the United States and Israel," Foreign
Affairs reports. "So Tehran is sparing no expense to help its ally fend off
popular protests." ("How Iran Keeps Assad in Power in Syria" snapshot, Geneive
Abdo, August 25, 2011)
For these same reasons, the U.S.
and its allies see overthrowing Assad as both removing a troublesome ruler and
a crucial means of isolating and weakening the Islamic Republic of Iran--either
as part of collapsing the regime short of war or preparing for war. (And taking
down the Assad regime would change the military balance in the region and limit
Iran's ability to retaliate against a U.S. and/or Israeli attack.)
The conflict with Iran is
increasingly driving and shaping all U.S. policy in the region. This is one
reason why, after refraining from demanding that Assad step down for the first
five months of the uprising, the U.S. shifted its position and calls for more
forceful intervention in Syria to weaken and surround Iran continue to grow.
Danielle Pletka of the American
Enterprise Institute, a right-wing think tank, spelled out some of the
imperialists' logic: "Syria is the soft underbelly of Iran, Tehran's most
important ally, conduit for arms and cash to terrorists.... A unique confluence
of American moral purpose and America's strategic interest argue for
intervention in Syria.... It's time to start arming the Free Syrian Army."
("Obama must do something tangible for Syria," February 8, 2012)
Islamist forces like Hamas in
Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon--those Pletka labels "terrorists"--and most
especially the Islamic Republic of Iran represent oppressive political forces
who do not pose a fundamental challenge to global capitalism-imperialism.
However, their aims and ambitions clash sharply with those of the U.S. and
Israel in the region. These Islamist forces have grown in strength over the
last several decades because of the 1979 Iranian revolution and subsequent
Iranian support, but more fundamentally because of how the criminal U.S. and
Israeli assaults on the region's people have fueled anti-U.S. Islamic
fundamentalism.
A former director of Israel's
intelligence service Mossad wrote in the New York Times that bringing down the
Assad regime would result in a "strategic debacle for the Iranian government,"
by cutting off its "access to its proxies (Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in
Gaza) and visibly dent its domestic and international prestige, possibly
forcing a hemorrhaging regime in Tehran to suspend its nuclear policies."
("Iran's Achilles' Heel," Efraim Halevy, February 7, 2012)
The resolution Senator John
McCain introduced on March 28 argued for arming the Syrian rebels, because the
"fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime would represent "the biggest strategic
setback for Iran in 25 years.'"
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