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| Clockwise from top: Assad with Iran's Ali Khamenei, Iraq's Nouri al-Maliki and Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah |
“The best defense is a good offense” is a popular saying in sports and
military combat.
For Iran, the idiom might also prove useful in politics to prop up its embattled
strategic ally in Damascus.
Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Lebanese Hezbollah leader
Hassan Nasrallah – both Shiites and unabashed surrogates of Shiite Iran – are
openly warning of regional sectarian conflict if Syria’s quasi-Shiite President
Bashar al-Assad is ousted.
In the words of Sarkis Naoum, the primary political analyst of Beirut’s
independent daily an-Nahar: “Nasrallah
and Maliki are bracing for civil wars.”
In an interview with The Associated Press (AP) released
yesterday, Maliki warned a victory for rebels in Syria would create a new
extremist haven and destabilize the wider Middle East, sparking Sunni-Shiite
wars in Iraq and Lebanon.
The implication of his
comments is that Assad’s ouster would empower Syria’s majority Sunni Muslims.
"If the world does
not agree to support a peaceful solution through dialogue... then I see no light
at the end of the tunnel," Maliki told AP
in Baghdad.
"Neither the
opposition nor the regime can finish each other off," he continued.
"The most dangerous thing in this process is that if the opposition is
victorious, there will be a civil war in Lebanon, divisions in Jordan and a
sectarian war in Iraq."
The Iraqi leader's
comments come as his government confronts growing tensions of its own between
the Shiite majority and an increasingly restive Sunni minority nearly a decade
after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
The war in Syria has
sharp sectarian overtones too, with predominantly Sunni rebels fighting a
regime dominated by an Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
Nasrallah also warned yesterday
against Shiite-Sunni infighting in Lebanon related to the Syria war.
"There are some
who are working night and day and pushing the country toward civil and
religious strife, and specifically Sunni-Shiite strife," Nasrallah said on
the group's Al-Manar TV. If this were
to happen, he said, it would "destroy everyone and burn down the entire
country."
Nasrallah denied
accusations by the Syrian opposition that his men were fighting alongside
forces loyal to the Assad regime, and reiterated that some Shiites in villages
along the Lebanese-Syrian border, including Hezbollah members, have taken up
arms in self-defense against Sunni gunmen. (Nasrallah’s
views have been publicly challenged by Hezbollah’s first Secretary-General Subhi
al-Tufayli -- see my post yesterday, “The
other face of Hezbollah”).
Officials and analysts
say there is real anxiety within Hezbollah that if Assad falls, the militant
group might lose not only a crucial supply of Iranian weapons via Syria but
also political clout inside Lebanon, where it currently reigns supreme.
Editorially,
an-Nahar’s Sarkis Naoum writes in his
column today:
ON ONE HAND we have the
Euro-American approach to the Syrian revolution, which is to starve it of serious
military backing in order to keep the regime in place.
Most Western military experts
concur the regime could have been brought down last year had the
revolutionaries been supplied with antitank and antiaircraft weapons and
logistics equipment.
From this perspective,
decision-makers in the West do not mind the fighting continuing to (1) destroy
united Syria and hearten Israel (2) drain Iran financially, militarily and
morally and implicate its Lebanese offshoot Hezbollah in the killing of Syrians
(3) ingather as many Arab and non-Arab Jihadists on Syrian soil, where they can
be easily monitored, then killed there and elsewhere.
ON ANOTHER HAND is the
Iran-led regional alliance fighting full-strength in Syria to avoid losing
Iran’s “Jewel in the Crown.”
Maliki, offspring of Iran’s
cherished Islamic
Dawa Party, warns that a Syrian revolution victory will trigger wars in
Iraq and Lebanon. Therein lies a cloaked warning to internal Lebanese and Iraqi
sides that (1) they would be made to pay for Assad’s fall (2) the Shiite surge
will fight tooth and nail in Lebanon and Iraq to preclude turning back the
hands of time.
Maliki means to say (1) Iraq’s
Shiites will fight to keep the upper hand in Iraqi politics and security (2)
Hezbollah won’t hold back from waging an internal war to prevent putting back
the Shiite jinni in the bottle from which it emerged a few years ago.
Maliki’s comments join
Nasrallah’s discourse yesterday, when the Hezbollah leader dwelt on the matter
of “sedition,” telling his adversaries in Lebanon, “Beware misestimating us.”
In other words, the post-Assad
chapter is the subject of serious thinking between Iran’s satellites in Iraq
and Lebanon.
They are warning of civil wars
here and there if the Iraqis or Lebanese tried to exploit Assad’s fall and capitalize
on the rise of a regime hostile to Iran’s regional politics...
