Rafsanjani in Damascus

[acmavm]

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/791/re5.htm

The tide has turned in the favour of Iran and Syria in the ongoing confrontation with Washington, writes Sami Moubayed

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Iran's former president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who now leads the powerful Expediency Council after his defeat in the presidential elections of 2005, has been making headlines on his four-day visit to Damascus. Injecting the Syrian regime with great confidence, he announced that "Iran and Syria are in the same boat," saying that the more the United States pressures Syria, the more Damascus and Tehran would come closer together.

This echoes the same line taken by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he visited Syria in January 2006 to thank President Bashar Al-Assad for visiting him in Tehran to congratulate him on winning the presidency in 2005. Both presidents clearly told Al-Assad not to worry. Rafsanjani met Al-Assad and visited the tomb of his father, the late Hafez Al-Assad, who was a good friend of the former Iranian president. He held private talks at the Iranian Embassy in Damascus with leaders of the Palestinian resistance based in Syria, including Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal, as well as Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah.

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Depending on who one talks to in this part of the world, the move is either a great leap forward or a disaster. Resistance movements in the Arab world, like Hamas and Hizbullah, as well as Arab nationalist regimes like Syria, have warmly embraced the development. Nasrallah described it as "a large moral boost to the resistance", while Meshaal added, "the Muslim world is proud that Tehran has acquired nuclear technology," a sentiment echoed by Syrian Prime Minister Mohamed Naji Al-Otari.

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This argument, which says that with evolution rather than revolution the Iranian regime would reform itself, is the one being toyed with by American decision- makers today. The Americans must reason that because of so much chaos in Iraq, the only solution they have in Iran is to engage in dialogue with Iranian leaders, about everything of mutual concern between them and not only about Iraqi affairs. The same, Rafsanjani is saying, should apply to Syria. Nobody can tolerate a new adventure in the Persian Gulf or the Arab world -- not even the Americans.

Syria should be reassured, Rafsanjani is saying.
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