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Syria’s Assad aims to reassure on visit to Iran

01 October 2010 20:19 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad visits Iran on Saturday on a trip aimed at reassuring Iranian leaders that the alliance between the two countries is solid despite Syria’s improved relations with the United States, APA reports quoting â€œReutersâ€.
The official Syrian news agency said Assad will meet Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other officials to discuss "the exceptional ties" between the two countries and the latest international developments.
The visit comes less than a week after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem in New York. Assad had earlier met George Mitchell, President Barack Obama’s Middle East envoy, who is now trying to save Palestinian-Israeli peace talks from collapse.
One main objective of the U.S. rapprochement toward Damascus, which began after Obama took power last year, is to drive a wedge between Syria’s secular ruling hierarchy and Iran’s religious Shi’ite rulers, analysts say.
The United States also wants Syria to distance itself from Iranian-backed Lebanese Shi’ite group Hezbollah.
A U.S. official said after the Clinton-Moualem meeting that Syria was "very interested" in renewing peace talks with Israel as part of a Middle East settlement pursued by Washington.
But Washington, the official said, was concerned about "Syria’s activities inside Lebanon" and its relationship with Hezbollah, which Washington accuses Damascus of arming with the help of Iran in contravention of a United Nations resolution.
Thabet Salem, a Syrian journalist and political commentator, said talks between Syria and Washington will worry Iran less if Iranian-U.S. ties become less hostile.
"The Syrians have made it clear that Damascus’ ties with the United States are theirs only to handle," Salem told Reuters.
While Iran has strongly criticized the U.S.-sponsored peace talks, Syria has kept its objections low key.
Syria has also taken a softer stance toward Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the last several months and is hosting a second round of talks between Hamas and Abbas’ Fatah faction this month to try to narrow a schism between the two groups.
HEZBOLLAH LYNCHPIN
But Hezbollah remains the lynchpin of Syria’s alliance with Iran, having acted as a formidable proxy force in conflicts with Israel -- most recently in a 2006 war -- and strengthening the strategic position of its Syrian and Iranian patrons.
A Damascus-based diplomat said neither Syria nor Iran want to see Hezbollah compromised by a domestic row over an international tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of Lebanon’s former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri.
Hezbollah officials said the tribunal could indict some of the group’s members, tainting its credibility, and hinted that an indictment could plunge Lebanon into renewed instability.
"Syria does not want Lebanon to go haywire and Iran does not want Hezbollah weakened by domestic conflicts as a force against Israel," the diplomat told Reuters.
The alliance with Tehran dates to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when Syria cultivated Iranian-backed clerics in neighboring Lebanon and was the only Arab country that supported Iran in its 1980-1988 war with Iraq.
Iraq has been the focus of the talks between Assad and Ahmadinejad on the two trips the Iranian president has made to Syria this year. The two leaders are expected to discuss the Iraqi government crisis again during Assad’s visit.