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Triple....
April 17, 2011
Syria Heading from Bad to Worse By Neil Snyder
Typical newspaper readers and those with untrained eyes probably read past the report on Monday that Syrian Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammad Riad Shaqfa declared support for anti-Assad protesters in Syria. Likewise, they probably failed to grasp the significance of a report on Tuesday that Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, said that the protests in Syria are the result of a plot by Americans and Zionists -- that's Jewish people in general and Israeli Jews in particular.
Syria is a Muslim country, but it's not an Islamist state. Bashar al-Assad, Syria's president, is a Muslim, but he's not a Sharia law aficionado. Even so, he has allowed Hamas, Hezb'allah, the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic Jihad, and other radical Islamist groups to set up field headquarters in Damascus, Syria's capital. Syria is a resource-poor country and a country that is still technically at war with Israel. Assad thinks that he's using these Islamist groups as leverage to maintain influence in Lebanon and to keep pressure on Israel, but the worm has turned. Iran has assumed the leadership position in the dark world of radical Islam, and Iran is using these and other Islamist groups to dislodge non-Islamist Arab leaders -- including Bashar al-Assad -- throughout the Middle East and North Africa.
Under the best of circumstances, Islamists can't be trusted. Lying is as natural to them as breathing is to normal humans. They don't even trust each other, and if it were not for the fact that they view Israel as their common enemy, they would fight among themselves until the bitter end. Bashar al-Assad, like his father before him, knows these things, and still he opened his arms to radical Islamists, believing as he does that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Iran is a game changer. The Iranians came to the party with a strong military, oil, money to burn (and radical Islamists love money), and a lust for transforming the world into a caliphate under Sharia law. From the radical Islamist groups' perspective, it makes perfect sense to dump Assad and embrace Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
That explains what's happening in Syria, but what about the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman's remark about Americans and Zionists? Does he honestly believe that these groups are responsible for the unrest in Syria? The answer is a resounding "no." Why? It's because Iran is stoking the fires in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen, Jordan, and Syria. From Iran's perspective, Assad was a good partner as long as radical Islamist splinter groups were relatively weak, but when they became stronger and more beholden to Iran, ditching Assad was a no-brainer.
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