Bashar al-Assad's Scramble to Keep the Iraq War Alive

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — while working with Iran's clerics to initiate new crises and war with the US and Israel in order to galvanize their respective control of power — is desperately trying to keep the conflict alive in Iraq. To do this, he must keep his and Tehran's allies — Iraqi Pres. Talabani and Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki — in office, averting an anticipated coup attempt against them in September 2007.

Bashar's officials have been liaising almost daily with Maliki's key advisors behind the scenes, and Maliki visited Damascus after his Washington visit in August 2007. An Australian of Iraqi extraction, Gata’a al-Rakaby, who holds an Iraqi diplomatic passport and serves as an advisor to Maliki, has been a frequent visitor to Damascus, bringing with him substantial amounts of cash — all donated by the US taxpayers — to help support Bashar and his key officials.

Indeed, all that Bashar and the clerics have worked for these past few years could come crashing down if Maliki is replaced by a nationalist Iraqi leader, probably a general. This means that Bashar and the clerics will have to push for open conflict against the US and/or Israel in the very near future if they are to upset the apple cart. In the meantime, the situation inside Iraq is transforming rapidly, and not in the way that Tehran and Damascus would like: the Iraqi public is now resisting al-Qaeda Iraq (AQI) and even Tehran's onetime poster boy, Moqtada al-Sadr, is talking to the Americans.

Yet despite all this, the clerics and Bashar have as their best ally the US State Department and the former Secretary of State, James Baker, who push for "normalization" and "dialogue" with Bashar and the Iranian clerics. Will the State Department yet again save Bashar and the Iranian clerics who are his paymasters?