Walid Phares: Second Warning: Assad in Tehran

By Walid Phares

Agence France Press. AFP. TEHRAN - Iran's new President Mahmood Ahmadinejad welcomed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Tehran on Sunday, vowing to strengthen ties between the two countries brought together by "shared threats."

"Syria represents the frontline of the Muslim nation, shared threats bring us together and make our cooperation even more necessary," Ahmadinejad said ahead of talks with the leader of Iran's leading Arab ally.

"Reinforcing our bilateral relations will protect the region against the threats of its enemies ... our enemies are trying to undermine this relationship," he said.

WALID PHARES: One week after Hizbollah's leadership visit to Tehran and his meeting with the new President of Iran, the Syrian regime's leader paid the same visit to the regional power seeking nuclear weapons, and reaffirmed the strategic alliance in the region. Back in 1992, I wrote for the periodical Global Affairs a study on the Syrian Iranian Alliance, which I baptized then as a "Axis." After 9/11 and the removal of Saddam Hussein, the Syrian-Iranian axis designed a joint strategy of obstruction to the rise of democracies.

Note that the Iranian and Syrian regimes as well as Hizbollah fear the march of Democracy in their neighborhood. All three are totalitarian in their ideologies. In the regional counter attack against the democratization of Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon, the three players have significant resources and reasons to come together: Iran is the Jihadi superpower, Hizbollah is the Jihadi Terror power and Syria's Baath is the bridge between both. Last week, and in the wake of the selection of Ahmedinijad as head of the Iranian state, Hizbollah's secretary general, Sayid Hassan Nasrallah is received almost as Lebanon's "real" President. Iran's Mullah promised all military and logistical assistance to the world A-team of Terrorism, to use US Senator Bob Graham's lexicon. Tehran since, is part of a "strategic open pact" with Hizbollah. This week, Assad of Syria arrives in Tehran: Same treatment. Read well: Any attack against Syria is an attack against -soon to be nuclear- Iran.

Assad in Tehran is the second warning to the policy planners within the beltway and to the NATO leadership in the Belgian capital: The axis has already formed. Iran, Syria, Hizbollah and their tactical allies in the region, including those in Iraq, have come together. Read their rhetoric: shared threat, frontline of Muslim nation, necessary cooperation, protecting the region against its enemies.. Any Political Scientist, Military Historian or common sense reader would conclude that the "axis" is up and running. Not only our national leaders and strategic planners have some thinking to do, but also our homeland(s) security analysts as well...

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