Striking the right balance between advancing democracy and securing law and order in Fertile Crescent countries such as Syria, Lebanon and Iraq has become the priority for peace and prosperity in the entire Arab region. The United States is key, all Arab pundits concur. One of the biggest gripes is that the Sunni-Shia divide is causing a broader concern that is engulfing the entire region. Confessionalism must be brought under control. Yet, there are oases of hope. “Amid the chaos in Syria, Al-Qalamoun, a region in the Syrian mountains near the Lebanese border, is a model for peaceful coexistence,” reports Tarek Al-Abed in the Lebanese daily Assafir. Claire Chakar, however, begs to differ. “Druze leaders on each side of the Syrian conflict have met with top officials in Riyadh and Damascus to affirm support for their respective sides,” Chakar writes in Assafir. Some quibble whether Chakar's opinion was influenced by Lebanese domestic politics or local lobbying. In an op-ed entitled “Hizbullah's true colours revealed,” Mshari Al-Zaydi, Saudi journalist and expert on Islamic movements and Islamic fundamentalism, wrote in the London-based Pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat that Lebanon's Hizbullah has cemented the image that some of its supporters in the Islamic world have tried so hard to deny, namely that of Hizbullah as Khomeinist Iran's iron fist. We are talking about the image of Hizbullah as the obedient lap-dog of velayat-e faqih Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, rather than the symbol of Lebanese resistance. “This is no longer the party that would cross swords with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Arab nationalists, particularly the Nasserites, from the Red Sea to the Arab Gulf,” Al-Zaydi extrapolates. “Every critic of Hizbullah, particularly over the group's ties to the Khomeinist Iranian project, would face counter accusations of being agents of the Americans and Zionists.” “Hizbullah is blatantly interfering in the war currently raging in Syria, particularly the battles taking place in border villages in the Al-Qusayr region. In fact, former Hizbullah secretary-general Sobhi Al-Tufayli acknowledged that the group is involved throughout Syria. This is something that Moez Al-Khatib has brought to the attention of current Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, emphasising the deceit of the resistance. He stressed that the resistance slogan is nothing more than an empty political mantra that is used for propaganda purposes and to manipulate Arab and Islamic sentiments.” “Hizbullah has been shown to be nothing more than a mere tool of the mullahs in Tehran, promoting the lies of the resistance while condemning all those who have refused to fall for this charade,” Al-Zaydi postulates. In an article entitled “Political Islam in name only,” Hussein Shobokshi, who hosts the weekly current affairs programme Al-Taqreer on the Dubai-based Pan-Arab satellite television channel Al-Arabiya, warned against the dangers of mixing politics and religion. “Several politicians and analysts are trying to look closely and accurately into the state of confusion, tension and failure that has characterised the experience of the ruling political groups and parties in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, ever since the outbreak of the Arab Spring revolutions. Perhaps the most important and dangerous trait that all these political groups share is their “exclusionary” nature. They have failed to accommodate different segments of society and represent them all, particularly at a highly sensitive time following on from the violent and impassioned uprisings,” Shobokshi admonished. “As a result, once in power, they took on a retaliatory form, further intensifying the state of fragmentation and fuelling mistrust within society,” he lamented. “Islam's discourse on politics in general is somewhat shallow. While we can find dozens of volumes and books on purity, worship, and other issues, there are very few books on “political fiqh”, and a clear lack of scholarly consensus. This means that we must use much discretion when talking about political Islam; no one alone can claim a full understanding, and no one should be able to impose this understanding upon others,” Shobokshi observed. “When one chooses to represent religion in the political domain, he must entail a greater moral responsibility because a huge amount of harm can be caused by his failure. Numerous examples of this can be seen in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, with a prevailing atmosphere of disappointment and frustration,” Shobokshi concluded. “The US is not the only party claiming to have evidence that Assad's regime has transported or used chemical weapons: Britain, France, Israel and the Syrian opposition also claim to have such evidence. Of course, we should not forget that the regime itself has accused the opposition of using chemical weapons; neither should we forget the regime's refusal to allow a United Nation's team to enter Syria to conduct investigations,” expounds Tarek Al-Homayed in Asharq Al-Awsat. “Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad has now crossed every red line, according to United States President Obama's yardstick. We must remember that killing is killing, whether it is by plane or bomb or chemical weapons, and Assad's regime has committed a variety of atrocities against its own people,” Al-Homayed stipulates. “So what will President Obama do with Assad, now that he has broken the rules of the game? Will the US president continue to hesitate and avoid taking decisive action against Assad's crimes, and thus lose his credibility? Does the US administration even understand the seriousness of what Al-Assad has done?” he asks. “Some will point out that Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against the Kurds, and was not punished at the time even though it was a crime by all standards. However, had Saddam been punished, Al-Assad would not have dared to commit such an attack today,” Al-Homayed concludes. Amir Taheri was the executive editor-in-chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran from 1972 to 1979. He has worked at or written for innumerable publications, published eleven books, and has been a columnist for Asharq Al-Awsat since 1987. “Washington's circular argument on Iran and the bomb” noted that “in Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Bashar Al-Assad's Syria, nuclear capabilities were bombed out of existence in the early stages of the conflicts. In one case, Libya, the nuclear project was abandoned thanks to pressure and promises from the United States and the European Union,” Taheri expounds. “Right now, eight nations have acknowledged nuclear arsenals. They are the United States, China, Russia, France, Britain, India, Pakistan and Israel. A ninth one, North Korea, has a burgeoning, although no less deadly, capability. North Korea is a glaring example of the failure of preemption in dealing with nations with nuclear ambitions,” Taheri notes. “Then we have a batch of 32 nations that have the money and the science needed to develop a nuclear arsenal but have never wanted to do so,” Taheri drops a bombshell. “Initially signed by only 11 nations 45 years ago, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT] now boasts the adherence of virtually all 194 members of the United Nations,” Taheri said. “However, the only thing that is unlikely ever to run out is time, if only because there is always a day after tomorrow. What could run out is the relevance of any talks with Iran. Once the Khomeinist regime has obtained the means to produce a nuclear arsenal, there would be no point to the current talks — which are about preventing Iran from hitting that threshold.” Raghida Dergham in Al-Hayat notes that Washington must assume a more responsible policy towards the Middle East. “US Secretary of State John Kerry has dispelled some of the ambiguity surrounding the second Obama administration's policy towards Syria during his European tour this week, and his meetings with European Foreign Ministers as well as with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov,” Dergham postulated. “In parallel to this, in Kazakhstan's former capital Almaty, the Obama administration also clarified its position regarding Iran during the round of talks concerning its nuclear issue, between Iran and the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany. The outcome, very briefly, was that Obama has in his second term reinforced the policy of dialogue under any circumstances, whether it leads to the results sought-after or not, and that he has taken the decision to hand over leadership on the Syrian issue to both Moscow and Tehran, each in its own way,” observed Dergham. “What Iran's skillful policy has done is that it has engaged in “counter-containment” at the start of the second Obama administration's term in office through the language of optimism and of positively responding to flexibility, as expressed by Iran's Foreign Minister. Indeed, Tehran knows exactly what it wants from Washington, and is perfectly well aware of what Washington does not want from Iran under Obama,” Dergham concludes. “The United States has ambiguously opened the door to the issue of the use of chemical weapons in Syria. Indeed, neither has it confirmed that they had been used beyond possible doubt, nor has it denied it beyond possible interpretation. This makes the recent uproar over this issue merely a new way to kill time, as well as an unoriginal exploitation of events that are of exceptional importance.”
