The tide has turned in the favour of Iran and Syria in the ongoing confrontation with Washington, writes Sami Moubayed Iran's former president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who now leads the powerful Expediency Council after his defeat in the presidential elections of 2005, has been making headlines on his four-day visit to Damascus. Injecting the Syrian regime with great confidence, he announced that "Iran and Syria are in the same boat," saying that the more the United States pressures Syria, the more Damascus and Tehran would come closer together. This echoes the same line taken by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he visited Syria in January 2006 to thank President Bashar Al-Assad for visiting him in Tehran to congratulate him on winning the presidency in 2005. Both presidents clearly told Al-Assad not to worry. Rafsanjani met Al-Assad and visited the tomb of his father, the late Hafez Al-Assad, who was a good friend of the former Iranian president. He held private talks at the Iranian Embassy in Damascus with leaders of the Palestinian resistance based in Syria, including Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal, as well as Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. On 11 April, shortly before Rafsanjani's Syria visit, Ahmadinejad spoke briefly on the anniversary of the Muslim Prophet Mohamed's birthday, saying: "I am officially announcing that Iran has joined the group of those countries that have nuclear technology." Iran had successfully enriched uranium, sending shockwaves throughout the international community and the Arab Gulf; meaning that it can now produce fuel for nuclear power or the fissile core of an atomic bomb. The US immediately replied that by doing so, Iran was moving "in the wrong direction". The Syrian press cheered, however, with Syrian websites reporting that President Al-Assad remarked that news of Iran's success in enriching uranium "had thrilled the hearts of Syrians". Depending on who one talks to in this part of the world, the move is either a great leap forward or a disaster. Resistance movements in the Arab world, like Hamas and Hizbullah, as well as Arab nationalist regimes like Syria, have warmly embraced the development. Nasrallah described it as "a large moral boost to the resistance", while Meshaal added, "the Muslim world is proud that Tehran has acquired nuclear technology," a sentiment echoed by Syrian Prime Minister Mohamed Naji Al-Otari. At a grassroots level in the Arab and Muslim world, including Syria, the masses are also pleased at Iran's success story, seeing it as a natural and much needed response to the US and Israel's double standards in dealing with Israel's nuclear programme. After all, here is Ahmadinejad -- a man who one year ago was a political nobody -- defying and challenging the United States. Washington does not really know what to do about him. Nor does Europe. Nor does the United Nations. Ahmadinejad is not playing the victim, like most Arabs have been doing since 1967. He insists that he is the victor in this undeclared war with America, speaking to Americans in the same defiant language they use when addressing him. With regard to Rafsanjani, Syrians are happy because the former president shows the world that Syria remains a regional power to be reckoned with -- one cannot be ignored, relative to Lebanon, Iraq or Palestine. His visit makes Syrians feel important, easing the isolation imposed on Syria by the United States since the assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister Rafik Al-Hariri in February 2005. Both he and Ahmadinejad give courage to Syria, showing that defiance pays off and does not always lead to defeat. The other part of this story that both Rafsanjani and Al-Assad observe with great pride that Hamas in Palestine is following a more principled path. Rafsanjani is a seasoned Iranian politician with great talent, vision and character. He has many tales to tell Syrians on how to survive their confrontation with Washington. Rafsanjani realises -- just as Ahmadinejad does -- that the Americans are not serious about going to war against Iran; nor are they serious about regime change in Syria. They also cannot isolate a country with Iran's size, power and surroundings. They simply need Iran for security in Iraq and Afghanistan, in as much as they need Syria for security in Lebanon and Iraq. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice outlined the new US policy towards Iran 15 February 2006. In the past, during the first tenure of President Bush, American policy had been to ignore and isolate Iran. Those suffering most from this policy, many Americans argue, have been the Iranian people, not the Iranian regime. The new policy, according to Rice, would be to differentiate between the Iranian regime and the Iranian people, engaging with Iranian leaders, rather than confronting them. Americans, from now on, would focus on reforming the Iranian regime. Ignoring the mullahs of Tehran would not make them go away; it would not make them more democratic or Western-friendly, but rather, increase their radicalisation. Strikes that do not topple the regime will only strengthen it. Meanwhile, military analysts say that Iran needs at least eight years before it can build a nuclear device. By the time it could develop a nuclear bomb, Iran would have had three presidential elections; the way things are going, it is likely that a new president, by then, would be a moderate politician, not a cleric driven by political Islam. After all, Iran today is not the same Iran that existed in the 1980s. Former presidents like Ali Khamenei, Mohamed Khatami and Rafsanjani were all clerics. Ahmadinejad is not. Iran is moving away from political Islam, although it remains dominant in the constitution and structure of government. The last presidential elections were not won because of political Islam; Ahmadinejad won because of promises of better housing, higher wages, better infrastructure and cheaper real estate. The necessities of day-to-day life would guarantee that the Iranians would vote for a candidate with reasonable and appealing promises -- not for clerics who have a track record of having "honourably served the Islamic Revolution". This argument, which says that with evolution rather than revolution the Iranian regime would reform itself, is the one being toyed with by American decision- makers today. The Americans must reason that because of so much chaos in Iraq, the only solution they have in Iran is to engage in dialogue with Iranian leaders, about everything of mutual concern between them and not only about Iraqi affairs. The same, Rafsanjani is saying, should apply to Syria. Nobody can tolerate a new adventure in the Persian Gulf or the Arab world -- not even the Americans. Syria should be reassured, Rafsanjani is saying.
