Crippled ahead of convening, the Arab summit in Damascus will be haunted by the confrontation between Iran and the US, writes Ayman El-Amir* A few days before the Arab summit convenes in Damascus on 29 March, Arab countries are still squabbling over whether to participate or not, and at what level of representation. Some including Lebanon, are sitting it out. At issue is whether participation at the level of kings, presidents or heads of state would suggest or could be interpreted as dignifying the hardline policies of the summit's host, Syria, by the axis of "moderates" baptised as such by the US and Western powers. Habitual divisions have marked previous Arab summits and were usually papered over by a convenient consensus on generalities. What is significant at this year's summit is the invisible appearance of two officially uninvited guests: the United States and Iran. Their phantom presence will surely overshadow proceedings. The presence of these two powers and their influence in the region is strongly felt, and their role in shaping Arab events is undeniable. Both are non-Arabs, both having vital interests in the region, and both are polarising in opposite directions. Arab countries are caught in this tug-of-war and their policies deeply reflect this diametrically opposed conflict of interests. On the one hand, the US invaded Iraq and reduced it to rubble on the claim of creating democracy. Some of Iraq's Gulf Arab neighbours, particularly Kuwait, were not unhappy to see their archenemy, Saddam Hussein, toppled regardless of the horrifying consequences. From another perspective, Gulf Arab states are comfortable with the massive American military presence on their territories as a sure fire protection against potential enemies that may eye their golden egg -- the oil wealth. Given that the threat of Saddam is no longer a factor, the US had to invent another one to justify its military presence for the protection of US oil interests in countries it does not trust. Shia Iran, with its budding nuclear programme, became a convenient scarecrow. Since the US, like Israel, knows no way of protecting its interests other than by way of military domination or bending insecure allies to its willpower, the rise of Iran and Syrian resistance against US- Israeli policies are intolerable. They had to be defined as the axis of evil as opposed to the "axis of the meek" that, in their most audacious articulations, regard US domination as that of a benign dictator. Syria and Iran are considered as lethal enemies because they support resistance to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and a sliver of Lebanon. What the US wants from the summit is to maintain the status quo borne out of the Annapolis conference last November, to forestall any rapprochement with Iran, to make bland statements about the Darfur problem and Iraq, without reference to the US occupation, to freeze the stillborn Arab peace initiative, to confront Iran, not Israel, as the genuine threat to stability in the region, to cut Hamas down in favour of the "legitimacy" of Mahmoud Abbas, and to isolate Syria as a pretext to advancing a phony peace process. On the other hand, Iran's growing influence over Gulf and Middle Eastern issues is a direct challenge to US and Israeli hegemony. Its support of the Palestinian people's struggle against the brutal Israeli occupation is unequivocal and its resistance to US-Israeli domination of the region is adamant. Iran, the fourth largest world oil producer, has a vital stake in the stability and security of the region, of which it is an integral part. Its interests are threatened by the US's destabilising invasion of Iraq, military presence in Gulf Arab states, and its blind support of Israeli terrorism against the Palestinians in the occupied territories. Iran and the Gulf Arab states have economic, political and cultural shared interests and common values more than they have with either the US or Israel. The US and Israel have worked hard to drum up fake Iranian threats to Gulf states and to fan the flames of Shia-Sunni conflict. This conflict was virtually unheard of until it was ignited in Iraq by the division plan of Paul Bremer, the first administrator of the US invasion. Despite his slapdash political statements against Israel and the US, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made the conciliatory gesture recently of paying an official, public visit to Iraq which, under the rule of Saddam Hussein and with US abetting, had fought his country for a decade resulting in nearly one million victims on both sides. His public visit was ludicrously imitated by US Republican presidential hopeful John McCain who, during a recent visit to Baghdad, dared to step out of the Green Zone, walk a heavily guarded, virtually evacuated Baghdad street and pose for a photo-op with a terrified Iraqi shop-keeper. In another friendly gesture, the Iranian president was invited to address the Arab Gulf Cooperation Council in December 2007 and was courteously welcomed in Doha. However, President Ahmadinejad is not likely be invited to the Arab summit lest such an invitation should rub the US the wrong way and give reason for "moderates" to boycott it. The US and Israel would be concerned at the prospect of any Arab-Iranian rapprochement that is not stage-managed by the US. Preparations for the Arab summit have confronted a good number of hurdles, ranging from suggestions for postponement to floated ideas about changing Damascus as the venue. These and anticipated lower-than-expected levels of representation by some Arab countries could only be interpreted as a reflection of US pressure on some "moderate" allies to signal displeasure at Syria's reluctance to encourage settlement of the issue of the Lebanese presidency. Syria, no doubt, has vested interest in Lebanon, just like many other regional and foreign powers. That explains how key figures of Lebanon's parliamentary majority have been flocking back and forth to Washington, Paris and London seeking support against other competitive nationalist forces. This has been a time- honoured Lebanese political tradition. Since its independence, Lebanon has been a free playground for all sorts of interests, both Arab and non-Arab, including Israel. Its leaders had no hesitancy to invite foreign military intervention to prop them up against their opponents, as President Camille Chamoun did in 1958 when he pleaded with US President Dwight D Eisenhower to send the Sixth Fleet to rescue his regime. The 15-year-long Lebanese civil war provided a free-for-all battlefield and the Lebanese people paid a hefty price. However, Lebanon remains the exclusive concern of the Lebanese people and until they develop a strong enough consensus on that, to the exclusion of all external powers, the US and Israel will continue to shadowbox Syria and Iran on Lebanese territory and the people of Lebanon will continue to suffer. In the heyday of shuttle diplomacy following the October 1973 war against the Israeli occupation of Sinai and the Golan Heights, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger used to say, "There is no war without Egypt, and no peace without Syria." There is still a half-truth in that. Egypt opted out of the armed conflict 29 years ago and regained Sinai as part of a peace package. Now that Egypt has been militarily neutralised, Israel, backed by the US, is exercising full military options in the region against Lebanon and the Palestinian population in the occupied territories without having to worry about Egyptian or any other regional military intervention. Israel wanted peace with Egypt to get it out of the conflict and exercise military hegemony over the region. This remained the case for almost 25 years; that is, until the rise of Iran as a military power that could challenge the Israeli-dominated balance of power. While Israel has used every Nazi tactic under the sun to crush and liquidate the Palestinian population, all the Arabs have done has been to utter infrequent bleats to the US which they know full well is on the side of whatever Israel wants to do -- from building a racist wall of separation to constructing new settlements on Palestinian land. And they will keep hoping that the next administration will be more just to the Palestinians than all the previous administrations, starting with that of Harry S Truman in the mid-1940s. The four-month-old Lebanese presidential vacuum will top the agenda of the summit because of the interests of the external powers involved. The internal Palestinian dispute and the confrontation with Israel will be marked, again, by some rhetorical statements and appeals to the US and the European Union, code-named "the international community". Few, if any, will remember last year's summit decision to set up and activate an "Arab Quartet" that would put the Palestinian problem and Israeli occupation on top of the agendas of international meetings. Conventional Arab wisdom that the issue will have to await the outcome of the US presidential elections will prevail. Then it will have to wait on yet another Israeli election. Israel has politely turned down Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's invitation for a follow-up conference in Moscow to the US- sponsored Annapolis conference last year. The two main Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, who spent one week in negotiation in Sanaa to mend their rift, finally signed off on an agreement that the government of President Mahmoud Abbas soon repudiated, claiming that the leader of the Fatah delegation, Azzam Al-Ahmed, had no authority to sign it. It would seem that to President Abbas the confrontation with Hamas is more important than stemming the flow of Palestinian blood. To top it all, US Vice-President Dick Cheney, the arch- architect of the war on Iraq, left the region after conferring with some key Arab allies to whom he made US priorities abundantly clear. His admonitions will not be lost on participants in the summit. * The writer is former Al-Ahram correspondent in Washington, DC. He also served as director of United Nations Radio and Television in New York.
