Libya yesterday, Syria today and Iran tomorrow

Syria has commenced redeploying its Lebanon-based troops on Sept 21, while trying to avoid the appearance of buckling, under pressure from the United States. Damascus is signaling both Israel and Washington that it is ready to do business. If this process leads to a significant policy change on the part of the al Assad regime, it will represent yet another foreign policy dividend of the Bush administration, after its rapprochement with Libya.
More than 1,000 of the some 20,000 Syrian troops based in Lebanon began dismantling their bases near Beirut to redeploy closer to the Syrian border or to leave the country altogether, a Lebanese official announced on Sept 21. The redeployment is scheduled for completion in a few days.

With this massive redeployment, Syrian President Bashar al Assad is indicating to Israel and the United States that he is ready to strike a deal that could lead to the complete withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon.
This could signal Damascus’ willingness to stand down from its non-cooperative stance toward the United States -- yet another example of the geopolitical shift in the region resulting from the coercive machinations of the US. The US has pressurized Syria, not only to pull its troops from Lebanon; but also to curb cross-border infiltrations from Syria into Iraq and end Syrian sponsorship of militant Palestinian groups.

The timing of this move is telling also in that it comes a week after Arab member states from the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council and Jordan made it clear they want Damascus to comply with the U.S.-sponsored U.N. Security Council resolution 1559, which called on Syrian troops to withdraw from Lebanon. The recent surprise trip to Damascus by Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak also possibly, induced /accelerated a change in Syrian policy toward its military presence in Lebanon.

The redeployment indicates to all stakeholders that, Damascus is ready to engage in negotiations and no longer will insist on rigid conditions. However, the move by Mubarak and al Assad to link a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon to an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights and the West Bank clearly means that Syria will drive a hard bargain.

This move further strengthens the US President Bush as Election Day nears and also increases pressure on Syria’s ally, Iran.

But this is not all; it will be enlightening to examine the issue in a broader perspective. Exploiting the event of 9/11, the neo-con junta in the White House, accelerated the implementation of its agenda of global domination through the physical control of the Middle Eastern oil resources and simultaneously, obliterate the threat to Israel’s security. The so-called “war against terror” was chosen as a convenient alibi.

The solution was to pick a single country and beat the tar out of it, and then use it as a base to pressure the other countries. The strategic formulation was, that having a few U.S. tank divisions on the borders of uncooperative states would intimidate them enough to do the United States’ work for it.
For a variety of reasons, Iraq was chosen: Iraq had the 2nd largest reserve of oil; it was a military threat to Israel; Iraqi oil in the US control would degrade the Saudi pre-eminence in the global oil market; with US forces both in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran would be in a grip of a military pincer. And of course not to forget, that Iran and Iraq were part of the original “axis-of-evil”.
Fearing the consequences of another US attack, Libya buckled under the US pressure and renounced its pursuit of nuclear weapons program in 2003. The growing U.S.-Libyan partnership promises to make Libya into a major regional power with U.S. backing—to further US interests.

Syrian troop movement indicates that Damascus is also flirting with joining the Yankee dance.

The next target of overt or covert US coercion is Iran; although isolated, Iran is still defiant.

On Sept 21, Iranian announced that in defiance of International Atomic Energy Agency requests, the country had begun converting its uranium stocks into uranium hexafluoride. In short, Iran has just embarked on the first step of the final stage of a nuclear weapons program.

Iran is not insipid; it is not trying to get itself attacked. It views its nuclear program nearly identically to the way North Korea does: as a card to be played at the negotiating table for maximum benefit. Iran’s desired outcome is a pro-Iranian -- or at least Iran-neutral -- Iraq on its western border. It sees every step it takes as upping the ante and giving itself more leverage.
But with the enrichment process now going on, the line between Iran having a great card to play and being a nuclear power is becoming blurred from the US viewpoint.

Libya was yesterday, Syria is today, and Iran could be tomorrow. Now that Iran is actively moving forward with its enrichment program, that "tomorrow" could be more literal than we know.