The colonial nature of Syria-Iran relations

Iranian officials’ recent comments on the Syrian crisis gave a clear indication about the colonial nature of the relations between Syria and Iran. It gets clearer every day that the Syrian regime is involved in Iran's regional strategy, Assad’s regime is actually an obedient follower of Iran's rulers. If anybody has doubts about this he can go back to the latest comments of General Hassan Fayrouz Abadi, Iran's army Chief of Staff, who said that the war taking place in Syria is "Iran's war". I found this obvious as the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime will subsequently mean the Syrian people will be free from Iran's control. What is good about this comment is that it can't be denied as it was published by Iran's state-run news agency, IRNA.  Lebanese Christian MP Michel Aoun, a former commander of the Lebanese army, will need no international investigators to confirm that Iran is directly involved in the war launched by the Syrian regime against its own people, or to confirm the presence of Iranian military experts in Lebanon, whose task is to provide military aids to the Syrian regime through the Lebanon. However, Iran doesn't really need to have direct military presence in Lebanon or even Syria as long as Hezbollah – which is almost a division of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Forces, is still doing its mission effectively. How did the Syrian regime become so closely connected to Iran? Was this the real nature of their relation during the mandate of the late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad? I believe that a considerable change occurred in the Syria-Iran relations after Bashar president. This change was due to Bashar's lack of experience in dealing with the regional politics in the Middle East, as well as his support of Hezbollah. These two factors made him fail to realise the redlines which his father used to respect, particularly in south Lebanon. Israel had no problem in the past with the Lebanese army's struggle the area as long as their activity would help Israel appear as a persecuted country by uncontrollable gunmen. The Israelis didn't care whether those gunmen were Palestinians or Lebanese belonging to the Iran-controlled Hezbollah group. This situation was kept in south Lebanon until the war of 2006 followed by the UN Security Council resolution number 1701, which created new terms for regulating the situation in south Lebanon. Another development that has hugely affected the situation in Lebanon was the withdrawal of the Syrian army from Lebanon in April 2005, as a result of massive anti-Syrian regime protests that followed the assassination of late Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Not a single Lebanese wanted to see Syria pull out from Lebanon in such a shameful way and the Syrian regime relied on Iran to fill the void Syria left in Lebanon. This development eventually broke any balance in the relations between Syria and Iran. Syria's dependence on Iran was stronger than all the efforts made by its neighbouring countries to keep it out of Iran’s control. The attempts exerted by the Gulf states in particular in that regard were countless, but were vain as Syria gradually turned into an Iranian colony. General Abadi's comment that the war in Syria being Iran’s war summed up a fact we can no more deny, although this realisation came a little too late for some of the Arabs. As the Arabs can now understand that the alliance between Damascus and Tehran is meant to create sectarian rifts in the Arab region; these rifts will benefit Iran's regional interests. They should also realise that eliminating the Syrian regime will not only save the Syrian people from Iran's control, but it will also save the Arabs from a major Iranian threat. --- The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.