Damascus-Baghdad-Tehran Anti-American Axis Emerging

On August 13th, Middle East Newsline (MENL) reported that Iraq had offered Syria military assistance in any military confrontation with Israel. The report reinforces other media accounts that the two Baathist regimes had concluded a joint defense pact aimed not only against Israel and the United States, but against Turkey as well. The agreement came during a visit by Syrian Prime Minister Mustafa Miro to Baghdad, the first visit to Iraq in 20 years by such a high-ranking Syrian official.

One of the most important items on the agenda was an agreement to construct a new oil pipeline to carry Iraqi crude to the Mediterranean through Syrian territory, thereby undermining US-led sanctions against Iraq. The agreement also clearly indicates the Syrian response to US Secretary of State Colin Powell's request that Damascus not cooperate with Saddam Hussein. Driving this point home is the declaration of Miro's Iraqi counterpart in the negotiations, Vice President Yassin Ramadan, who said the two countries would sign "a long-term cooperation agreement in various economic, commercial and cultural agreements in order to improve their economic complimentarity."

The elaboration of the Damascus-Baghdad alliance is a ratification of several outstanding protocols between the two regimes that substantiates a new anti-Western, anti-US alliance system in the Middle East. This structure was first defined in the April 1999 IASPS Research Paper in Strategy No. 8, The Southern Eurasian Great Game. In that study, Institute Strategic Fellow P.M. Wihbey wrote:

"The emergence of a Damascus-Baghdad-Tehran axis was given credence by recent reports detailing initiatives with Baghdad to create an anti-US alliance system in the region. They included mechanisms for Syrian military support for Iraq in the event of a military confrontation with the United States; intelligence sharing; joint action against Turkish forces in northern Iraq; economic cooperation....The leadership of these three states seems intent upon creation of a new bloc whose primary goal is to alter the regional balance of power by reducing the influence of the US and its local allies."

The Syrian entente with Iraq reflects a regional war calculus in which the Palestinian assault on Israel is but the opening act of a larger play. The aim is to destroy US interests and influence in the region. It is apparent that the US-Israeli peace process serves these interests.

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