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Syria and Iran

This contradicts years of “expert analysis” by the Middle East editor of the BBC and others, and suggests President Bush and the neo-cons were right in their analysis that the people of Syria are less interested in opposing Israel and the United States, and more interested in gaining freedom from the regimes in Iran, Russia […]

This contradicts years of “expert analysis” by the Middle East editor of the BBC and others, and suggests President Bush and the neo-cons were right in their analysis that the people of Syria are less interested in opposing Israel and the United States, and more interested in gaining freedom from the regimes in Iran, Russia and China which help prop up the Assad dictatorship in Damascus. ~Tom Gross on Syrians’ burning of Iranian, Russian, and Chinese flags

Via Daniel Halper

It’s hardly surprising that Syrian protesters are expressing hostility to Russia, China, and Iran. Russia, China, and Iran are lending support to Syria in different ways while it is engaged in its brutal crackdown. This has everything to do with the protesters’ opposition to Assad and his regime. Until the Syrian government began violently suppressing protests earlier this year, there was no reason for Syrians to express hostility to these other governments, because as far as Syrians were concerned these governments were not directly hostile to their aspirations. The protesters understandably see any government that they perceive as lending aid to Assad and his regime to be their enemies, and they’re not wrong to view them as such. Iranian protesters in 2009 did the same thing when they changed the usual regime-sponsored chants into chants of “death to Russia” and “death to China.” Protesters against repressive regimes frequently direct their ire at perceived foreign sponsors of their oppressors, as Americans should understand only too well at this point, and we should be wary of reading anything more into it than this. Needless to say, there was no “expert analysis” of this question in the past, because we haven’t seen a large-scale protest movement in Syria of this kind before. “Bush and the neocons” were among the last to believe that Syria could be separated from Iran, and they had no notion that Syrians would one day be burning Iranian flags.

It would be quite wrong and misguided to conclude from this that Syrian protesters are burning Iranian flags because they object to Iranian foreign policy in the region or that they are repudiating the “resistance” position that has linked Syria and Iran in the past. What we can conclude from this is that Syrian protesters understand the role these other governments have in backing Assad and protecting him from U.N. sanctions, and they are understandably angry about it. The one thing that could drive Syria and Iran apart in the future, as I have said before, is resentment on the part of a post-Assad Syrian government that Iran was aiding Assad in his crackdown. Much of that depends on how representative anti-Iranian Syrian protesters are and on whether Assad and his regime remain in power.

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