One should take note of the flood of American, European, western, regional and Arab statements that talk about civil war in Syria. Some are made in the form of warnings, some are predictions, while a third group deals with the matter as a foregone conclusion. If the developments on the ground and the news of sectarian clashes in neighborhoods of Homs that have led to population transfers have made it easier to make such statements, the behavior of the Syrian regime has done exactly the same. For those who follow the complicated nature of the domestic Syrian scene, President Bashar Assad's comments that he will fight to the end are being understood only as the regime's lack of concern that a hard-line position by the regime against its opponents, and against the solutions and proposals to begin a transitional process, will lead to this civil war, and that the Syrian leadership will hold on to power until the end. These statements were preceded by reports that quoted leading figures in this leadership, who said that whatever the pressure exerted on them, and no matter how successful they were, the leadership will dig in until the end in areas where it enjoys a special level of influence, in order to confront other areas where its influence might wane. If these leaks by visitors to the Syrian capital are true, it means that the Syrian leadership is in turn moving toward a period of total civil war. This could represent a full awareness of the situation, and not just a slide toward civil war because of miscalculating the consequences resulting from an insistence on "crushing" the popular insurrection. However, what is more alarming, after the expectations and western warnings of a civil war, is that they are closer to implicit "wishes" on the part of influential countries. Why might a civil war become an option for these western states, just as it is an option for which the regime is pushing? The western warnings and predictions coincide with stances by influential countries ruling out foreign intervention, which is rejected by the opposition, that takes the form of direct military involvement. This led to the impression that western countries agreed with what was said by the leaders of the regime, namely that Syria was not Libya, and that they truly acted differently toward the crisis compared to their behavior vis-à-vis- Libya. This leads to the conclusion that refraining from foreign intervention means that outside parties are "washing their hands" of doing anything that prevents civil war. There is a hidden conviction in western decision-making circles that rests on two policy orientations: the first is that the Arab Spring, which spread to Syria, requires the west to deal positively with events, while the second is that the United States and its allies, including Israel, are more inclined to confront Iranian influence in the "arc" stretching from Tehran to Baghdad, Damascus and South Lebanon. In light of the difficulty of waging a war against Iran to halt its nuclear program, confronting Iran's influence requires disassembling the components of this arc, by feeding the "gangrene| in the center, or in the nucleus, which links these components to the arc, namely Syria, in order to weaken Iran's regional expansion. Since this policy is not a secret to the Iranian leadership, Tehran has accelerated its nuclear program, before the likely success of this western policy; the West then accelerated its accusations that Iran is trying to acquire nuclear weapons, to speed up the issuing of further sanctions against the Islamic Republic. Isn't the "gangrene" represented by this civil war, which will have an impact on the entire region, especially Lebanon and Iraq, and serve as an alternative to foreign intervention in Syria or a war against Iran? Washington is moving toward other priorities, imposed by a series of its failures in the region, and economic conditions, to focus on its strategic interests in Asia and the Indian Ocean. The Arab League's initiative on the Syrian crisis was a serious attempt to avoid the scenario of civil war in Syria. The Arab political order sought other mechanisms to confront the arc of Iranian influence, by employing a flexibility that closed the door to Tehran's using its regional cards: signing the Gulf Cooperation Council initiative for Yemen, the investigation into violence in Bahrain, based on which the authorities promised to undertake measures and reforms, and speeding up an inter-Palestinian reconciliation in Cairo. These steps allowed the Arab order to busy itself with trying to ensure the success of a formula for the political process in Syria, with no pressure from Iran, or of the specter of civil war, which western countries don't seem to mind taking place.
