What is happening in Syria is frightening, painful and ugly. Seven thousand people have been killed and the regime continues to repress its people, as if they are public enemy number one. Russia continues in a position that is unfathomable, except that it is determined to recover its past glory as a superpower, seeking to block the work of the United Nations Security Council. Will Morocco succeed, with the support of leading Arab countries, in obtaining support for the Arab draft resolution passed by the Arab League, and rejected by Syria? Such a murderous regime cannot continue to kill its people before the eyes of a world unable to stop the violence and repression, because of Russia. The fall of the Syrian regime will have a huge and fundamentally-important impact on the balance of power in the region, from Lebanon to Palestine and Iraq, for several reasons. In Palestine, Hamas has begun to change its stance; we have seen this in the recent visit by Khaled Meshaal to Jordan. In Lebanon, Hezbollah will be forced to resort to returning to a real division of power between the government and the opposition, and in-depth dialogue between them without one side exercising hegemony, as is the case today. After the certain disappearance of the regime, the party will have to respect the other segment of the population, which wants Lebanon to be sovereign and free, and not subject to either Iran or Syria. The fundamental change that will be created by the fall of the Syrian regime is that Iran will lose its right arm in Maliki's Iraq, whose religious parties took shape in Iran, which provided them with political and financial support. These parties did not have a political role in domestic politics, but only outside the country. After Saddam Hussein liquidated the Dawa Party, for example, it had no activity in Iraq. Its primary location became Iran, and to a certain extent Syria. Dawa and the Supreme Council were two important parties that were formed in Iran after Saddam Hussein's fall. The Mahdi Army, meanwhile, was armed by Iran and trained in repression, violence and terror, just as the Qais Khuzali group, now close to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, which was armed and trained by Iran, and the Abu Kirar group, which took refuge in Iran and was the first to send terrorists to Iraq. Muqtada Sadr is subject to Iranian influence and acknowledges that Iran funds his movement. Iranian intelligence agencies are active in Iraq and in Karbala and Najaf. Iran runs Iraq for now, and the Syrian president claimed at first that he supported the Iraqiya list of Iyad Allawi and asked him to come quickly to Syria, because he was going to visit Iran and convince the leadership of to install a prime minister other than Maliki, because Assad clashed with him at the beginning. But in the end, Assad carried out what Iran was demanding, i.e. support for Maliki's appointment as prime minister, and the Syrian regime was a primary tool for Iran in openly working in Iraq, committing terror, intervening and using Syrian and Iranian violence. If the Syrian regime falls, Iran will lose its right hand for influencing things in Iraq, and Iran's loss of its right arm will see it lose its left arm as well, i.e. its influence over sectarian parties in Iraq, which will become a tool held openly by Iran. Some people in Iraq might look for new allies to protect themselves from Maliki. Syria's actions are now providing cover for Iran's actions in Iraq, but the fall of the Syrian regime, although it has become inevitable, poses the question about the time that will be needed for it to fall, and the magnitude of the cost if the killing continues. Today, prompt international intervention is required to stop the killing of innocents and work for the exit of the regime that has committed crimes against its people and in neighboring Lebanon. Let the world and the Security Council save the Syrian people from the crimes that are being committed in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, and let Russia's responsibility for the crime remain in the minds of all peoples of the region, forever.
