The Islamic Republic of Iran has closed the parentheses which were represented by the two presidential terms of Mohammad Khatami. The country reconciled with its Constitution and slogans by choosing Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad as President and stopped the imbalanced struggle between the Reformists and the Conservatives within the higher circles of the State. All the State institutions have succumbed to the united voice of the anti-openness Conservatives, especially in the sphere of personal and political freedoms; under the patronage of the spiritual leader of the Republic Ali Khamenei.

A few days ago, the ruling Baath party in Syria has concluded its 10th Regional Congress, also ending a struggle between an old and a new guard by choosing a leadership that includes the men of President Bashar Assad. In this way, it is assumed that the party leadership and the country’s leadership have come to overlap, reducing the multiple or contradictory official voices. On the other hand, the Congress has set the boundaries of the internal openness process, which focused on the economic aspect at the expense of the wide and direct political reform.

When the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice concluded her regional trip, she expressed her relief that the Middle East has begun to open up to democratic reforms, deeming that the progress “is in part due to the American policy”. The US Secretary of State was referring to the electoral processes in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Palestinian territories and Lebanon, all of which held elections either with a direct American military intervention or with exceptional American political and economic pressures. More importantly, intervention led to a favorable outcome from Washington’s perspective.

Indeed, the US Secretary of State did not mean Iran and Syria which she considers to be in opposition to the sought-after progress. She even places the two countries within the axis of evil. The American assessment will only be more drastic with Ahmadi Nejad coming to power in Tehran and the widening scope of accusations directed against Damascus in Lebanon and Iraq. Both countries, from Washington’s perspective, represent an obstacle hindering Reform.

However, Rice has declared the end of the principle of prioritizing stability in the regional regimes, placing priority this time in pushing the democratic reforms forward. Thus, the principle entails that Washington will be in direct and blunt confrontation with the regimes of Damascus and Tehran.

Regardless of both Syrian and Iranian political rhetoric in confronting the new American stance, the relation between the two sides is built on a long history of alliance and coordination. This fact might incite them to stimulate their former axis to face those who are targeting them. Especially since the Iranian previous tendency to avoid direct clash with the United States will diminish in favor of a policy hostile to the West in general and America in specific. Furthermore, the Syrian attempts of openness toward America keep clashing against the conservative US administration’s refusal. As long as the United States insists on the principle of intervention to instigate change in Iran and Syria through pressure and supporting the oppositions, the two countries will form a united front, especially in places where confrontation is easy like Iraq and Lebanon; where they have more than one card to use.

In this sense, the American effort to contain the regional roles and pressure for internal reform might lead to undesired effects. It could even encourage the formation of an axis that not only would be supported by the offended regimes, but also by popular groups that have opposed the American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq and oppose the intervention in the internal affairs of their countries. In this way, their positions would overlap with that of Tehran and Damascus.

With the increased number of US casualties and the sluggish political process in Iraq, the US movement opposed to the military campaign and the accountability calls regarding its justifications and results will widen. The conservative administration, which has been fighting in Congress for months in order to appoint one of its supporters as ambassador to the United Nations, will find it difficult to extract an internal decision, allowing a military intervention against Syria or Iran. In fact, it seems that it is moving toward diminishing the number of troops in Iraq, after it lost the power of internal mobilization. Hence, giving impetus to the violent solutions and the wide dismantling in Iraq.

In Lebanon, the electoral victory of the opposition (which the United States place within the framework of the democratic progress) is mixed with the complex sectarian structure, diminishing the importance and implications of the victory. In the context of the confrontation with America and the hard-line Israeli policy on both issues of land and peace, Syria and Iran will be able to find a common basis of understanding and alliances over the Lebanese resistance. Since their understanding does not coincide with the American conception of the country’s future, the implications may engulf trouble, tension and violence.