Min yali? (Who’s next?) This is the question asked in teahouses in the Middle East. As men puff on hookahs and play backgammon they speculate about the next regime to be targeted by the United States.

With Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship gone, its sister Baathist regime in Syria moves to the top of the Richter scale of roguishness, ahead of Iran, Libya and the Sudan.

The hawks around President Bush are right to focus on Syria for three reasons. First, Syria, in tandem with the mullahs of Tehran, supports a variety of terrorist groups that have targeted American interests (for example they murdered more than 300 Americans, including 241 Marines, in Beirut in 1982-83) and Israel. Today, 22 terrorist groups have offices in Damascus.

The second reason is Syria’s efforts to form a front with Iran to oppose what President Assad calls “imperialist domination” of Iraq. The President visited Tehran days before the war started to encourage the mullahs to use their Iraqi Shia clients to make life difficult for the US-led coalition. The mullahs moved the so-called Badr Brigade, a force of 10,000 Iraqi Shias armed by Iran, to the border with Iraq in a show of force.

Syria and Iran also asked their political client, Muhammad-Hussein Fadlallah, the spiritual leader of the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah, to issue a “fatwa” calling for “jihad” against the US-led coalition. Fadlallah was the only Shia theologian to join the Egyptian muftis in declaring “jihad” in support of Saddam Hussein. Syria later began putting together a force of dissident Iraqi Baathists to oppose any “American puppet regime in Baghdad”. The formation of an Iraqi Baathist government-in-exile could be part of the plan. The alliance between pro-Iranian Shias and pro-Syrian Baathists showed its force in the Najaf last week when a mob murdered Abdel-Majid al-Khoei, one of Iraq’s leading moderate clerics.

The third reason is Syria’s failure to make a strategic decision for peace. A saying in the Middle East is that the Arabs cannot make war without Egypt but cannot make peace without Syria. Afraid it might find itself alone facing Israel, Syria has systematically sabotaged Palestinian-Israeli peace moves.

Having said all that, the hawks are wrong to urge war against Syria. The chief weakness of Saddam’s regime was its suicidal inflexibility. The man known as “Al Saffah” (The Vampire) could play in only two registers: defiance or surrender. The Syrian regime, however, has always understood the reality of power and the need to back down when in a position of weakness.

The late President Hafez al-Assad met all the American presidents, from Nixon to Clinton. Throughout the Cold War Syria maintained close ties with Moscow but, unlike Iraq and Egypt, refused to sign a military pact with it. Assad’s is the only radical Arab regime never to have broken ties with Washington.

Although Syria’s Golan has been under occupation since 1967, not a shot has been fired against Israel from the Syrian side. Syria also organised its occupation of Lebanon as if it were doing a favour to the Lebanese. Unlike Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, Hafez al-Assad ensured that his troops entered Lebanon as “saviours” with the support of the Arab League, the United Nations and the European powers.

The British Government is right to insist that Syria’s leaders can be persuaded to play ball. But what ballgame should be on offer?

The Assad regime will try to give the minimum to ensure its survival, as it has always done. But, unlike Saddam’s, it also knows when not to believe its own slogans. Using diplomatic, political and economic pressure while keeping the military option open, the US-led coalition should ask for the maximum. That includes support for the growing reform movement in Syria itself, a movement that many say is secretly endorsed by President Assad against the old guard.

The liberation of political prisoners, the lifting of the ban on political parties and trade unions and, in time, the holding of free elections are among the demands of Syrian reformists. Other demands should include an end to Syrian support for terrorist groups, a termination of its alliance with hard-line Khomeinists in Tehran, the denial of safe haven to fleeing Iraqi Baathist criminals, and public support for the “roadmap for peace” as proposed by President Bush and backed by the new Palestinian Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas. Last but not least, Syria must end its occupation of Lebanon, and the Mafia-style milking of that country that has enriched Baathist big shots. The momentum for change created by the victory in Iraq should not be wasted.

Amir Taheri is the author of The Cauldron — The Middle East Behind the Headlines

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