"Occupation by Policy" - How Victors Inadvertantly Provoke Resistance Insurgency

[Dayuhan]

Dayuhan---as I said you tend to dissect sentences---try looking at this paragraph from Lebanon today and tell me what you think the Iranians mean by their use of the word "honor".

"Honor" to me means you must accept us as a full hegemon for the region not a side player. If in fact the majority of the Syrian population is Sunni WHY does Iran "feel their honor is at stake" and WHY do they feel they are required to be even involved in Syrian affairs if in fact the majority of the country is Sunni not a deviant of Shiaism which is in the minority---kind of a reverse of Iraq do you not think?

What is you interpretation?

Obviously the Iranians don't think that playing a role "from the sidelines" is consistent with their perception of their regional stature. That doesn't necessarily mean they want to be accepted as a "hegemon", but it suggests that they expect to be treated as an inner circle player. That does not necessarily have anything to do with the Sunni/Shi'a balance in Syria; it can bu purely based on the Iranian desire to be acknowledged as a central regional player.

A second question might be WHY did Baa'thism originally develop in Syria and was exported into Iraq when Syria was a Shia controlled country---when today Malaki equates Iraqi Sunnis with Baa'thism?

Of course Maliki will equate Ba'ath with Sunni, as the Ba'ath party in Iraq was dominated by the Sunni minority. The Ba'ath movement was at least nominally secular and not necessarily derived from either branch of Islam, it served more as a loose justification for autocratic rule in the nominal cause of pan-Arab unity than as a tool in the religious dispute.