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W hat is correctly named “Arab Spring” is continuing to heat up the Middle East without an

end in sight. As predicted earlier in this column, Muslim Brotherhood started to show its strength in Egypt; elections hoped for by all Tunisians have been de-layed; President of Yemen has been in-jured in an assassination attempt and moved to Saudi Arabia for treatment leav-ing Yemen in the hands of various tribes and rebels who have no definite plans for the future; protesters have been subdued in Bahrain; and an undeclared, aimless and leaderless war continues to deplete our resources in Libya. However, the most important of all events in the Middle East has to be the insurrection against the So-cialist Baath Party controlled dictatorship led by Basher al-Assad in Syria and its im-plications. What happens in Syria will un-doubtedly change and re-shape the entire area for many years to come.

Syria in the past few years has become a true surrogate state of Iran. While Iran is not an Arab state, its influence in the area is huge. Iran has sent high level offi-cers from the elite Quds Force into Syria; trained and financed Hezbollah units and in fact invaded Lebanon, turning that small but strategically important country on Israel’s northern border into another client state. Iran’s influence and power in the area is undeniable. Financing op-

erations in Iraq and Afghanistan against the US military presence and helping in-surgencies in Yemen and Bahrain; Iran showed her desire to create a dangerous zone around their main target, Israel. A new report released this morning clear-ly indicates that Iran is only about two months away from having the capability of producing their first nuclear weapon. This is what brings us to the Persian Sum-mer.

If we start by looking into the fast mov-ing events in Syria today, we may be able to get a glimpse of what we can expect in the upcoming Persian Summer. Syria bor-ders Turkey in the North, Lebanon and Is-

rael in the West, Iran in the East and Iraq in the South. Since 1970, when Hafez al-Assad father of the present Dictator Basher al-Assad, assumed power in Syria as the head of the Arab Baath Socialist Party, Syria was under an emergency rule. In March of 1973 a new constitution was put into effect; officially defining Syria as a secular socialist state with Islam recog-nized as its majority religion. On October 6, 1973, Syria and Egypt began the Yom Kippur War against Israel. After the ini-tial surprise, Israeli military reversed the initial Syrian gains and pushed the Syrian Army out of the strategic Golan Heights and invaded Syrian territory beyond the

1967 border. Israel still occupies the Go-lan Heights. When the Lebanese Chris-tians were in danger of being eliminated, they asked Syria’s assistance. Assad sent in 40,000 troops using the invitation as a reason and occupied Lebanon. Syria re-mained in Lebanon until 2005 and engi-neered many political assassinations. Ap-proximately a million Syrian workers were sent to Lebanon to work for the recon-struction of Lebanon; eventually 200,000 of them were sworn in as Syrian citizens. From 1976 to 1982, fundamentalist Sun-nis led by the Muslim Brotherhood led an armed insurgency against the secular Baath Party of Assad. In February of 1982, Assad sent in troops into the city of Hama and leveled the city killing between an es-timated 10,000 to 25,000 people, what is now described as the single deadliest act by any Arab government against its own people in the modern Middle East. Hafez al-Assad died in June 2000 and the Syr-ian parliament changed the constitutional age of a new president from 40 down to 34 in order to elect Assad’s son, Basher, Pres-ident. There was much hope he would be a reformer but this never materialized. The Arab Spring started in Syria on January 26, 2011 and despite all efforts of Basher al-Assad grew in size with 7,000 people detained and over 800 civilians killed. To-day a northern Syrian city is surrounded by government troops, ready for the sec-ond Hama massacre. Iran has been fol-lowing the events in Syria closely making sure Iran wins at the end at all costs.

Iran wants to dominate the Middle East and do away with the State of Israel; there is no doubt about that. However, there are some interesting events taking place within Iran which point to a pos-sible Persian Summer of anti-government

BEYONDTHE COAST

Tarik Ayasuntayasun@taray.com

SUBMITTED PHOTOSMap of the area of conflict.

From Arab Spring to Persian Summer