A SUMMIT meeting usually brings together heads of state. But when delegations deplane in Damascus this weekend for an Arab League summit, a dozen or more of the 22 Arab leaders will express their displeasure with Syrian President Bashar Assad by staying home. And Lebanon, whose current political crisis was to lead the summit's agenda, will snub the Damascus event entirely.
Discord among the Arab states is hardly new but is rarely expressed in public. This gesture is a sign of growing exasperation - most of all over Assad's ties with Iran.
The most immediate source of discontent is with Assad's role in preventing the Lebanese government from voting for a new president to replace outgoing Syrian puppet Emile Lahoud. As the price of permitting a presidential vote, Syria's Lebanese allies, led by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement, are demanding enough cabinet seats to give them veto power in the government.
Such veto power could be used to protect Assad's ruling group from a United Nations tribunal looking into the 2005 assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister Rafik Hariri. A preliminary UN investigation of Hariri's murder incriminated Syria's security services, which are commanded by Assad's brother and brother-in-law.
For Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and some of the other stay-at-homes, however, Syria's spoiler role in Lebanon is only a sideshow. The ultimate cause of their rancor is Assad's alliance with Iran, the ascendant regional power that stands outside the Arab League.
This alliance facilitates Iranian penetration into Arab countries and Arab politics. Sunni Arab leaders unhappy with Assad resent him for allowing Arab Lebanon to fall under the influence of non-Arab Iran. Assad's hosting in Damascus of leaders from the Iranian-armed Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad has enabled Tehran to wrest control of the Palestinian card from Arab states that have long used it as a unifying and legitimating cause. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak reportedly told a European diplomat this month that recent events in Gaza - for example, Hamas's importing of Iranian weapons - have brought Iran to Egypt's border.
If there is a remedy for the Arab angst over Syria, it lies in American and Israeli engagement with Assad's regime, however distasteful that may be. The strategic aim would be to pry Syria from the clutches of Iran. Assad wants the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights returned to Syria and an end to Washington's hostility. This would be a price worth paying for Lebanon's emancipation and a diplomatic rollback of Iran's destabilizing encroachment on the Arab world and Israel.
