Ajami on Lebanon

Fouad Ajami puts the Lebanese "independence intifada" into context in a new essay in the May/June Foreign Affairs. His argument is basically that--unlike his father Hafez--Bashar al-Assad isn't up to the task of "properly" running Syria's autocratic regime, especially not in the world of the Bush Doctrine.

He also gives us the following interesting analysis on Iran, which touches on the potential for a Syria-Iran alliance that I blogged about a few days ago:

"The claims of an Iranian-Syrian accord should also not be given much credence. Iran's horizons are wider, and Iran's interests differ radically from those of Syria. For all their strident revolutionary poses, the Iranians are shrewd, unsentimental practitioners of realpolitik. Iran's pursuit of its nuclear ambitions (or the barter of these ambitions for economic and political concessions from Europe and the United States) overwhelms the concerns of Syria, with its extortion rackets in the Bekaa Valley and Tripoli. Tehran will not ride to the rescue of Damascus."

It's worth a read.