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Syria Is Really a Proxy Religious War between Sunnis and Shiites
(U.S. News) Mortimer B. Zuckerman - What is going on in Syria is an all-consuming Muslim religious conflict between the Sunnis - led by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and the Kurds - and the Shiites, led by Iran, Syria, Iraq and the Lebanese Hizbullah. Syria is the strategic battleground where Shiite Iran is waging a proxy war against the moderate nations in that region. Should the Iranian bid for regional hegemony be broken in Syria, the Middle East would change dramatically and for the better. The stranglehold of Hizbullah on Lebanon might well come to an end. Iran will go on supporting its only state ally in the Middle East, but if the U.S. managed to intervene intelligently, then we might at least reduce Iranian presence in Syria and thus affect the regional balance of power. Allowing Syria to become an ungoverned land and thus a haven for terror and crime will prove far costlier in the long run.