Perspective: Iran expands links with Syrians

DAMASCUS: Early next year, Syria's first domestically manufactured cars are scheduled to roll off an assembly line. They will have an Iranian name, be produced in a plant partly financed by a state-controlled Iranian car company and be made of parts from Iran.

Not long after that, Syria hopes to open two new multimillion-dollar wheat silos, add 1,200 new buses in Damascus, open another Iranian car factory in the north and start operating a cement plant — all in partnership with Iran. The two countries are also talking about building an oil refinery, opening a joint bank, constructing housing, developing electric generators and, someday, linking their rail systems through Iraq.

As the White House begins to rethink its strategy for dealing with the Middle East, particularly how to calm the chaos in Iraq, pressure to try to re-engage with Syria has grown. Some Western analysts contend that Syria, with a government more pragmatic than ideological, can be pried away from Iranian influence and convinced that its long-term interests lie instead with the West.

But Washington has spent years trying to isolate Syria, while Iran has for decades moved to entwine itself with Syria on many levels — political, military, economic and religious.

Iran is a country of many power centers with different pools of money, from funds controlled by grand ayatollahs in the religious city of Qum to those in the hands of the Revolutionary Guards. They may not all be directed by the central government, but they all help promote Iranian influence in Syria.

As a result, some Western diplomats in Iran say that, even if the United States tried, it might be impossible to extricate Syria from Iran's orbit.

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