Mr Bush, a few things you may want to read today

Before his meeting on the Middle East in Crawford today, I hope the President gets a chance to read two pieces from the NYTimes this morning (I know this violates the no newspaper rule in Bushworld) that further document the political nature of the challenges we face in the Middle East today, and the limits of what our military can do:

BAGHDAD, Dec. 27 — The car parked outside was almost certainly a tool of the Sunni insurgency. It was pocked with bullet holes and bore fake license plates. The trunk had cases of unused sniper bullets and a notice to a Shiite family telling them to abandon their home.

“Otherwise, your rotten heads will be cut off,” the note read.

The soldiers who came upon the car in a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad were part of a joint American and Iraqi patrol, and the Americans were ready to take action. The Iraqi commander, however, taking orders by cellphone from the office of a top Sunni politician, said to back off: the car’s owner was known and protected at a high level.

For Maj. William Voorhies, the American commander of the military training unit at the scene, the moment encapsulated his increasingly frustrating task — trying to build up Iraqi security forces who themselves are being used as proxies in a spreading sectarian war. This time, it was a Sunni politician — Vice Prime Minister Salam al-Zubaie — but the more powerful Shiites interfered even more often.

“I have come to the conclusion that this is no longer America’s war in Iraq, but the Iraqi civil war where America is fighting,” Major Voorhies said.

A second story describes the approach Iran has taken to increase its influence in the region, an approach very different from the one America has taken:

DAMASCUS, Syria — 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 Syria has grown. Some Western analysts contend that Syria, with a government more pragmatic than ideological, can be pried away from Iran’s 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 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.

“Iranians have been working harder for longer than we realized,” said a European diplomat based in Damascus who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing Syrian officials. “They have stronger links going back more years than we were aware of.”

Syrian officials are extremely sensitive about the relationship with Iran. Part of the reason is fear of igniting sectarian tensions in Syria, which is about 80 percent Sunni Muslim. The president and his inner circle are from a minority Shiite sect, the Alawites, and Iran is Shiite.

While the Syrian power brokers have decided for practical reasons to align with Iran, political analysts in Syria say the government remains fearful of alienating the Sunni majority, especially amid widespread rumors that Iran is trying to convert Sunni Syrians to Shiism.

Concern among Sunnis is heightened because Syria is a major destination for Iranian religious tourists; as many as 500,000 a year visit Shiite sites in Syria. Iranian organizations have spent millions of dollars restoring, enlarging and maintaining Shiite shrines in Syria, from the center of Damascus, the capital, to the north, near the Turkish border.

Iran’s efforts to spread its influence around the Middle East have increased in the last two or three years, regional analysts say. They have been propelled by rising oil prices and American policies in the region, which have neutralized Iran’s enemies, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

“Iran has used this affluence of oil revenues over the last five or six years to play a beautiful game, from their perspective,” said Osama T. Elansari, a director of the Dubai International Financial Exchange who lives in Syria.

Iran’s efforts have often been most evident in Lebanon, where it has set up an informal economy in the south. It needs only to provide money to its proxy, Hezbollah, which has a construction arm, called Jihad al Bina, and a vast network of social services that dole out money and build schools and hospitals.

According to some estimates, Iran has spent tens of millions a month over the years in Lebanon. Riad Salameh, the governor of Lebanon’s central bank, said he had no idea how much money Iran had sent into Lebanon because it had gone via Syria, not through the central bank.

This story follows a very similar story yesterday about the growing influence of Iran in Afghanistan.  Kudos to the Times from their strong reporting on the Middle East in recent months.