Mob War In the Mideast:   New info from "Syria's former vice president, Abdul Halim Khaddam. From exile in France, he gave an astonishing interview Friday that linked the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad to the murder last year of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri. He told al-Arabiya television that "there were many threats" from Syria against Hariri before his death, and that it was "impossible that any apparatus in Syria could have taken a unilateral decision to murder Hariri" without Assad's approval.

[According to] Walid Jumblatt, the leader of Lebanon's Druze community and something of a warlord himself. .. As Assad is backed deeper into a corner, he cautioned, the situation will become more dangerous for Lebanon. "The more you squeeze the Syrians, the more they get aggressive here," Jumblatt said. .. Like other Lebanese I spoke with this week, he fears a deadly new attack by the Syrians that would attempt to trigger sectarian conflict in Lebanon -- and take the heat off Damascus. Jumblatt argues that the only stable outcome will be regime change in Syria -- a "Milosevic solution" that will bring Assad to justice through the United Nations. ..

What makes the Syria-Lebanon situation especially volatile, Jumblatt explained, is that it is linked to the radical new Iranian regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He argued that Iran is using its alliance with Assad and Hezbollah in its larger strategic battles against Israel and the United States. "It's as if we are defending Iranian nuclear facilities from the border of Lebanon," he said."
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