WHEN President George Bush meets Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki in Jordan this week in what could be the last chance to stop Iraq's slide into civil war, a 6ft 3in former eye doctor will be top of the agenda.
Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who was supposed to follow a medical career as an ophthalmologist until a car crash killed his elder brother, catapulting him into the Syrian presidency, has emerged as the key player holding the fate of Iraq in his hands.
Indeed, so dramatic is the transformation in Assad's position that he is seen as crucial not only to a solution in Iraq, but also in Lebanon, and even as a moderating influence on Iran.
It is not out of the question that he will be invited to attend in person in Amman, even though Bush is scheduled to stay in the Jordanian capital for only 12 hours.
Officially, the meeting is to review the "new political realities" facing Bush with a new Democratic Congress, many of whose members are calling for some sort of withdrawal from Iraq. But this is a code for the increasingly desperate search by Bush for a way out of the Iraqi quagmire. The background is the escalating sectarian carnage in which more than 7,000 civilians have died in the past two months, culminating in last week's triple suicide bombing in Baghdad, which killed more than 200.
The Bush who meets Maliki is a very different man from the one who railed against the "axis of evil" and whose neo-con agenda was supposed to sweep away the totalitarian regimes of the Middle East.
As late as this summer, Washington wanted regime change in Damascus. In June, State Department officials attended meetings in Brussels and London of Syrian opposition leaders in exile as active participants. Now, humbled by the catastrophe in Iraq and facing the prospect of being a lame duck president because of the mid-term election results, Bush is executing a volte face.
Direct dialogue with Syria and Iran is likely to be one of the key items on the agenda next month of a heavyweight panel on future policy towards Iraq headed by former Secretary of State James Baker, long-time confidant of the Bush family.
Sensing a growing power vacuum with the waning of the Bush administration, the regional players have embarked on a flurry of diplomatic activity. Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, is due to fly to Tehran today to seek help in halting a descent into civil war. This follows a landmark visit to Iraq by Syria's foreign minister to restore diplomatic relations after a 25-year rupture. At the same time, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, seeing a chance to become a regional power broker, has invited Syria's president to Tehran.
But can Syria become the bridge that Washington is now seeking in the Middle East? On the one hand, Damascus does have significant influence. As a neighbour with a long land border with Iraq, it can choose whether to continue to allow its territory to be used for transiting terrorists on their way in and out of Iraq.
It has growing influence in Tehran. Threats of regime change from the US have thrown Syria and Iran together, and Iran sees Syria as "a sisterly and friendly country", according to Iranian Supreme National Security Council secretary Ali Larijani.
Syria is also a key player in Lebanon. With Iran, it backs Hezbollah's fight against Israel with money and weapons and has the capacity to destabilise Lebanon through its influence over Hezbollah members in the government.
Yet Tehran is interested only in a broader deal that links the US desire for help in Iraq with Iran's desire to be allowed to enrich uranium. Negotiations to halt Iran's nuclear programme remain stalemated, and President Ahmadinejad has just declared that "many countries have agreed to live with an Iran that has mastered enrichment."
Moreover, Assad has yet to demonstrate that he is in total control of his own country. Ever since he succeeded his father as president, he has vacillated between endorsing reform and leading a new crackdown to purge his regime of the hard-liners. The slow progress on reform stems from the opposition of an "old guard" which drags its feet in protest against political liberalisation in order to maintain its privileged position within the government.
"Syria's Ba'athist regime is among the most opaque on earth," said British commentator David Hirst, "and an abiding uncertainty is just how much the young and inexperienced president Bashar al-Assad has ever really controlled the despotic apparatus he inherited from his father, Hafez."
The regime is controlled by Alawites, a quasi-Shi'ite sect that accounts for about 11% of the population but dominates the army and the security forces.
Arab Sunnis, accounting for 60% of the population, believe they can form an alliance with Christians, Kurds, Turcomans and other minorities to challenge the Alawite hold on power.
Even so, if Assad is in control then he is playing a very strange game if he did indeed order the killing last week of Lebanon's industry minister, Pierre Gemayel, who was gunned down in a gangland-style killing.
Immediately, many Lebanese pointed the finger at Syria, just as they believe that Damascus was behind a string of 15 car bombings and five assassinations, beginning with a massive truck bomb that killed former prime minister Rafik Hariri and 22 others on February last year.
"We believe the hand of Syria is all over the place," said Saad Hariri, the son of the assassinated former prime minister.
Gemayel's funeral turned into a massive display of defiance against Syria and its ally, Hezbollah, as tens of thousands of Lebanese paid tribute to the assassinated politician.
Lebanon's government says its Syrian-backed opponents, led by Hezbollah, want to weaken it and to scupper an international tribunal being set up to try suspects in the suicide truck bombing that killed Hariri.
"The assassination is part of a series of actions that Hezbollah and the pro-Syrian camp are trying to carry out in an attempt to topple Fouad Siniora's western-backed government, to put themselves in a position to form a new coalition government," said Boaz Ganor, of the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, Israel. "The Christian side has come to realise that it has few cards left to play. Hezbollah could be in power within five years."
Even one of the US's most senior diplomats yesterday warned that Lebanon's future was at stake in a battle between "democracy and terrorism" following the killing of Gemayel.
John Bolton, the US ambassador to the United Nations,
said it would be a "serious problem" if an investigation into Gemayel's assassination found Damascus was involved. "Then you have a further clear piece of evidence that Syria is not just a supporter of terrorism but is a state acting in a terrorist fashion," he said.
Others, even in Israel, are not so sure that the Syrian government itself was involved, finding it hard to see how Syria could possibly benefit from the killing. Zvi Barel, Arab affairs analyst of the daily newspaper, Ha'aretz, said that Syria was in the midst of chalking up significant diplomatic points that could only be harmed if it were shown to be involved in another political assassination.
Damascus had just renewed full diplomatic relations with Iraq and was on its way to achieving a semi-official stamp of approval from Washington as a positive influence in Iraq. It was also on the verge of seeing the fall of Siniora's anti-Syrian government in Lebanon.
"With three such achievements," Barel wrote, "the last thing Damascus needed was a new accusation of political murder in Lebanon." He suggested it might have been a rogue action carried out by one of Syria's intelligence arms. "If that is true, it puts President Assad in an embarrassing position, with elements of his regime working behind his back."
Yet the most significant reaction was that of Bush, who stopped short of accusing Damascus of killing Gemayel. The inside word from Washington is that Assad is at last enjoying the resumption of what Syrian embassy spokesman Ahmed Salkini calls "unofficial contacts" with the US administration.
According to Toby Dodge, Iraq political expert at Queen Mary University of London, one possible deal could be that Syria would tighten its border control and stop allowing insurgents to use Damascus as a safe haven. In exchange, the US would guarantee that it would not seek regime change in Syria.
The wider implications for the Middle East are that now that the US/UK invasion of Iraq and Israel's actions in Lebanon have shown that the region cannot be reshaped by military force, there is a recognition that a settlement will have to be negotiated, and that Syria and Iran have to be involved, not just in negotiations but in underwriting peace in the Middle East.
Could the endgame now be in sight?
