Source : www.exclusive-analysis.com

Summary/Forecast: Despite Syrian government denials of a bomb explosion targeting Iranian pilgrims, the target selected and the timing point to a deliberate attack, quite possibly planned outside Syria, and intended to threaten Syria’s ties with Iran and embarrass both countries.

Additional Information: On the morning of 3 December 2009, a bomb targeted a bus carrying Iranian pilgrims near the Shia shrine of Sayyida Zeinab mosque in a Damascus. Terrorist attacks in Syria are rare, particularly those targeting government or foreign government property, or targeting assets/individuals related to the leisure and tourism sectors, such as hotels and tourists. An attempt to target the US Embassy in Damascus in September 2006 was crude and caused limited damage. Sunni extremist groups have a limited presence in the country, given the pervasiveness of Syrian intelligence. This has prevented any display of dissent, whether through violent or other means. Occasionally such groups, including Jund al-Sham, have engaged Syrian forces in gun-battles, but they have been unsuccessful in targeting government or other assets. However, some militants have used Syria as a route into Iraq, allegedly with Syria’s full knowledge.

Of the recent bombings in which fatalities and property damage have occurred, these have most likely been perpetrated by an external intelligence agency, most likely Israel’s Mossad. This is because Syrian military facilities and Hamas and Hizbullah leadership have been the targets. Although the most recent attack targeted Iranian civilians, its effect has been to expose Syrian vulnerabilities by breaching its otherwise water-tight security. Similar effects resulted from the Israeli air strike on an alleged nuclear facility in eastern Syria in 2007, and the car bomb assassination of a high-ranking Hizbullah commander, Imad Mughniyeh in February 2008 (for which Israel has not claimed responsibility).

The Syrian government finds such breaches of its security (and sovereignty), by Israel in particular, extremely embarrassing and has typically played down or denied that such attacks have occurred. Following the bus explosion this morning, the Syria government first claimed that one of the bus tyres had exploded; it then claimed the tyre was being repaired at a petrol station, which contributed to the explosion. Meanwhile, al-Manar, Hizbullah’s television news network claimed that gas containers in the bus, which was empty at the time, caused the explosion. Similar denials occurred when, in July 2007, an explosion at a military base in Aleppo, northern Syria, killed 15 soldiers. The government attributed this to an accident caused by overheating. In the case of the air strike that destroyed the alleged nuclear facility, the Syrian government claimed Israel had targeted an unused military building.

More significantly, the latest bombing coincided with the visit to Damascus of the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Saeed Jalili. Jalili is charged with formulating Iran’s nuclear policy. Iran and Syria have a strategic alliance which extends to a mutual defence pact. The bombing was quite possibly intended as threat to the Iranian government, given its ambitions to expand domestic nuclear enrichment, whilst also attempting to undermine mutual Syrian-Iranian ties.

Another possibility is that the bombing was perpetrated by Islamist groups residing in Lebanon, such as Fatah al-Islam; however is this less likely, as these groups would fear a backlash by Syria or Hizbullah, which in turn would threaten their very existence (mainly in the Palestinian camps in Lebanon).

Finally, there is an outside possibility that the attack was carried out by elements in neighboring Iraq, upset at Syria’s continued sheltering of Iraqi Baathist leaders. The Iraqi government believes that the Baathists are making a come-back and also that al-Qaeda and the Baathists are working together in order to carry out bomb attacks in Iraq (such as the August and October suicide bombings at government ministries in Baghdad). Hence, the bombing may have been intended by the Iraqi government to persuade the Syria government to desist from support for Baathist elements in Iraq.