The New Axis of Evil?

Another of my favorite columnist is Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post. In his most recent column, he takes a look at Syria and the new axis of evil.

Iran is the senior partner of this axis of evil. Syria is the crucial middle party allowing a non-Arab state to reach into the heart of the Middle East. For example, Hezbollah receives its weapons from Iran, shipped through Syria. And Iranian Revolutionary Guards are stationed today in the Bekaa Valley, under Syrian protection.

The alliance goes back a long way. Syria under the Assad dynasty was the only major Arab country to support Persian Iran against Arab Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War. They form a true axis because, unlike the 2002 State of the Union axis, all of the parts are connected and working with each other. The last axis of evil -- Iran, North Korea and Saddam Hussein's Iraq -- was evil but no axis. They were more like points of evil, with North Korea included, as I wrote at the time, as a concession to ethnic diversity.

Today the immediate objective of this Iran-Syria-Hezbollah-Hamas-Islamic Jihad axis is to destabilize Syria's neighbors (Iraq, Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian Authority) and sabotage any Arab-Israeli peace. Its strategic aim is to quash the Arab Spring, which, if not stopped, will isolate, surround and seriously imperil these remaining centers of terrorism and radicalism.