RCW: Recent events in Lebanon - government collapse, a looming tribunal decision on the Hariri assassination and periodic protests - are not encouraging. Is Lebanon primed for more violence and conflict?

MT: Probably. None of the outstanding issues that led to violent conflict in the past have been resolved. More war is almost assured in Lebanon, either between Hezbollah and its domestic enemies, between Hezbollah and the Israelis, or both. The status quo isn't sustainable.

The country basically has two governments - the ostensible government with its capital in Beirut, which controls most of the country, and Hezbollah with its effective capital in Tehran that controls the suburbs south of Beirut and the southern part of the country along the border with Israel. The country is too small and fractured to be partitioned, and no country is big enough for two governments. The state will eventually have to disarm Hezbollah, or Hezbollah will devour the state. And since Hezbollah is willing to kill their fellow Lebanese while the government and the pro-government Lebanese aren't, Hezbollah, for now anyway, is the horse to bet on.

RCW: Can the Obama administration shift Syria away from Iran?

MT: It won't work. Syria's President Bashar al-Assad is a blood-spattered tyrant and always has been. A number of officials in both the Republican and Democratic parties have been laboring under the delusion that he's a reformer, though I imagine they must be feeling a little chagrined at the moment now that he's using snipers to shoot peaceful demonstrators in the face. He is not going to reform, nor is he going to suddenly break his alliance with Tehran.

Assad's alliance with Iran and his support for terrorism in Iraq, Lebanon and Israel give Syria far more clout internationally that its size, economic might and conventional military power would ever allow. Syria would be no more geopolitically relevant than Yemen if Assad were to sever his ties with Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah. Trying to yank Syria out of that orbit is bound to fail for the same reason East Germany could not have been extracted from the communist bloc before the Soviet Union was in a state of collapse. Bashar al-Assad may be an Internet junky, and he may have been educated in London, but he was raised in the house of the ruthless Hafez al-Assad, and he will not play nice or go quietly.