Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Lebanese Prime Minister Sa‘d al-Hariri; Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and Syrian President Bashar al-Asad (below): it's pretend-you-aren't-ancient-enemies day!Seriously though, the visit of Ahmadinejad to Lebanon (he's been speaking in the South, and saying the usual inflammatory stuff about Israel) and of Maliki to Damascus will both be seen as boosts for the Iran-Syria-Hizbullah alliance, because, well, they are. Somehow this doesn't look much like Beirut Spring, or that new, democratic, utopian Middle East the neocons promised.
And yes, everyone is smiling, but does anyone else think Maliki is looking to see if Asad has something up his sleeve?
Then there's this:
I guess he's throwing kisses to the crowd, or something. The blogger Abu Arqala at Suq al-Mal has taken a variant of that picture and riffed on it, here.
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