AP Photo

Two years ago, a Syrian well connected with his country’s regime was chatting with two Lebanese journalists at a conference in Venice. At the time Syria, which had withdrawn its army from Lebanon after the February 2005 assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafiq Hariri, was seeking to reassert its power in Beirut against the governing coalition known as March 14.

As my journalist friends recounted it, the Syrian’s message was a simple one: “You Lebanese have one of two choices,” he told them. “You can either choose Syria or Iran.”