Middle East Looks West for Support : Geopolitics: Shifting agendas bring old rivals into new alliances. Financial hardships force hard-liners into unprecedented compromise.

Last Sunday 15 U.S. officials involved in “the hostage watch” waited anxiously in the seventh-floor suite reserved for State Department crises. Assembled around a long oak table cluttered with phones, clipboards and coffee cups, most were convinced a break was imminent, despite qualms at the White House. But by midday, several began to wonder. An early morning UPI bulletin of a hostage release proved false. And the seven-hour time difference with Syria, where night had set in, made a release seem increasingly unlikely.

Then, shortly after 1 p.m., the Ops Center next door relayed a flash from Damascus. A deputy assistant secretary of state read it and said, “This is it.”

The Bush Administration should have had no doubts.

For almost a year, the Middle East has been going through a quiet upheaval. With Soviet foreign-aid cutbacks, the Middle East is increasingly looking to the United States and Europe for economic and political support. Shifting political agendas are now bringing old rivals into new alliances. Financial hardships are forcing hard-line states into unprecedented compromise. And all but one ongoing war has or is being settled.

Tactics are also changing--as shown by the emergence of gaunt Robert Polhill from 1,183 days in captivity. The confluence of changes is such that even the most cost-efficient terrorist tactic is growing too expensive for governments long involved with hostage abductions.

The dimensions of the shift were evident in the Syrians’ meticulous attention to detail in staging Polhill’s release.

As State Department officials waited for Polhill to be driven from Beirut to Damascus, they were astonished to see him being interviewed on CNN. The Syrian government had dispatched a TV crew to talk to Polhill en route. Tapes were given to U.S. networks even before he arrived at the Syrian Foreign Ministry.

Since 1982, Syrian troops have ferried dozens of other hostages to freedom. None held live press conferences broadcast via Syrian TV. This time, however, the government of President Hafez Assad wanted the world, particularly Americans, to see how cooperative--and instrumental--it had been.

Freedom for the last of the remaining 17 foreign hostages in Lebanon is probably still far off. But, with Polhill’s release, two of the Mideast’s three pariah states--Syria and Iran--made concrete gestures of reconciliation toward the West. The third, Libya, is also making noises. Following the release of three European hostages by a pro-Libyan group, Moammar Kadafi called last Monday for freedom for all captives.

The release of the first U.S. hostage in more than three years seems to indicate that Western ideas and influence--the real target of the hostage phenomenon--are no longer anathema. A new interest in pluralism, free-market economies and peace is evident throughout the region.

Five months ago Jordan held its first national elections in 22 years. Algeria, after lifting a ban on several opposition parties, is scheduled in June to hold the most democratic local election since independence in 1962. Last month Syria announced the number of parliamentary seats open to independent parties in May’s national election will more than double, from 18% to 40%.

Economically the emphasis is increasingly on free trade and decreasingly on state control. Morocco is just one of several countries now restructuring its economy to allow greater Western investment. In February, Iran received the first World Bank mission since its 1979 revolution to probe the possibility of Western credit.

And militarily, the world’s most consistently fractious region is sorting out its differences; conflicts that played off the superpower rivalry are disappearing.

After a 12-year break, Syria and Egypt, long-standing rivals for leadership of the 22-nation Arab bloc, restored relations in December. Last August, Libya and Chad signed a nonaggression pact to end their long-simmering border dispute. And in October, Libya restored diplomatic relations with Egypt for the first time since 1977.

The one glaring exception to this regional conciliation is Israel. Ironically, the region’s most democratic state has been paralyzed by ruptures over basic issues of identity and survival. Jerusalem is still ahead of the curve, but the pace of change in the neighboring Arab and Muslim worlds is accelerating more rapidly than at any time since most of the region gained independence after World War II.

And this does not appear to be a temporary phenomenon. Many governments have little choice.

Syria’s decision to intervene now on behalf of U.S. hostages is telling. The prime motive was not humanitarian concern. Damascus has been among the hardest hit by Moscow’s cutbacks. Soviet financial support has dropped from a 1983 high of almost $3 billion to about $1 billion this year. This weekend Assad is scheduled to make his first pilgrimage to Moscow in three years to negotiate future arms. But U.S. analysts doubt that arms sales will increase given Syria’s inability to pay in dollars. Damascus is now saddled with a $5-billion commercial debt, at least $15 billion owed to the Soviet Union for military hardware and a $1-million-a-day tab to maintain troops in Lebanon.

Isolated in the Arab world because of his alliance with Iran and his feud with Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat, and ostracized by the West because of his support for terrorists, Assad needs new friends and trading partners. He needs the United States.

Glasnost and the resultant changes in the Soviet Union’s policies are the factors that have most shaken the Middle East. Several that once went hat in hand to Moscow now see strange turnabouts.

The Soviet Union recently announced it would accept 1.5 million copies of the Koran, the Islamic holy book, from Saudi Arabia--and the hard currency that the conservative Saudis will pay for the Aeroflot charters needed to transport them to Soviet Muslims in the south-central Asian republics. The two nations have not had relations since the 1930s.

Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani was candid about the impact of superpower rapprochement in a recent speech. “The world is moving toward a single bloc,” he said. “A great deal of the opportunities that existed in the world for independent countries to take advantage of the competition between the powers is being lost.”

Even Iranian hard-liners are showing interest in a new dialogue. In a startling statement Thursday, Deputy President Ataollah Mohajerani said the hostage issue “is an instructive one since the brotherly country of Syria, not avoiding direct talks with the U.S., has starred in the scenario of the hostage release and secured its national interests while Iran’s role in this regard . . . has been unknown to Washington.” He added pointedly: “Direct talks with the enemies of God and the masses have been the tradition of the prophet.” With unemployment estimated at 40%, inflation at 50% and a whopping $350-billion price tag on reconstruction after the eight-year Gulf War, Iran desperately needs new access to financial credits and technology.

The region’s changes are not, of course, limitless. Autocrats still rule a majority of the nations and arms proliferation is, proportionately, at its most intense in this volatile region. Terrorism, the weapon of the weak, is unlikely to disappear. Neither the Arab nor the Muslim worlds will speak with a single voice soon. Fundamentalism, among Muslims but also now including Jewish groups, will continue as a major political idiom.

Even so, changes that have occurred have far-reaching implications. For the United States, they open up a host of possibilities, including dealing Syria into the peace process and eventually talking to the mullahs in Tehran.

For the region itself, the exigencies of survival are likely to promote further moderation and democratization, if on an erratic--and even turbulent--course.

Regarding relations with Israel--the issue most important to all parties in the region--genuine Arab consensus on a formula for coexistence is closer than at any time since the Six-Day War in 1967. As for Syria, it knows its dream of strategic parity with Israel is just that. Israel will find a U.S.-orchestrated peace difficult and costly to dodge indefinitely.

Welcome home, Mr. Polhill. Your release may symbolize the beginning of a historic turning point.