There’s a major crisis brewing in the Middle East. There’s nothing new or surprising in that sentence. What may surprise some of you is where this new crisis is occurring.

What may become the most important Middle Eastern crisis of the year is not happening in Iran, Israel, or even Iraq, but rather in Syria.

On Oct. 20, the United Nations inquiry into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was delivered to Kofi Annan, the U. N. Secretary General.

For those of you unfamiliar with the case, Hariri was killed, along with 22 other people, in a suicide bombing assassination on Feb. 14. Hariri had become popular with the Lebanese people due to his harsh stance against Syria. It had widely been suspected since the time of the bombing that Syria was involved in some fashion.

The report given to Annan suggests just that. The report states, “The former senior security officials of Lebanon were their appointees. Given the infiltration of Lebanese institutions and society by the Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services working in tandem, it would be difficult to envisage a scenario whereby such a complex assassination plot could have been carried out without their knowledge.”

The report did not go as far as to implicate the president of Syria, Bashar Assad, or his political inner circle, which is made up mostly of his relatives.

However, the Washington Post reported on Oct. 22, “The [U.N. inquiry] said Syria’s longtime foreign minister, Farouk Charaa, lied in a letter to investigators. It also cited one witness as implicating Assad’s powerful brother-in-law, Asef Shawkat. Another claim that Shawkat, Assad’s brother Maher and other senior officials played a role in planning the assassination was deleted from the final report.”

Syria has strongly denied all these accusations. The information minister, Mehdi Dakhlallah, called the report “a political statement.” He went so far as to state, “It is impossible that a fair court would accept a report like this, relying as it does on mere talk.”

If the findings of this report are correct, and it seems pretty clear they are, Syria has broken international law and for that there must be repercussions.

In an interview conducted Oct. 24 with Dubai-based Al Arabiya, President Bush stated: “I’d be glad to talk to other leaders to determine whether or not that’s the best course of action. But certainly, people do need to be held to account. And the first course of action is to go the United Nations.”

The U.N. Security Council has already begun to discuss such actions.

On Tuesday the Security Council passed a draft resolution calling on Syria to cooperate fully with the next step of the investigation. This would entail the investigative commission interviewing high-level officials without any Syrian control over the inquiries.

With the likelihood of those interviews implicating everyone in the Syrian and Syrian-backed Lebanese governments, including Assad and his Lebanese counterpart President Lahoud, I find it difficult to imagine full compliance.

This is where things get difficult.

According to the draft resolution, if the Syrian government does not comply with the U.N. investigation the Security Council will impose “further measures,” meaning sanctions and possibly military tactics.

It is quite possible both of these further measures will be necessary. However, the United States cannot take the lead in this instance.

In its current condition the United States lacks three key components required to strong arm another nation in the Middle East. The U.S. government clearly doesn’t have the domestic support required for any military involvement. Also, the U.S. military simply lacks the resources required to fight on such a large scale, as controlling Iraq alone has proved difficult. Most importantly, however, the United States does not have the diplomatic capital in the region to lend any legitimacy to the cause – in the form of military action or sanction.

Any U.S.-led action in the Middle East, whether sanctions or military action, will immediately be discredited by the people of the region as a continuation of the U.S.’s supposed goals of domination in the region.

Because of this, it’s time for the other members of the Security Council to step up and take the lead. France has begun to do this, as it was a co-sponsor of the draft resolution along with the United States. France must continue to be in the forefront of the pressure against Syria. Nations such as Russia, Britain, and China must do the same. Russia has already opposed the draft resolution. It must change course and unite with France and Britain, as well as the United States, to send a clear message to the Syrians that anything less than full cooperation will not be tolerated.

This is the world’s chance to prove it won’t back down. Iraq was the United States’ chance to prove, for better or worse, that we stick to our guns – literally. Syria is a battle we can’t fight.

It’s time the rest of the world to step up, flex some muscle economically and militarily, and do what it takes to bring the people responsible for the assassination of Hariri to justice.

Columns reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of the Northern Star staff.