Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa, a former Egyptian foreign minister, returned to Beirut Wednesday, where he met with an Iranian official and Lebanese leaders from the ruling party and Hezbollah, before traveling to Damascus to meet with that country's president, Bashar Assad.

His regional hopscotch is an effort to cobble together a deal that would probably see pressure lessened on Syria over its political role in Lebanon in return for Hizbullah, an ally of Syria and Iran's, agreeing to a smaller role in a new Lebanese government than it has been demanding so far. The current Beirut government, in turn, is heavily backed by both the United States and by Saudi Arabia, which sees it as a bulwark against the expansion of Iranian influence in the region.

From Iraq to Lebanon and in the capitals of Amman and Cairo, the perception of Iran as a potential threat is driving the new engagement and is making for unusual alliances in which the interests of a state like Israel's are being closely aligned with those of the Saudi Arabian monarchy.

In a speech in Dubai Wednesday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair starkly summed up the views of the many governments that fear the expansion of Iranian power.

Iran has profited strategically from the rise of a Shiite-dominated government in Iraq whose main leaders are drawn from Shiite Islamist movements, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the Dawa Party, which have close ties to Tehran.

Blair accused parts of Iran's government of "openly supporting terrorism in Iraq ... trying to turn out a democratic government in Lebanon; flaunting the international community's desire for peace in Palestine ... and trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability."

While Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel are less concerned about democracy in Iraq or Lebanon, they are all committed to opposing an expansion of Iranian power, which they see as threatening their own vital interests.

In that area of concern, Iraq once again takes center stage. Saudi Arabia and Jordan are not only concerned about refugees and a sectarian war that could spill over and destabilize their countries, analysts say, but with the chance that Iraq could take center stage in the 25-year-old cold war that has persisted between Shiite Iran and its Sunni neighbors.

"All of these players are on the same side wishing to preserve the state order rather than seeing it undone," says Asher Susser, an expert on Jordanian-Israeli relations at Tel Aviv University. "That is why the undoing of Iraq causes such anxiety to Israel, to Jordan, to all those adjacent to Iraq."