Iraq Battle See-Saws

AMMAN: Six of one and a half dozen of the other: Washington dealt Baghdad a diplomatic drubbing Sunday, but Monday's missile strike on an Iraqi city may play into Saddam's counteroffensive. Baghdad was enraged Sunday at the Arab League's refusal to explicitly condemn the December air strikes, but it may be a little premature for Washington to crow about successfully isolating Iraq: "The anti-Saddam Arab governments are concerned that the U.S. strategy of bombing and sanctions has actually strengthened the regime in Baghdad," says TIME Middle East bureau chief Scott MacLeod. "But they weren't about to give in to Saddam's attempts to bully them into demanding an end to sanctions."

While Saddam failed at the Arab League, reports that Monday's U.S. missile strike on Basra may have claimed civilian casualties strengthen his campaign for Arab support. "The December bombings generated a lot of anti-American anger among ordinary Arabs, and that creates a domestic political problem for the pro-Western Arab governments," says MacLeod. "Saddam knows that by provoking these 'no-fly' zone clashes he can create incidents that reflect badly on the U.S. and raise the pressure on the Arab governments." This one's far from over.