Damascus, Syria ? The U.S.-brokered Mideast peace conference Tuesday raised tensions between allies Syria and Iran. Damascus defended its participation, while Iran said it was surprised by Syria’s decision and warned that Arab countries risk falling for an Israeli plot.

The two hard-line countries’ alliance since Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution has survived Syrian-Israeli peace talks in the 1990s. But this time, Iran feels it is an implicit target of the Annapolis conference, believing it aims to stem Iranian influence in the Mideast.

Though there is widespread skepticism over the conference in the Arab world – including in Syria – Damascus made clear it has its own interests: better relations with Arab nations and the West and the possibility of a peace deal with Israel that would win the return of the Golan Heights, seized by the Jewish state in 1967.

Syria is attending the conference “because peace is its choice and because it has made strides in previous negotiations to achieve it,” the state-run Syrian daily Tishrin said in an editorial Tuesday. Syria “is ready to go to the ends of the earth to achieve this objective.”

Washington has made clear it hopes that bringing Syria to Annapolis can crack the alliance of its top rivals in the Mideast – Damascus and Tehran, which both support the Hamas and Hezbollah militant groups.

Syria, which hosts the top Hamas leadership, is not about to break away and it was not clear how deep tensions with Iran go. Damascus has expressed deep doubts about the conference and sent its deputy foreign minister, rather than the foreign minister, in a sign of its discontent.

Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who attended the conference in Annapolis, said that even though Tehran decided to send Syria a “warning shot” about their participation at the meeting, their alliance was not likely to suffer.

“One day at one conference is not going to make a difference in their relationship,” said O’Hanlon.

“Syria attended because they wanted to keep all their options open. They made sure that if there was going to be a deal, their interests would not be forgotten … and it’s not as if Syria really requires Iranian blessing for everything they do.”

Tehran avoided direct criticism of Damascus, instead unleashing a volley of condemnations of the gathering.

Hossein Shariatmadari, an adviser to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the conference was “a plot against the Palestinians.”