ConservativeINC

From the Middle East Forum comes this sobering analysis from Robert G Gabil titled Has Hezbollah’s Rise Come at Syria’s Expense? According to Gabil Syria has been supplanted by Hezbollah as Iran’s proxy in the region. If you want to read the full article, I think you should do that and read other sections on the website like America’s Crash Course On Islam and their Islamist Watch section, here is the most important part:

While Hezbollah may appear to be operating in Lebanon to safeguard the interests of the Syrian regime, deeper analysis suggests that Hezbollah’s actions go beyond either protecting the Syrian regime or forcing the collapse of the Beirut government. Hezbollah has escalated its political brinkmanship far beyond what is needed to counteract the government’s policies.

Hezbollah has, for example, changed its position on several sensitive national matters. Hezbollah denied that it ever supported Siniora’s seven-point plan to end hostilities between it and Jerusalem in August 2006. It has tried to preempt the Lebanese government from placing the Shebaa Farms under U.N. jurisdiction in the event that Israel withdraws from the territory. After failing on January 23, 2007, to grind transportation to a halt in its attempt to extend authority over the entire country, Hezbollah dropped its demand that the pro-Syrian opposition should possess eleven ministries, giving it an effective veto. This is not a good sign: Rather than compromise with the Siniora government, Hezbollah is staking out a more maximalist position to eschew cooperation and instead dominate the country and transform its political character into an Iranian-style fundamentalist state. Nasrallah’s speech of April 8, 2007, in which he sarcastically questioned whether or not to give the majority forces of the current government one-third of the cabinet seats in the forthcoming legislative elections, attests to his ambition to dominate Lebanon.[42]

To accomplish this, Hezbollah and its allies have called for more “democratic” measures, which they believe would advance the group’s power: early national elections, direct presidential elections, and policy by referendum.[43] As the Shi‘a claim a plurality, Hezbollah believes that such measures could translate into irreversible power. At the same time, the group couples its quest for such reforms with its traditional reliance on military measures. Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general, brags that Hezbollah has “rebuilt its defenses in a way to respond to any new Israeli attack.”[44] By keeping Lebanon in constant sociopolitical and military flux, Hezbollah believes it can whittle away at the power of the majority.

Against this backdrop, it becomes difficult to conceive that Damascus is behind Hezbollah’s political challenge. This is not to deny that Damascus could use its agents in Lebanon to wreak havoc. But the reality is that Damascus—in contrast to the 1980s and 1990s—can no longer match its ability to inflict damage on Lebanon with an ability to force the major parties in the country (particularly Hezbollah) to reconcile as it did in 1989 when it helped broker the Ta’if accord. Syria’s role in Lebanon today is far less powerful than it was then.

Rather, it is Tehran that is orchestrating and backing both Hezbollah and Assad’s moves. The Iranian government is confident that the Bush administration is in deep crisis in the Middle East and will not be able to regain its capacity to “manage” the region before its term ends in January 2009. It also feels secure in its new influence in Lebanon where Tehran’s agents have consolidated a state within a state. Here, the Islamic Republic has adopted Damascus’s former role in the country and is sending a message to Washington as well as to Arab capitals that there can be no resolution to the crisis in Lebanon without Iranian involvement.

Some think they can already hear the drums of war being pounded in Iran and maybe they’re right. But we have to understand just how interconnected every country in the Middle East is to each other. It isn’t even connections between heads of state that we have to worry most about. Terrorist groups are funded by Saudi princes and Tehran’s government. Schools, hospitals, and other civil projects are financed by the same people. The people of the Middle East get very little real news provided by a pro-Western source.

Fighting Iran will also require us to fight Syria and maybe even go into Lebanon to rout out Hezbollah. Everything is coming to a head right now and I’m not sure it is prudent for President Bush to leave office leaving this issue unsolved. Hopefully there is some other way to solve this problem but time is against us here. BigT

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