Israel Matzav

Nasrallah running scared?

As noted earlier, Hassan Nasrallah has branded the Hariri tribunal as being an 'Israeli project.' The reason for Nasrallah's attack on the tribunal is apparently that he fears that the tribunal will implicate Hezbullah members in the murder of Rafik Hariri.

As you read this article, please keep in mind that Israel Radio reported on Thursday that the Hariri tribunal expects to issue indictments before the end of 2010 - something author Michael Young did not know when he wrote this.

What worries Hizbullah is that, if indictments come, Hariri will declare that he does not believe the party’s leadership was involved in his father’s assassination, implying that those accused were rogue elements. This would undermine Hizbullah’s credibility, show that Nasrallah doesn’t control his own organization (let him then try to sell Hizbullah as the vanguard of an effective national resistance), and make the party beholden to Hariri, but also, more generally, to Syria.

In that context, a new attack against western Beirut seems absurd. Nor can Hizbullah attack the mountains, because Walid Jumblatt is now more or less on the party’s side. Destabilizing the government would also be difficult, unless Syria sees an interest in doing so to gain greater leverage over Hariri. But for Hizbullah to bring down the government is much trickier. The Hariri government is, above all, the fruit of a Syrian-Saudi compromise. Hizbullah doesn’t have the latitude to damage relations between Riyadh and Damascus.

So there is not much Nasrallah can do, except rely on Syria to ensure that the party isn’t greatly weakened by the ensuing backlash that would follow eventual indictments. The Syrians are as unenthusiastic about the tribunal as Nasrallah is, but being pragmatic they would use any legal accusation to enhance their power on the Lebanese scene, even at the expense of their Iranian and Hizbullah partners. Ultimately, President Bashar Assad seeks to return Lebanon entirely to the Syrian fold, and indictments would open doors allowing him to play on Lebanese divisions to Syria’s advantage.

Nasrallah is caught in another bind as well. His foremost task, as defined by his relationship with Iran, is to prepare Lebanon for the possibility of a conflict with Israel in the event of an attack against Iranian nuclear facilities. He has largely succeeded on that front. Hizbullah has rearmed, has managed to neutralize serious opposition to its weapons from within the government, and largely controls the activities of the Lebanese Army in southern Lebanon, not to say the major decisions taken by the army’s intelligence service.

Indictments would throw Hizbullah’s strategy into disarray. For a start, the party cannot maintain Lebanon’s readiness for war if it chooses to go on the offensive domestically in order to pressure Hariri and the government into denouncing the special tribunal. Nasrallah would either have to opt for domestic instability, which would only divide the country, or avoid that path, so as to preserve some sort of united front against Israel. The secretary general could not do both.

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When all is said and done, are indictments coming? Reports this week that investigators will carry out a test explosion next fall in Bordeaux replicating the one that killed Rafik Hariri suggest we should be careful about predicting indictments this year. When the president of the special tribunal, Antonio Cassese, told this newspaper last May that he expected indictments to be issued between October and the end of the year, he retracted the statement a day later, plainly at the request of prosecutor Daniel Bellemare. Cassese must realize that unless indictments are issued before 2011, securing financing for the tribunal next year will become complicated. That may explain why he is pushing the prosecutor on a short deadline.

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A new assessment of the Hariri explosion is a telltale sign that things are not going well. If there are lingering doubts, for example, about whether the blast was above ground or below ground, then we are perhaps further from indictments than many imagine. But ultimately we should not miss the forest for the trees. A crime was committed, regardless of how, and Bellemare has not managed to arrest anybody who might shed light on what actually happened.

Maybe Nasrallah is being too hasty in incriminating his own party.

Or maybe not if indictments of his party are 3-5 months away and he also knows that something is up with Iran on the horizon.

Hmmm.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:29 PM