Israel Matzav

Why Ahmadinejad is in Lebanon

Judith Miller explains why Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in Lebanon.

A special United Nations panel (called the STL, or Special Tribunal for Lebanon) is reportedly on the verge of indicting officials of Hezbollah, which Iran has sponsored, trained and supported since its inception in the wake of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, for Hariri's murder. In an analysis published earlier this week by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Ash Jain and Andrew J. Tabler argue that a key goal of Ahmadinejad's trip is to pressure Lebanese prime minister Hariri and his Lebanese and Western allies into ending their support for the tribunal, which Lebanon has been financing.

Ahmadinejad's second goal is to build support among the Muslim Arab masses by putting additional pressure on the American-sponsored, now-stalled Arab-Israeli peace talks. On Thursday, the Iranian president is scheduled to tour Bint Jbeil and Qana -- two towns in southern Lebanon on Israel's border that were badly damaged in previous rounds of fighting between Hezbollah and Israel which Iranian money has helped rebuild. Ahmedinejad clearly intends to throw an actual or rhetorical rock across the border, taunting the Israelis to dare to strike back.

Israeli officials say that Hezbollah has replenished its conventional arsenal with some 40,000 rockets and missiles, over twice what it had prior to their last war. It has also trained thousands of recruits on new battle tactics in preparation for another war that both Lebanon and Israel increasingly see as inevitable.

In the Christian Science Monitor, Nicholas Blanford, the author of "Killing Mr. Lebanon," about the Hariri assassination, notes that while this is the Iranian president's first official visit to Lebanon, Ahmadinejad has visited southern Lebanon before. More than two decades ago, he came to the Bekaa Valley as an officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps to help train the Lebanese Shiites who became the nascent Hezbollah.

Hezbollah was young then, and far less dangerous. Its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was giving speeches declaring that "Lebanon should not be an Islamic republic on its own, but rather, part of the Greater Islamic Republic, governed by the Master of Time [the Mahdi], and his rightful deputy, the Jurisprudent Ruler, Imam Khomeini," according to a speech published today by MEMRI. Today, he is a self-styled Lebanese patriot, and Hezbollah is not only part of the Lebanese government, capable of bringing it down at will, but also what Blanford calls the "most effective non-state military force in the world."

But "as an asymmetrical warrior," writes Lee Smith in the online magazine, Tablet, "Nasrallah understands that even his most capable guerrilla units are no match for Israel." So he is waging war against "the Jewish state's center of gravity—public opinion." Ahmadinejad's threats to wipe Israel off the map and similar vows by his Lebanese creation, Hassan Nasrallah, play well among Arabs, Shiite and Sunni alike. "By continuing the fight to liberate Jerusalem," concludes Smith, author of "The Strongest Horse," Teheran has "picked up the banner of Arab nationalism that the Sunni Arab regimes had tossed by the wayside. Here was another reason for the Arab masses to despise their cruel and now obviously cowardly rulers—and admire a Shia and Persian power they might otherwise fear and detest."

Read the whole thing.

Here's that speech by Hassan Nasrallah to which Miller refers. Let's go to the videotape.



Will the West at least keep the tribunal going if Hariri cuts it off?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:33 PM