• Ahmadinejad's controversial visit  - Nizar Abdel-Kader
Iran is becoming a strong player at the regional level.

• Ahmadinejad galvanizes Lebanon's Palestinians  - Franklin Lamb
Iranian largess has quietly benefited thousands of Palestinians.

• Israel could respond by reviving the Syrian track  - Itamar Rabinovich
For Israel, the visit was more a matter of symbolism than substance.

• Ahmadinejad's problematic triumph  - Sadegh Zibakalam
Many Iranians ask why our money should be spent on Shi'ites in Lebanon.

Ahmadinejad's controversial visit
 Nizar Abdel-Kader

The controversial visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will remain the central issue in the political debate in Lebanon for several weeks to come. Some analysts look at it as a shift in the balance of power in Lebanon and in the Middle East as a whole. Furthermore, some politicians among the March 14 coalition look at it as a disruptive element in the Lebanese internal political balance, as well as in options for peace or war. The visit of Ahmadinejad to Bint Jbeil in South Lebanon left a clear message for Israel, the US and a few moderate Arab governments that Iran is becoming a strong player at the regional level and its support for Hizballah will continue.

Hizballah and its allies prepared a very special welcome for Ahmadinejad by mobilizing hundreds of thousands of mostly Shiite Lebanese to celebrate the visit. The great popular gathering in Bint Jbeil was meant to express the gratitude of Hizballah and other Shiite factions for the Iranian help in organizing and arming the Islamic resistance toward liberating the south from Israeli occupation, which has happened twice.

Ahmadinejad's visit is primarily to serve Iranian grand strategies in Lebanon and as an expression against Israeli and US policies. The visit also underscored the importance of Hizballah as Iran's proxy militia in Lebanon. Ahmadinejad's visit was intended to serve the Iranian agenda at both the Lebanese and regional levels. Internally, Ahmadinejad expressed loudly Iran's determination to defend Hizballah against any possible indictment by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. Regionally, he had dual messages: one, to tell the Israelis that Lebanon is becoming Iran's first defense line in case Israel or the US attempts to attack Iran's nuclear facilities; and, two, to impress on some of the Arab countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia the new consolidated, influential status of Iran.

Hizballah found in Ahmadinejad's visit the great opportunity to present a show of force vis-a-vis the March 14 coalition. This came at a time when Lebanon has been hit by a new climate of uncertainties that could cause new instability--possibly leading to civil strife. At the same time, Hizballah profited from this opportunity to show the attachment of its popular base to Iran's leadership and its total submission to the Vilayat-e Faqih.

When Ahmadinejad left Lebanon after his two-day visit, the local and regional political scenes were left aggravated. Local analysts who do not support Hizballah found in Ahmadinejad's rhetoric against Israel an invitation for the wrath of Israeli leaders to be vented on Lebanon.

The visit was labeled by US and Israeli governments as a provocation and an outrage. The US administration quickly dispatched Assistant Under-Secretary of State for Middle Eastern Affairs Jeffry Feltman to meet with President Michel Suleiman and to convey a message from President Obama that reaffirmed the steadfast support of the United States for the development of a sovereign and independent Lebanon. Feltman's message to the March 14 coalition and to Prime Minister Saad Hariri was to express US commitment to help Lebanon build strong state institutions and to support the work of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. Feltman emphasized that the tribunal has not been "politicized" (as proclaimed by Hizballah) but rather is a non-political, independent organization with the purpose of ending an era of impunity for political assassination, and that it will continue functioning until those responsible for the assassinations are brought to justice.

Nonetheless, Ahmadinejad's visit has brought some positive developments to the political process that may help reduce the growing political uncertainty and tensions building in Lebanon. Based on some media reports, Prime Minister Hariri and Hizballah General Secretary Nasrallah may be meeting soon as a result of efforts initiated during the Iranian president's visit. The reports link the success of efforts in tackling the problem of false witnesses and issues around the Special Tribunal to the Iranian will to develop a strong working relationship with Mr. Hariri, who received an invitation to visit Tehran. Independent analysts see in these developments and the invitation extended to Hariri a good opportunity for the Lebanese government to establish a new, state-to-state relationship with the Iranian government, independent of Hizballah or Syrian channels.

It is still early to determine all the possible outcomes of Ahmadinejad's visit given rising political tensions and the growing pressure between the March 8 and March 14 coalitions over the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and the possible indictment of several members of Hizballah for their responsibility in Hariri's assassination. -Published 21/10/2010 © bitterlemons-international.org

Nizar Abdel-Kader is a political analyst/columnist at Ad-Diyar newspaper in Beirut. He has authored four books on Lebanon and regional political and strategic issues.

"The only solution to the Palestinian issue is for the invaders (Israelis) of the occupied Palestinian land to leave, and give the Palestinians their rights and return all the Palestinian refugees to their original land. Iran supports Lebanon's bitter struggle in confronting Israeli assaults. We demand with all seriousness and insistence the liberation of all occupied land in Lebanon and Syria."--President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bint Jbeil, October 15, 2010.

In the days since Iran's president Ahmadinejad completed his visit to Lebanon, and given the continuing lively discussion across the local and international political spectrum evaluating the impact of his historic appearance, one thing appears fairly clear. US State Department official Jeffrey Feltman who came to Beirut quickly from Saudi Arabia on orders from the White House to "do something!" to offset the Iranians unprecedented reception, was likely wide of the mark in his evaluation. Feltman repeated this past weekend the March 14 pro-US and Saudi prediction that: "I don't think Ahmadinejad's visit will have a lasting effect. It's not something extraordinary. Its impact will remain for a couple days and that's it."

One largely unnoticed achievement of the Iranian president's visit remains among the Palestinian refugee community in Lebanon, close to a quarter million of whom are "living in cages" (to borrow President Jimmy Carter's description during his meeting this week with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Damascus in describing how their sisters and brothers are forced to exist in Gaza).

Apart from the Shiite community, the majority of the approximately 750,000 who waited at various events to greet and hear Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were Palestinian refugees. Iranian largess has quietly benefited thousands of Palestinians even though they are forbidden by law to travel to South Lebanon to visit or work and must remain north of the Litani River on penalty of arrest and imprisonment.

During an October 18 morning tour of nearly completed Waad ("Promise") residential buildings, bombed into smoldering mountains of rubble during the 2006 war with Israel, this observer interviewed several Palestinian laborers and craftsmen working side-by-side with equally skilled and hard working Syrian workers. What was learned is what Hizballah officials have said: that Waad and Jihad al-Bina ("Struggle Construction Company")--both now firmly on US terrorism lists--have discretely hired hundreds of Palestinian laborers, engineers, craftsmen, architects and "syndicate professionals." These job offerings go to Palestinian refugees despite being forbidden to them by Lebanese laws.

Nearly a week now since Ahmadinejad's departure, the 12 Palestinian refugee camps and two "gatherings" (unofficial enclaves) are still abuzz with discussions of his visit. It is well known that Lebanon's camps have deteriorated and that quality of life there continues to disintegrate. But the young people still appear resolved to follow the spirit of their elders who founded the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Discussions among many in the camps here inevitably turn to questions of "what went wrong?" and "how can we fulfill our parents' dreams and take up the mantle of Liberation and Return that we heard from our elders?", "how can we unite Hamas and Fateh?" and "how to confront the expanding apartheid regime in Palestine?"

What President Ahmadinejad brought to the under-30 generation in the Palestinian camps is hope, energy and self-confidence.

Lacking unified leadership of their own, many Palestinians in Lebanon have been looking to Hizballah and Iran as a model for reviving the Palestinian liberation movement. Iran's president easily connects with young people and is unquestionably committed to the full right of refugee return to their country. In a side meeting with representatives of the refugee camps and some of their allies, Iran's president could not have been more emphatic about this. Included in his counsel to young Palestinians was the following:

• Stay in school and help care for all members of your family. It is you who will join the villagers of South Lebanon and liberate Palestine. People like you make revolutions.
  
• Do not become discouraged by what might appear to be a bleak period in occupied Palestine and in Lebanon's camps. Ignore those who say the Palestinian revolution belongs to the past.
  
• Palestine will be liberated. It is a scientific certainly that this criminal occupation will end and that all Palestinian refugees in Lebanon will be able to go back to their ancestral lands .
  
• The splintering of the Palestinian body politic has been caused largely by external forces and must be resisted.
  
• It is the duty of the international community to help you secure basic rights in Lebanon until your certain return to Palestine. Iran is prepared to fulfill its duty in this regard.
  
• Lebanon is the focus point of the resistance against occupiers and oppressors and is playing an excellent role.
  
• Your return to Palestine may happen sooner than you think and is only a matter of time and perhaps the coming war will achieve this.

For Israel, as for other actors interested in Lebanese affairs, the visit by Iran's president to Lebanon was more a matter of symbolism than substance. It did not reshape or deeply affect the realities of Lebanese or regional politics, but it did highlight and underline several important aspects of the Lebanese and larger Middle East scene: Hizballah's ascendancy in Lebanon, Iran's use of Hizballah as an extension of its own governmental machinery, Iran and Syria's ongoing collaboration in Lebanon, Iran's assumption of the leading role in the "resistance" to the US and Israel, and the weakness of the Arab world and in particular the major Arab states whose roles in Lebanon and in managing the conflict with Israel are being usurped by Iran.

The Lebanese crisis is now 35 years old (going back to the civil war of 1975-6) and has gone through several twists and turns and ups and downs. It suffices in the present context to review developments since 2005. Rafiq Hariri's assassination was followed by the formation of an international tribunal, Syria's military withdrawal and the victory of the moderate March 14 coalition and the apparent supremacy of the Siniora government. Then came the 2006 war, Syria's gradual return and the formation of Saad Hariri's government, with Hizballah participation and veto power. This in turn led to Hizballah's defiance of the government in 2008, the fragmentation of the March 14 coalition and Hariri's capitulation to Syria. Saudi Arabia then tried in vain to recruit Syria to rein in Hizballah, Syria collaborated with Hizballah against the international tribunal, and a border incident with Israel demonstrated the extent of Hizballah's influence over the Lebanese army.

Lebanon's ability to maintain the Arab world's only functioning parliamentary democracy for 30 years depended on a delicate internal and external balance. Its collapse produced the 1975 civil war, from which Lebanon has not fully recovered. But during the past 35 years, there were periods of relative calm and stability. That brief moment of triumph in 2005 was produced by effective American and French support and reflected the capacity of a significant Christian, Sunni and Druze coalition to collaborate and mobilize support.

But that unique coalescence has vanished. The March 14 coalition has disintegrated, the Obama administration is not as supportive of Lebanese sovereignty as the Bush administration was, and there is no effective support from such Arab states as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Nor can much be expected from Israel. Since 1975, Israel has tried several strategies for dealing with the ramifications of its northern neighbor's failed state status. These strategies have included two wars, three large-scale military operations, a security zone in South Lebanon, the cultivation of a host of allies and clients and the acceptance of Syrian supremacy in Lebanon as a stabilizing force. Over time, none has worked. In fact, some of Israel's actions have actually served to exacerbate rather than remedy the crisis.

From the current perspective, Lebanon and the Lebanese crisis present Israel with a number of severe challenges. First, Lebanon has become an Iranian political and military outpost on the Mediterranean and on Israel's northern border. With more than 40,000 missiles and rockets at Hizballah's disposal, Israel would require a protracted and costly military operation to respond to an attack or remove the threat to its cities and infrastructure. If sanctions on Iran become serious, if it wishes to derail a peace process or seeks to respond to a US or Israeli attack on its nuclear installations, Tehran can order Hizballah to start a war with Israel.

Second, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad's visit and rhetoric offer a fine example of how Iran is turning Lebanon into a showcase of what the "resistance camp" can accomplish against those who wish to cooperate with the US and make peace with Israel. The main target audience for this display is the Palestinians.

Third, in the long term the actual size of the Shi'ite community, Hizballah's skillfulness and Iranian and Syrian support are likely to transform Lebanon from a struggling pluralistic society to a very different, Hizballah-dominated country. And fourth, while in theory Syria must not be happy with these trends--it wants to hold sway in Lebanon and not be surrounded by a Shi'ite Iraq and a Shi'ite Lebanon--in practice it collaborates with Hizballah and Iran and supports the organization's military build-up as part of its own deterrence against Israel.

Israel's own options are limited. The lessons of 1982 and 2006 and the actual prospect of another war in Lebanon have a restraining effect on Israel's leadership. Diplomatically, Israel should persuade the US and its European allies that the Lebanese issue is part of the larger Iranian issue and that failure to act will push more Arab states to behave like Qatar. But is the Obama administration going to take more decisive action against Iran?

Israel can also choose a diplomatic option of its own by reviving the Syrian track. Here the original formula of "territories for peace" is no longer relevant. A realignment of Syria's policies is now a crucial component of any future settlement. Syrian President Bashar al-Asad speaks often about his preference for a peace option. It is up to Israel to test the seriousness of this rhetoric; it should include resolution of the Lebanese crisis within the Israeli-Syrian context.- Published 21/10/2010 © bitterlemons-international.org

Itamar Rabinovich, Israel's former ambassador in Washington and chief negotiator with Syria, is the author of the forthcoming "The Lingering Conflict: Israel, the Arabs and the Middle East 1948-2011".

Whichever way one approaches Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Lebanon, there can be little dispute that it was a personal triumph for the hard-line Iranian president. The Iranian media covered the state visit thoroughly and in particular showed the huge crowd that gathered to welcome the Iranian president. Ahmadinejad's aides and supporters back in Iran tried to portray the visit as a personal triumph for the president's "bold, revolutionary and courageous foreign policy".

Having confronted unabated criticism since the much-disputed presidential election in June 2009, it was only natural for Ahmadinejad to portray his visit to Lebanon as a victory against his opponents in Iran. Whether or not the visit was equally a triumph for Iran itself is a more controversial question. There are many Iranians who ask why our money should be spent on Shiites in Lebanon or for that matter on the Palestinians.

These complaints are no secret; Iranian leaders are painfully aware of them. The classic answer by the Islamic leadership is Islamic solidarity. We support our Shiite and Palestinian brethren in much the same way the Jews in the United States support their brethren in Israel. In the past, this justification more or less convinced many Iranians. However, during the street demonstrations and protests that followed the 2009 elections and particularly at the Quds rally that year, for the first time many Iranians shouted the slogan, "Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, my life for Iran."

The Iranian leadership blamed opposition leaders for that slogan and pressed them to dissociate themselves from and even condemn it. Hence the Ahmadinejad visit to Lebanon was partly in response to increasing criticism by the Iranian people as to why the country's money must be spent on the Palestinians or the Shiites in Lebanon. The Iranian leaders have tried to explain to critics of their pro-Hamas and pro-Hizballah policy that it is a "strategic investment". "If we had not armed Hizballah in Lebanon, we would have had to confront the Israelis at our borders in Iran," stated an Iranian leader in response to those who questioned the wisdom of this investment.

In other words, Iranian policy in arming and investing in Hizballah is a deterrent strategy to safeguard the country from the myth of the Israeli armed forces. So is Iran's support for Hamas in Gaza. What is militarily more beneficial to the Islamic regime, asked the same Iranian leader, "to fight the Israelis near Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, or near Tehran and Isfahan?" So the best strategy for Iran is to arm Hizballah to prevent Israel from attacking it.

There is a flaw in this argument, an Iranian academic responded. It assumes there is an inherent animosity between the two countries and therefore envisages that war and confrontation between the two states are inevitable.

Still another issue concerning Ahmadinejad's visit to Lebanon was raised by Mohamad Reza Khatami, brother of ex-president Khatami and a leading Reformist figure. Hizballah leader Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah praised Ahmadinejad as a hero. He forgot that the Iranian president faces a lot of opposition inside his own country. For Nasrallah, Ahmadinejad is president of the country that during the past three years spent huge sums of money on Lebanon's Shiites. He therefore was full of praise and admiration for Ahmadinejad. One cannot imagine that the Lebanese Shiite leader was unaware of Ahmadinejad's lack of popularity among many of his own people, particularly the more educated Iranians. Yet he extolled Ahmadinejad like a hero, to the disappointment and the anger of many Iranians.

Nasrallah was of course walking a tightrope. On the one hand, he could not have risked provoking the anger of his "rich" guest by not admiring and praising him. Yet on the other hand, to do so angered many Iranians. Caught between these two opposing forces, we know which one he opted for. And it was precisely Nasrallah's indifference toward the Iranian people, or at least his indifference toward Ahmadinejad's critics, that Mohamad Reza Khatami pointed out in an open letter addressed to the Hizballah leader.

Whatever justification Nasrallah had for praising Ahamdinezhad in this manner, his behavior further strained the feelings of many Iranians toward Hizballah. Perhaps Nasrallah feels that neither he nor his movement needs the support of ordinary Iranians and that the Iranian leadership's backing is sufficient. But as leader of a grassroots movement, Nasrallah cannot possibly be unaware of the significance of the people's support for any successful struggle.- Published 21/10/2010 © bitterlemons-international.org


Sadegh Zibakalam is professor of political science at Tehran University.