Lebanon
Will Be First
Victim Of Iran Crisis
By Robert Fisk
22 February, 2007
The
Independent
How easily the sparks from the
American-Israeli fire fall across the Middle East. Every threat, every
intransigence uttered in Washington and Tehran now burns a little bit
more of Lebanon. It is not by chance that the UN forces in the south
of the country now face growing suspicion among the Shia Muslims who
live there. It is no coincidence that Israel thunders that the Hizbollah
are now more powerful than they were before last year's July war. It
is not an accident that Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbollah's leader,
says he has brought more missiles into Lebanon.
Why, the Lebanese ask, did
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria visit President Ahmadinejad of Iran
last weekend? To further seal their "brotherly" relations?
Or to plan a new war with Israel in Lebanon?
The images of Iran's new
missile launches during three days of military manoeuvres - apparently
long-range rockets which could be fired at US warships in the Gulf -
were splashed across the Beirut papers yesterday morning, along with
Washington's latest threats of air strikes against Iran's military.
Be certain that the Lebanese will be the first to suffer.
For the West, the crisis
in Lebanon - where Hizbollah and its allies are still demanding the
resignation of Fouad Siniora's government - is getting more serious
by the hour. Up to 20,000 UN troops - including Nato battalions of Spanish,
French and Italian forces - are now billeted across the hillsides of
southern Lebanon, in the very battleground upon which the Israelis and
the Hizbollah are threatening to fight each other again.
If Israel is America's proxy
(which the Lebanese don't doubt), then Hizbollah is Iran's proxy. The
more the United States and Israel warn Iran of its supposed nuclear
ambitions, the more Hizbollah increases the pressure on Lebanon.
Already, there are dangerous
signs of what may be to come. Spanish troops were stoned by youths in
a Lebanese village last week. French soldiers who arrived at Maroun
al-Ras with their weekly medical convoy for local Lebanese civilians
were told in no uncertain terms that they were not welcome. The French
left immediately. Was this because President Jacques Chirac, busy commemorating
his murdered Lebanese friend Rafiq Hariri in Paris on Monday, is now
talking of placing UN forces not just along the Lebanese border with
Israel but along the country's frontier with Syria as well?
M. Chirac is warning that
last summer's war between the Hizbollah and Israel could "re-plunge
Lebanon into a deep crisis". If the Lebanese don't pull themselves
together, the French President added, they could "slide once more
into a fatal chasm". These are not words which are likely to commend
themselves to President Assad or his opposite number in Tehran.
Add to this the statement
by Brigadier Yossi Baidatz, Israel's head of research for military intelligence
- disputed by Amir Peretz, the country's Defence Minister - that the
Hizbollah "is building up more firepower than it had before the
war... some is still en route from Syria", and it's not difficult
to see why a visiting delegation of Italian senators in Beirut have
been expressing their fears for their own country's UN troops in southern
Lebanon.
An Italian major general,
Claudio Graziano, has just taken command of the multinational force,
Unifil, and has been described by the Israelis as an expert in "counter-terrorism"
- not quite the praise that General Graziano is likely to have wanted
from the Israelis as he faces the dangers of the coming weeks and months.
In fact, generals seem all the rage in Lebanon these days, the latest
of whom - the Lebanese army commander General Michel Sulieman - has
made a speech of remarkable common sense, effectively blaming Lebanon's
politicians for not creating the unity which might resolve its problems.
In last month's street fighting
in Beirut and other towns, General Sulieman's soldiers achieved the
extraordinary feat of repeatedly breaking up riots without killing a
single one of their own citizens.
"Lebanon cannot be governed
by its military or through a dictatorship," he said. "It is
a country satiated with democracy... but such a great amount of democracy
in Lebanon might lead to chaos.
"Soldiers are even more
conscientious than many leaders in this country."
Up to 70 per cent of the
Lebanese army - which is now a volunteer, rather than a conscript force
- are Shia, which is why it cannot be used to disarm the Shia Hizbollah.
© 2007 Independent News
and Media Limited