Khatami
Insists Tehran Still Supports Hizbollah
By Robert
Fisk in Beirut
14 May 2003
If the Americans expected
submission, they didn't get it in Beirut yesterday afternoon. President
Mohammad Khatami of Iran whose election gave him a far more convincing
majority than George Bush received in America insisted that Tehran's
support for the Lebanese Hizbollah would remain firm, that Israel must
leave the last square miles of Lebanese territory and that here
was the old, familiar Khatami refrain there must be a "dialogue"
of civilisations.
The Shia Muslims of Lebanon,
the largest if largely unacknowledged community in the country, flocked
to see their hero in Beirut, women in chadors and great bearded men
weeping with delight at the mere sight of the thin, ascetic but humane
cleric who once offered a real hope of democracy in Iran.
Alas for hopes. The religious
hierarchy in Tehran has crushed President Khatami's spirit of freedom
it tore up two parliamentary bills demanding yet more freedoms
this week but his message to the Lebanese contains a powerful
emotional charge: don't give in, trust in God, believe in humanism.
It is very much the message of the Renaissance with which the West was
blessed but of which the Middle East we are talking here about
Islam was deprived. Vincent Battle, America's unimaginative ambassador
to Lebanon, has been preaching the lessons of Israeli submission to
the Lebanese for weeks: disarm the Hizbollah fighters, put the Lebanese
army on the border with Israel, learn the lessons of the "war on
terror".
In this particular conflict
the American version of it as it supposedly applies to Lebanon
Hizbollah must be forced to surrender, Israel's northern border
must be left untouched (forgetting the little matter of Shebaa farms)
and Lebanese soldiers must protect Israel's frontier. Talks between
US and Iranian officials had suggested President Khatami might make
some allusion to Washington's demands.
Not so. He has praised Hizbollah,
recalled its courage in forcing an Israeli retreat in 2000 and given
Iran's continued support to the Lebanese and pro-Syrian
government in Beirut. At a rally in the great sports stadium of west
Beirut tonight, he repeated all these themes to the infinite
relief of Hizbollah, which feared that a new, post-Iraq world order
might have sidelined its resistance movement.
But the days are young and
Syria's gentle sidelining of "terrorist" Palestinian groups
in Damascus may yet reflect painfully on Beirut. If Hizbollah are "terrorists"
America's faithful parroting of Israel and if they are
the "A team of terrorism", the cliche adopted by Colin Powell's
faithful State Department protégé Richard Armitage, who
knows what pressures may be placed on Tehran in the coming months?
One thought in Beirut is
that the US nurtures the idea that a peaceful, pliable, Islamic Iran
could take up the Shah's old role of policeman of the Middle East, controlling
the wayward Shia Muslim majority of Iraq, maintaining the loyalty of
Saudi Arabia's Shia Muslim population over the Saudi oil fields and
generally ensuring that the Arab Gulf states don't go to war with each
other.
But President Khatami
perhaps the only truly democratically elected leader in the Muslim Middle
East seems in no mood for such a place in history. His lecture
to Lebanese academics and preachers yesterday morning was one of peace
and compromise. Politicians he did not identify them though we
could guess "exploit science, morality, literature and art
for their individual interests, at their own will, under their talons
of power", he said. He wanted a new, spiritual life capable
"of establishing the foundation for the most profound of all dialogues
between cultures and civilisations and religions" that recognised
no geographical boundaries. Human rights "in all aspects of man's
material and spiritual life" were what he wanted.
Was this what America was
asking for in Iraq? Yes, he wanted an American withdrawal from Iraq.
And why not? After all, US troops are now in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan,
Afghanistan, Iraq and in the Gulf. Iran is surrounded. Which, one supposes,
is why the Hizbollah in Lebanon a country once described by a
Hizbollah cleric as "the lung through which Iran breathes"
is so important to the Islamic Republic. Not to mention Syria
and Lebanon itself.
This is how the reasoning
goes: if Hizbollah was disarmed, there is no reason why Syria should
expect Israel to give back the occupied Golan Heights to Damascus. If
Lebanon disarms Hizbollah, there is no reason why it should not sign
a peace treaty with Israel, abandoning its claim justified in
international law to the still-occupied Shebaa farms. The last
disciplined, armed group opposed to Israel and forget, here,
the ragtag Palestinian militias would be closed down. No wonder
they cheered President Khatami last night. But did they realise that
only a few metres away lay the slums of the Sabra and Chatilla Palestinian
refugee camps, whose population was first slaughtered by Israel's brutal
allies and then by Lebanese Shias loyal to the present Speaker
of Parliament who himself held warm talks with Mr Khatami only a few
hours earlier?