ABU DHABI – Well, I was going to blog the slaying of Imad Mughniyah earlier, but a combination of surprising barriers to getting online in Abu Dhabi, a crashed laptop and just arriving here to live put me in the slow lane on this one. I have a column coming in Spot-on.com, but I have to wait 24 hours to post that. (Contracts…) Anyway, in the meantime, check out Laura Rozen’s piece and be informed. The CIA is seriously denying this, but I for one think the agency is a bit more competent than it’s usually given credit for. Yeah, it was probably the Israelis, but hell… the CIA would love to have gotten this guy.
BEIRUT – Anyone paying any attention to al-wada (the situation) in Lebanon knows things ain’t good. The weather is affecting everything, from food deliveries to electricity. Skiing’s good up in Faraya, I hear, though.
Last weekend’s unrest was extremely unsettling. Seven people were killed and now Hezbollah and Amal are calling for revenge against the Army. March 8 — the Hezbollah-led opposition — is looking more and more intransigent, and unwilling to come to any solution other than a complete caving of the government to their demands: veto power in the cabinet, picking the president and a lock-in to the Syrian orbit.
Of course, the pro-Western government of Fuad Siniora is unwilling to do that, creating a situation that is ripe for explosion. The atmosphere is tense, and Lebanese are jumpy. Already there are small daily clashes and assaults on Army positions. Lebanese media are rife with reports that Syria now opposes Army Chief Michel Sleiman for president (not sure why, really; perhaps he’s not so in their camp as they thought he was?) and prefers former Foreign Minister Fares Boueiz for the post.
Mrs. Back to Iraq, a better observer of Lebanese politics than I am, doesn’t think last week’s protest-turned-street-battle was spontaneous. The dahiyeh, she said, is like Syria. Not much happens there without Hezbollah’s notice and approval. They’re trying to discredit the proto-presidency of Sleiman before it even happens. I agree with her, but I wonder if the protests really did start spontaneously and Hezbollah, recognizing an opportunity, allowed them to balloon into a confrontation with the state. At any rate, “Black Sunday” has led to a predictable amount of finger-pointing and blame-shifting.
My friend, Mitch Prothero, has a good piece in Slate on last weekend’s violence.
Most people I talk to think the al-wada will go on until 2009, when there are parliamentary elections. Then Hezbollah and the rest of the March 8 folks will likely win these and that will be the end of the so-called Cedar Revolution. Lebanon will return to the Syrian fold and politicians like Walid Jumblatt and Saad Hariri will be spending a lot of time in Paris and Riyadh.
That’s Hezbollah’s real goals, I think. Not to take over the country and install an Islamic state. Hezbollah is at heart a revolutionary movement and they’re smart enough to know that their popularity comes from that mystique as well as their social services that operate separately from the woefully inefficient Lebanese services.
If they “took over” and became the government, they would lose the revolutionary aura. From Hezbollah’s point of view, It’s much better to be a network of guerilla commanders in southern Lebanon fighting Zionist occupiers than to be in charge of fixing potholes and making sure the electricity is on. Because they don’t get blamed for the screw-ups then. (And Lebanon is nothing but one big screw-up when it comes to basic infrastructure.)
It works like this: If Hezbollah gives up its weapons — as every other militia in Lebanon did at the end of the 1975 – 1990 Civil War — they lose their value to Iran and Syria as a force on the northern flank of Israel. They would be just another political party in Lebanon. Without that firepower, what reason is there for Syria and Iran to continue funneling money and matériel to the group? And without the money, those much-admired social services will come to an end. Lebanese are easily bought, frankly, and their loyalties are not usually so ideological. They follow leaders who deliver on patronage, jobs and services. Without the loyalty of the Shi’ites, primarily bought and paid for with those services — not, as is claimed, because of an inborn revolutionary mindset — Hezbollah would quickly fall apart.
That’s what’s at stake here. That’s why Hezbollah must have veto power and control the presidency — to prevent any decision regarding its weapons; to remove UNIFIL as an irritant in the south; to prevent the Lebanese government from extending authority to south Beirut and other areas of Hezbollahstan.
Samir Geagea, a March 14 leader, said the goal is to so paralyze Lebanon that Syria will be asked to intervene again, as it did in 1975, but he inflates the issue, I think. I think Syria very much wants a return to preeminence in its tiny neighbor, but troops are not in the cards. The plan is to return to the 2004 status quo ante, as Condoleezza Rice intoned so often during the Israel-Hezbollah war. They want to get back to a protected status in the south, being a free-range guerilla movement. They want to preserve their weapons, which is their real constituency.
Hezbollah’s plan, when it comes to Syria and its weapons, is to paralyze and protect.
OK. Having watched the video of the Iranian speed boats “swarming” the U.S. naval vessels, I’m left with a strong sense of being underwhelmed. That’s it? Something out of “Miami Vice“? Where are the white boxes that were spoken of in the initial reports? What’s the deal with the weird robotic monotone? And again, why was this put out when it was, on the eve of President Bush’s trip to the Middle East in a bid to round up opposition to Iran?
Mind you, I am not questioning the performance or patriotism of the sailors involved. They performed exactly as they’re supposed to. What I am saying is that something’s off about this on the Pentagon’s end.
Hey everybody! I’m back after a long hiatus, honeymoon and oodles of time with the in-laws. But I’m back in Beirut now and ready for action.
And what a day to come back to work. In a very disturbing development, five Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats harassed three big U.S. naval vessels in the Arabian Gulf, nearly sparking a sea battle, according to the Pentagon. Over the weekend, the five smaller vessels threatened an American frigate, destroyer and cruiser in the Strait of Hormuz.
“Five small boats were acting in a very aggressive way, charging the ships, dropping boxes in the water in front of the ships and causing our ships to take evasive maneuvers,” a Pentagon official said. There was also communications between the Americans and the Iranians, which the Pentagon described to the effect of, “we’re coming at you and you’ll explode in a couple minutes.”
The story doesn’t describe them beyond “small boats,” so they could be patrol boats or the Iranian equivalent of the American RHIBs (Rigid Hull Inflatable Boats), but even so, they could do some real damage. The U.S.S. Cole and the UK 15 are high on everyone’s mind in the Gulf, as is the attack on the U.S.S. Firebolt.
And from my time with the American, British and Australian forces in the Gulf, I can tell you the Iranians are considered the foremost threat. As I wrote back in July last year:
The Iranians are a constant presence in the Gulf, which is natural considering its long coastline on the Gulf. And not far from KAAOT, they’ve made a naval base on a crane that sunk during the 1980 – 88 Iran-Iraq War. (Part of it still sticks up out of the water.) You can see it with the naked eye and American commanders say the Iranians are conducting recon ops on the Coalition forces.
The Iranian Navy gets some respect from [Cmdr. Jim Aiken, 40, who captains the American guided missile destroyer Chung-Hoon] and other commanders, who told me that when passing through the bottleneck to the Gulf called the [Strait of Hormuz](http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://worldatlas.com/aatlas/infopage/hormuz.gif&imgrefurl=http://worldatlas.com/aatlas/infopage/printpage/hormuz.htm&h=426&w=427&sz=25&hl=en&start=3&um=1&tbnid=WdgznmPezyzFtM:&tbnh=126&tbnw=126&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dstrait%2Bof%2Bhormuz%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26hs%3D6j8%26sa%3DX), a passing Iranian Navy ship presented colors and her sailors saluted, holding fast to naval traditions the world over. But the IRGC Navy is a different story. The Coalition sailors I spoke with called them thugs and accused them of basically running a protection racket on dhows that venture into their part of the Gulf.
At the time, I asked Aiken what would happen if the Iranians tried to grab some U.S. sailors like they to the 15 British commandos back in March 2007. He mumbled some stuff before finally saying the U.S. would shoot back. And that’s almost what happened in this incident. The Pentagon official said the Iranians turned back “literally at the very moment that U.S. forced were preparing to open fire.”
What does this mean? I’m not sure yet; it could be just one of those things but it’s interesting that the IRGC took over Iran’s naval command in the Gulf back in November, according to the U.S. Navy. It could be a probe, a provocation or some yahoos out of control. The IRGC isn’t the most unified or disciplined of armed forces. But no matter what, the Iranians have given President Bush some fresh PR to use against them when he comes calling on the region this week to shore up an anti-Iran coalition among Arab states.
UPDATE 1÷8÷08 10:36:24 AM: Folks more knowledgeable than me are chewing this over, and they’re smelling a rat. It is awfully convenient that an incident happens on the even of Bush’s visit to the region where containing Iranian aggression is high on the president’s agenda. And the Navy claims the IRGC–N is running protection rackets and smuggling. Could the dumped white boxes have been Iranian attempts to dump contraband? On the other hand, the U.S.S. Cole incident has made the Navy understandably twitchy. Those guys out there are switched on, big time. And Iranian explanation that they didn’t recognize the ships is implausible at best. A cruiser, destroyer and frigate aren’t small ships, and the only naval power of force in the Gulf’s international waters are going to be either American, British or Australian. The Iranians knew with whom they were playing chicken. Perhaps this was an indication from Iran that it can cause trouble on multiple fronts for the U.S. and its allies?
There’s also a history of Iranian aggression in the Gulf during the 1980 – 88 Iran-Iraq war and the war of the tankers. The Iranians laid mines in international waters that led to the U.S.S. Samuel B. Roberts incident.
So, in short, there are good reasons for both sides to provoke the other, and it remains to be seen what — if anything — will come of this. In all honesty, probably nothing, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Posted without comment:
From W. Thomas Smith Jr.: “After much reflection and consideration, I am withdrawing from my professional relationship as a regular freelancer with National Review Online.”
Kathryn Jean Lopez weighs in:
I apologize to all of our readers. We should have required Smith to clearly source all of his original reporting from Lebanon. Smith let himself become susceptible to spin by those taking him around Lebanon, so his reporting from there should be read with that knowledge. (We are attaching this note to all his Lebanon reporting.) This was an editing failure as much as it was a reporting failure. We let him down, and we let you down, and we’re taking steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Smith has, on his own, decided that he will no longer write for NRO. We respect his decision.
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