DUBAI — First of all, thanks to peo­ple for writ­ing to check on me. The long radio silence has wor­ried peo­ple, but there’s a rea­son for it. My wife and I left for Dubai back in Feb­ru­ary, and there’s not been much to write about from here. Any­way, we’re per­fectly safe here. Bored, too.

I’m greatly wish­ing I could get back to Beirut right now. But the air­port is closed, and we’re hear­ing that Hezbol­lah is attempt­ing to close Beirut’s port, too. In fact, from the sounds of it, Hezbol­lah is tak­ing the city — at least the west­ern part of it. This was the threat, and it seems like they’re mak­ing good on it.

At the moment, it appears the only way in is over­land through Syria via Tripoli — although even that road may have been blocked. NOW Lebanon is cur­rently report­ing it’s blocked by burn­ing tires. Not sure who is doing the north­ern block­ing, but that’s a heav­ily Sunni area, so local Salafis might be attempt­ing to block infil­tra­tion of forces from Syria. Mas­naa, the other main land cross­ing was closed by Salafists last night. They have good rea­son to fear rein­force­ments from Syria or Iran. When I entered Lebanon on July 13, 2006 to get to the war, an Iran­ian man came in at the same time — I saw his pass­port. We exchanged glances and went our sep­a­rate ways.

Friends in Hamra and nearby ‘hoods report that Hezbol­lah gun­men have taken the streets and are telling peo­ple to stay indoors. They’re also tak­ing pro-government peo­ple from their homes. One friend near Sport­ing Club reported a Shi’ite man in her (mixed) neigh­bor­hood was taken by gun­men as he was scream­ing, “I’m from the Dahiyeh!“
Reports com­ing in right now report that RPGs are hit­ting Qor­e­itam, Saad Hariri’s home in West Beirut.
[Streets are being sec­tioned off by sec­tar­ian division](http://bp3.blogger.com/_dcdi – LdAeQ/SCOs1Za5KRI/AAAAAAAACTE/2l0yUYZZxPs/s1600-h/Das+Kriege.JPG).

There are reports of Hezbol­lah check­points around the infor­ma­tion and defense min­istries. Young men’s IDs are being checked.
Mean­while, in the east­ern, mainly Chris­t­ian, part of the city, it’s quiet. Most stores are shut­tered and many res­i­dents have appar­ently fled for the hills and moun­tains north and east of Beirut — the tra­di­tional Chris­t­ian heart­lands of Lebanon.

LBC, one of the main broad­cast­ers, is show­ing patri­otic songs on its satel­lite feed — usu­ally a bad sign.

Mustafa Alouch, a Future Move­ment MP from Beirut is on Al Jazeera right now say­ing Hezbol­lah is the only orga­nized force in Lebanon. The Sun­nis fight­ing back are just cit­i­zens defend­ing their homes, he says. This is patently untrue, as Hariri’s Future move­ment has a mili­tia. It’s just not as adept as Hezbollah.

“Hezbol­lah has been vic­to­ri­ous,” he said. “It has taken over Beirut. But this is a wound that will not heal. … The state of Hezbol­lah wants to dom­i­nate the Lebanese state. … Hezbol­lah rep­re­sents in Lebanon an Iran­ian proxy. This is not a local conflict.”

He’s right. This cur­rently has all the ear­marks of a Sunni-Shi’ite scrap as you’ve been see­ing in Iraq. Lebanon is — again — a front line in a con­flict between Iran/Syria and the U.S.

UPDATE 1148 +4 GMT: Hezbol­lah and Amal mili­ti­a­men have cut off the road near the Phoeni­cia Inter­con­ti­nen­tal Hotel near where for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Rafik Hariri was assas­si­nated. Spec­u­la­tion: Hezbol­lah may be plan­nin to take the hotel, as it housed mem­bers of par­lia­ment dur­ing the long siege of the Serail. I’ve head they’ve since left, but Hezbol­lah may think some are still in there, given that they’ve already taken over the homes of other pro-government MPs.
Also, the Port of Beirut is appar­ently in Army hands. There’s light traf­fic around the port, but it’s calm there.

I’m start­ing to think this is a cal­i­brated show of strength by Hezbol­lah. Based on the neigh­bor­hoods they’re going into — mainly Sunni and mixed ‘hoods in West Beirut, along with sym­bolic attacks on Hariri land­marks — his home, his TV sta­tion — it appears Hezbol­lah is show­ing that it can take over if it wants to. This, in fact, was a threat made by Has­san Nas­ral­lah yes­ter­day when he said if the group wanted to stage a coup, gov­ern­ment lead­ers would be in prison or the sea by dawn. Like­wise, Hezbol­lah is orga­nized enough that if it wanted to take West Beirut com­pletely, they could. (East Beirut is another story. That’s an express trip to Civil Warville, and Hezbol­lah doesn’t want to be the one to fire the first shot on that conflict.)

I could be very wrong, but I pre­dict the fight­ing will be over later today or tomor­row and Hezbol­lah will begin turn­ing the areas its taken over to the Lebanese Army. Peo­ple taken will be released — most of them. Hezbol­lah won’t pass up the oppor­tu­nity to take care of some polit­i­cal ene­mies and peo­ple it con­sid­ers trai­tors.

UPDATE 1234 +4 GMT: This isn’t a war, this a bitch-slap. Judg­ing from reports, the only March 14 fac­tion tar­geted by Hezbol­lah seems to be the Future Move­ment, a pri­mar­ily Sunni group. It’s also the mil­i­tar­ily weak­est of the March 14 fac­tions. The PSP and Chris­t­ian parts of March 14 have stayed out of the fight­ing for the most part. These past two days have been a pub­lic humil­i­a­tion of Saad Hariri.

Already, civil­ians are walk­ing the streets nor­mally, based on Al Jazeera video. (Most of them have suit­cases, indi­cat­ing a desire to flee.) Most — per­haps even all? — of the press out­lets asso­ci­ated with Hariri have been closed down. Fight­ing is dying down all across the city as the army and mili­tias take con­trol of secu­rity in their var­i­ous sectors.

This wasn’t a war… This was a warning.

**UPDATE 1804 +4 GMT:** Actu­ally, I take that back. This may well be a coup. It looks like most of the gov­ern­ment may well be capit­u­lat­ing to Hezbollah’s actions. We’re wait­ing to see what Hariri, Sin­iora and oth­ers will do. They’re all in a big meet­ing at Geagea’s place. Like that won’t throw gaso­line on the fire.

UPDATE 2037 +4 GMT: Well, leader of the Lebanese Forces Samir Geagea came out and pledged defi­ance to Hezbol­lah, say­ing Lebanon and Beirut would not fall. By using their weapons, he said, they have lost their right to them. Does that mean the LF is going to get into the fight and dis­arm Hezbol­lah? Not likely. Amin Gemayel spoke ear­lier, and mouthed sim­i­lar plat­i­tudes, but based on their demeanor and lack of any offered solu­tions or com­pro­mise, they seemed beaten to me. Where is Saad Hariri and Fuad Siniora?

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](http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2008/02/7208_aterrorist_is_a.html) 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](http://yalibnan.com/site/archives/2008/02/3_injured_as_he.php) and [assaults on Army positions](http://www.naharnet.com/domino/tn/NewsDesk.nsf/getstory?openform&C84DEA09904614D1C22573E300236CDE). 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](http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=88635) and blame-shifting.
My friend, Mitch Prothero, [has a good piece in Slate](http://www.slate.com/id/2183285/) 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](http://www.naharnet.com/domino/tn/NewsDesk.nsf/getstory?openform&CEC817027646A1F6C22573E2005610B2), 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](http://www.defenselink.mil/news/briefingslide.aspx?briefingslideid=320), I’m left with a strong sense of being under­whelmed. That’s it? Some­thing out of “[Miami Vice](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0430357/)”? 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](http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/01/07/america/US-Navy-Iran.php), 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](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Cole_bombing) and the [UK 15](http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0„-6796836,00.html) are high on everyone’s mind in the Gulf, as is the attack on the [U.S.S. Firebolt](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Firebolt_(PC-10)).
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](http://www.spot-on.com/archives/allbritton/2007/07/water_and_oil_mix_in_the_gulf_1.html):

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](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/06/AR2008010601574.html?hpid=moreheadlines) 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](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Samuel_B._Roberts_%28FFG-58%29#1988_deployment_and_mine_strike).
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.