The greatest beneficiary of Israel's military misadventure in Lebanon is Iran, writes Mustafa El-Labbad* The smoke cleared and the dust settled over Lebanon to reveal a configuration of regional geopolitical dynamics markedly different to those that existed before the Israeli invasion. Israel's architecture of destruction, drafted by its raiding aircraft across large swaths of southern Lebanon, could not conceal the limits of Israeli military might. The Israeli war machine has lost its aura of invulnerability. Hizbullah, by contrast, now stands taller in the region than ever, having succeeded in grinding the Israeli invasion to a halt and, simultaneously, in retaining its own arms and regional alliances. As a result, the US flew to Israel's rescue, producing Security Council Resolution 1701, turning a debacle on the ground to Israel's relative strategic advantage. But no UN resolution can alter the shift in the regional balances that ensued from the confrontation, and there is no doubt that Iran, Washington's actual target in this war, has emerged even more influential. In the opening phases of Israel's aerial bombardment of Lebanese civilians and civilian infrastructure, Condoleezza Rice remarked that the death and destruction were the birth pangs of a new Middle East. Yet it appears that the new Middle East that is emerging is not the one she had in mind. After a full month of warfare, which Israel failed to resolve in its favour in spite of the complete military and political support it received from the US, a new set of strategic balances has begun to impose itself on the regional map. In keeping with the laws of Hegelian dialectics, the quantitative political and geo-strategic changes that have taken place in our region as the result of the occupation of Afghanistan in 2001, the occupation of Iraq in 2003 and, finally, the war on Lebanon in 2006, have given rise to profound and far reaching qualitative changes. At the heart of these changes is the emergence of Iran as a prominent regional power. Iran's growing regional influence is the product of the interaction of numerous factors, foremost being the catalogue of policy failures of the ruling neo-conservative administration in Washington. True, Tehran has slowly and steadily worked to weave a fabric of relations extending from its western boundaries across Iraq and Syria to southern Lebanon, making it possible to speak of an "Iranian-Israeli frontier." However, there can be no denying that America's floundering military adventures in the region have given Iran just the boon its regional ambitions needed. The failure of US policy towards Iraq, in particular, opened the door to Iran to become a key player in Iraqi politics. In like manner, the failure of the Israeli venture in Lebanon has strengthened the moral and political hand of Hizbullah and, by extension, Iran, the Lebanese resistance movement's source of spiritual authority and political and military support. One of the main aims of 1701 may well have been reducing Iranian-Israeli geopolitical proximity by compelling Hizbullah forces to withdraw north of the Litani River, an objective Israel failed to accomplish militarily. However, international political boundaries are, in reality, no more than a theoretical construct that ultimately reflects the current balances of regional and international power. Lebanon, since its establishment as an independent nation in 1943, has been a focal point of regional tensions and an infallible gauge of the shifts in regional balances of power. This year, the US has tangibly acknowledged the Lebanese dynamic by backing a military adventure the major purpose of which was to sap Iran's regional strength by stripping Hizbullah of its arms. Helping to pave the way to this was the White House's perception of the efficacy of Israel's military might. Key figures in the Bush administration had been under the impression that Israel's army could accomplish the mission of disarming Hizbullah in the space of a couple of weeks, providing that Israeli forces had an internationally acceptable pretext for going on the offensive and that their military operations would focus on the predominantly Shia areas of Lebanon (the south, the Bekaa Valley and the southern suburbs of Beirut), so as to neutralise Lebanon's other religious parties. Iran, for its part, was operating under different assumptions. It believed that a military confrontation between Hizbullah and Israel would put Arab regimes under unprecedented strain, especially in view of the collapse of the peace process and Israeli belligerency in the occupied territories. Tehran would then be able to turn the fallout from these pressures towards the further expansion of its regional standing and influence. Iran also knew that it could count on the ideological and combat fervour of Hizbullah fighters, through whom it would be able to deliver political and military messages to various regional and international forces. Where the thinking of Washington and Tehran coincided was in regarding Lebanon as a "rehearsal" for future wars. While Israel was testing American-made military high-tech hardware and demonstrating the ability of "smart" bombs to destroy underground fortifications (Iran's underground nuclear facilities being their eventual target), Hizbullah forces proved their efficacy at thwarting an Israeli advance and at harvesting Israeli tanks and artillery using Iranian-made anti-tank missiles. In addition, Hizbullah succeeded in delivering some powerful messages on its behalf and on behalf of Tehran via the Iranian-made missiles it dispatched in ever increasing depths into Israel. Above all, Washington was given to understand that Tehran could indeed strike heavily populated Tel Aviv with its Shihab-3 missiles if Washington launched an attack against Iran. Iran has improved its regional hand with consummate skill. Building on its geographic position overlooking the Gulf, from where it could obstruct the passage of oil to international markets, and upon its network alliances, it has so enhanced its spiritual and ideological standing among Arab Shia that Iran has become to them what the Soviet Union was to communists around the world. In this context, the fight of the southern Lebanese Shia to liberate Shebaa Farms and other such just causes has worked to promote Iran's regional interests, just as the Soviet Union once sought to capitalise on the struggles of communist movements elsewhere in the world. In the absence of an Arab alternative, two regional projects are vying with one another: the neo-conservatives' "new Middle East", stripped of its Arab identity and dominated by Israel, and the other new Middle East, dominated by the Shia "International" or "Comintern". Because the Arabs are highly suspicious of both, but have no alternative of their own, or the ability to impose one even if they had, the region appears headed for another collision revolving around Iran's nuclear capacity. During the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Washington, which has been outmanoeuvred by Iran at every turn, pressured the Security Council to pass Resolution 1696, giving Iran until the end of this month to halt all uranium enrichment activities or face sanctions under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. But, rather than dampening Iran's regional ambitions, international sanctions, which are certain to be forthcoming, will only fuel its resolve. We can therefore expect next month to usher in a new and qualitatively different burst of escalating tensions in the region. Iran has demonstrated, on numerous occasions, that it has the political acumen to strengthen its presence as a regional power using means far less formidable than those available to the US. The neoconservatives in Washington, by contrast, are plodding their way from one disaster to the next, constantly leaving one predicament by plunging headlong into another with absolute confidence in the ability of military force to solve their problems while blind to the impact their pugnacity has on US interests, and on those of its allies, in the region. American policymakers still have to wake up to the fact that to the Arabs the regional power struggle with Iran comes second in importance to the Arab-Israeli conflict. They should also realise that Washington's policies have hampered the ability of Arab governments to perform their regional roles effectively and in a manner that would enable them to keep Iranian ambitions within proper bounds and, simultaneously, to secure their own regional goals. If Iran's persistence at promoting itself as a regional power at the expense of the Arabs may have momentarily blurred the above-mentioned order of priorities, Washington's stubborn refusal to respond to the Arabs' minimum demands for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict will inevitably propel the region into the embrace of the "Iranian Comintern". * The writer is a political analyst specialised in Iranian affairs.
