Iran is the target and, as in the past, Lebanon is paying the price, writes Ayman El-Amir* The Bush administration wanted to map out a new Middle East and Hizbullah gave it a version it did not like. After three weeks of grinding, US-backed Israeli warfare and massacres that turned Lebanon into a mangle of rubble and civilian casualties, the US plan for a new Middle East has foundered. Following the gruesome Israeli massacre in Qana, the Bush administration, under the pressure of international indignation, turned to familiar grounds where it wields unabashed veto power -- the United Nations Security Council. It sought to secure by coercive diplomacy more time for Israel to push deeper into southern Lebanon and establish a de facto military buffer zone. The Security Council shed some crocodile tears but was barred from adopting a ceasefire resolution. That invited France to stomp on the scene and introduce a European initiative for a ceasefire and a political settlement. While the need for a ceasefire is paramount to ease the suffering of the Lebanese people, the US and Israel are using it as a bargaining chip for the liquidation of Hizbullah. However, the ultimate target for which crucible Lebanon is paying such heavy price is Iran. Bush's overall strategy for a new Middle East is based on his obsession with the global fight against terrorism. To him, a Pax Americana in the region rests on a militarily superior Israel, the eradication of Hizbullah, Hamas and all forms of Palestinian/ Arab challenge to Israeli domination. To dismantle Hizbullah, the only credible resistance force against rabid Israeli expansion, the Bush administration has encouraged Israel to scorch Lebanon, undermine and provoke Syria and thus isolate and contain the Iranian influence that threatens US ambitions in Iraq and the Gulf region. With the US democracy model in Iraq in tatters, the Bush administration is engaging in shadow-boxing with Iran in a gamble it is unlikely to win. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is energetically promoting a so-called permanent and sustainable ceasefire that carries an Israeli price, and conditions, for halting the carnage. It provides for the deployment of an international army at the borders of Lebanon and Syria, dismantling Hizbullah, release of the two Israeli soldiers but excludes an immediate ceasefire. By cutting off Lebanon from its neighbours and pitting Hizbullah against a weakened Lebanese army, Israel, with US blessings, would have a free rein in the Middle East. The US has given Israel the green light to execute what it does best: commit genocide against the civilian population. For the second time in a decade, Israel bombed the town of Qana, killing 60 civilians, including 37 children. It demolished the country's civilian infrastructure to demoralise the Lebanese population. The second Qana massacre has provoked international outrage and made it impossible to start any political process before a ceasefire takes hold. Hizbullah has offered an antidote to the US-Israeli scheme: Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon, exchange of prisoners and cessation of Israeli aggression. On the Palestinian side, there are similar demands for the release of more than 10,000 Palestinian detainees, withdrawal from illegally occupied Palestinian territories and a final settlement of the conflict based on time-honoured UN resolutions. Few analysts, if any, believe that the massive Israeli military offensive was designed to free the two soldiers captured by Hizbullah in the Israeli-occupied Shebaa farms. More likely, it is the first, though failed shot in the US-Israeli grand design for what Rice called the "New Middle East". By its pugnacious military strike Israel and the US hoped that the shock and awe inflicted upon the suffering Lebanese civilian population would turn the tide against Hizbullah. It was aimed to trigger a domestic Lebanese confrontation that would lead either to an uprising against Hizbullah or to a civil war that would tear Lebanon apart -- both a cherished Israeli objective that failed. What it has confirmed in the minds and hearts of the Lebanese and the Arabs is that Israel, backed by the US, is still the Arabs' public enemy number one. US-Israeli strategy had tried to put Lebanon between the rock and the hard place. If the Lebanese government wished to spare the civilian population the Israeli murderous campaign, it would have to accept the deployment of a stabilisation force under the authority of the Security Council and the threat of international sanctions. Unlike the UN Peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon (UNIFIL), it would provide for a modified NATO force modeled on the Stabilisation Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina (SFOR) that controlled the country for a decade, from 1995 until it was replaced by a European Union force (EUFOR) in 2005. Manned and equipped by NATO, SFOR was a robust enough force to fight and control a war situation. As a way of exercising maximum pressure on Lebanon, the US deliberately foiled the adoption of a Security Council resolution for a ceasefire, which is consistently the council's first order of priorities in any conflict situation, in order to give Israel more time to gain a blood-soaked advantage. The grand objective of US-Israeli strategy in the region is to break Iran. Being a prominent member of Mr Bush's "Axis of Evil" club, Iran's rising influence threatens to change the 50- year-old Middle East balance of power that assures Israel military superiority over all Arab armed forces. This has been a fundamental US national security strategy in the area since 1958. Ever since, the US has guaranteed that Israel commanded qualitative military advantage over the Arabs in conventional and non- conventional weaponry. The strategy was complemented by Israel's reputation of invincibility -- a myth that was shattered during the October 1973 War. US-Israeli strategy is desperately trying to surround and contain Iran, which has provided vigorous support for the Palestinian people after the 1979 revolution that deposed the Shah. Instead of neutralising Iran, the US-Israeli misadventure in Lebanon has galvanised the entire Arab nation and embarrassed US allied regimes in the region. Iran is surrounded on three sides by US allies with heavy American military presence. There is Afghanistan in the east, Pakistan to the south-east, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in the south-west and Iraq in the west. Western countries, particularly the US, have been nurturing Gulf Arab fears of a Shia Iran spreading influence and militancy in the conservative Gulf commonwealth; hence the need to contain the Islamic Republic. This explains last week's announcement of a $4.6 billion US arms sale package to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and Jordan. Saudi Arabia's lion's share of a $2.2 billion package includes Abraham's tanks, Apache helicopters and troop carriers. The introduction of a new arms race in the Gulf region is designed to create confrontation between Arab countries and Iran. The temptation is there to incite military hostilities between some Gulf Arab countries and Iran over the negotiable dispute of the Abu Musa, Little and Greater Tunb islands. This would only play in the hands of Israel and the US's myopic vision of "constructive chaos". President Bush may eventually regret, but not admit, his wishful thinking of forging a New Middle East. Israeli aggression and devastation of Lebanon has unified Lebanese of all political and sectarian shades against Israel. Hizbullah has given Israel a new version of the David versus Goliath myth it so often cited to portray itself. Hizbullah commander Hassan Nasrallah has emerged as the most popular Arab leader since Gamal Abdel-Nasser, the peace process in the Middle East has hit a stumbling block and the jerk-knee reaction of collaborating Arab regimes allied with the US has given millions of simple Arabs a sense of where the real battle against Israel begins -- at home. And, above all, the US-Israeli massacre in Lebanon will breathe a new life into Al-Qaeda. * The writer is former Al-Ahram correspondent in Washington, DC. He also served as director of the United Nations Radio and Television in New York.
