By visiting Lebanon, Ahmadinejad has tipped the regional balance towards resistance to Israel and away from appeasement, writes Ayman El-Amir* Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent visit to Lebanon and his statements were a disappointment to national and regional forces anticipating confrontation. Despite a wary Sunni and Christian reception, Ahmadinejad sought to assure all Lebanese that Iran was interested in the unity and stability of Lebanon and that he did not come to throw Iran's heavy weight behind the dominantly Shia Hizbullah against other factions. To Israel, he had nothing more than scathing remarks that reflect Iran's standard policy of the condemnation of Israeli occupation, oppression of the Palestinians and the doomed future of Zionism. The so-called Arab moderates were in a quandary as to what to expect from this Iranian penetration of Arab ranks. What Ahmadinejad did is that he refocussed more clearly the existing lines of confrontation between the Arab forces of resistance and those of appeasement in the Middle East conflict. His visit came at a critical time after the failure of US-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that demonstrated that Israel has the upper hand in the peace process. Israel wanted to impose its own terms of peace, including Palestinian capitulation and the continuation of Israeli settlement of Palestinian territories. The US is desperate to show some progress to justify the continuation of negotiations, the Netanyahu government is not helping, and the Arabs are helpless. They are counting on the US exercising pressure on Israel, which the Obama administration is both unwilling and unable to do. Instead, the US has surrendered to usual Israeli blackmail and is granting it more sophisticated weapons. The Iranian president's appearance on the scene came at a time when Arab hopes pinned on US active involvement in the peace process have been dashed. Both Israel and the US know that Arab moderates are so appeasing because they have no other alternative. None of them is willing or able to confront Israeli policy in any way that may raise its concern. This Arab dependency has failed to persuade the Arab masses that Israel can be brought around to negotiate a peaceful settlement that would fulfil legitimate Palestinian rights. And the failure of indirect and direct negotiations has undermined the peace process and promoted the more credible option of resistance. It is against this backdrop that Ahmadinejad landed in Lebanon. One of the most important lessons of the Middle East conflict is that Israel respects only the use of force. It was thus created and it continues to exist by the threat or the use of military aggression. In 1967, it defeated and humiliated three Arab countries in a blitzkrieg attack. It concluded a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979 in the shadow of the October 1973 War -- an experience Israel did not want to repeat. It was therefore worthwhile to give back occupied Sinai in return for taking Egypt out of the conflict in what was known at the time as the land-for- peace formula. On another front, Israel was forced to withdraw from South Lebanon in 2000 after two decades of confrontation with the Lebanese resistance movement Hizbullah. Then it met with unexpected humiliation when its 34-day campaign into Lebanon in 2006 failed to crush the resistance. Throughout its history Israel has been a belligerent state presenting the gun as an olive branch. Israel calculates that no single Arab country, or all of them put together for that matter, is capable of inflicting decisive military defeat on it. It is a condition extorted from the US since the late 1950s, following the Suez War: that Israel should be militarily superior to collective Arab military power. The rabid, Israeli-driven Western campaign and sanctions against Iran's nuclear enrichment programme is not about its potential development of nuclear weapon capability. It is about Iran's rising political and military power that threatens to neutralise the concept of Israel uber alles, or Israel above all. Israel is comfortable with the idea that the US protects and controls Arab moderates while it uses the US as a cat's paw in Middle East politics. President Ahmadinejad's visit to the town of Bint Jbeil was symbolic of Iran's support of resistance as an alternative to the failed policy of appeasement. His entry into the fragile Lebanese scene and his anti-Israeli rhetoric have stirred jitters in Arab ruling circles, as well as in Israel and the US. It is a declaration of the death of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which was spurned by former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon at the time. Promotion of the spirit of resistance also has its implications for the domestic situation in all Arab countries where sitting autocrats seem to perpetuate themselves in power over rebellious masses. For quasi-feudal regimes with a religious mantle they dressed Iranian revolutionary policies as a Sunni-Shia conflict that threatens the dominant Sunni culture. Strangely enough, this confrontation did not exist when Shah Mohamed Reza Pahlavi ruled Iran and fostered a strategic alliance with Israel against Arab interests. For the US and Israel the visit of Ahmadinejad was alarming, particularly in view of the resounding welcome he received everywhere. The US, which called the visit provocative, rushed Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman from Riyadh to Beirut to meet with Lebanese President Michel Suleiman and to talk to other leaders. His mission was to assess the impact of Ahmadinejad's visit on Lebanese policies, ascertain that Lebanon remained in the Western fold and that rising factional tensions will not derail the work of the international court investigating the car-bomb murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Al-Hariri in 2005. Lebanon has been an open and hospitable country for decades, allowing cross-political currents to blow from every direction without losing its cultural balance. Eventually, it turned into the playground of regional and international political competition. Almost everyone, Israel included, has a proxy of sorts in Lebanon. The arrest over the past few months of several Lebanese spies working for Israel who had penetrated the Lebanese communications network is a vivid example. Western powers, assisted by some regional Arab regimes, have consistently tried to keep Lebanon locked into the Western camp, which favours Israel over all Arab countries. Lebanese nationalists of all affiliations see their country as part of the Arab world and are concerned with its priorities, regardless of the leanings of existing ruling regimes. Israeli militarism and aggression are not part of this alliance and the Arab masses do not share the policy of appeasement. The US, Israel and their Arab cohorts do not want to see Lebanon stray too far from the Western camp. They still feel that Lebanon is the balancing chip in the Middle East equation. Ahmadinejad's visit seems to have tipped the balance in favour of resistance against Israel away from the policy of appeasement. It also showed that despite several rounds of sanctions and attempts at isolation, Iran is still a major influential player in Middle Eastern affairs. A few days ago, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki, who is seeking a second term in office, travelled to Iran to meet Iraqi leader Muqtada Al-Sadr to seek his support for the premiership he is contesting with Iyad Allawi. Al-Sadr controls 10 seats in the Iraqi parliament, which could give Al-Maliki's coalition a comfortable majority over Allawi's two-seat margin. Iran was also invited to participate in a high-level conference in Rome on Afghanistan where the US-led NATO invasion force is breathing its last gasp. Iran is an influential party to this conflict too. President Ahmadinejad's visit to Lebanon has shown that Iran has a vested interest in Middle Eastern affairs that it is not willing to abandon in deference to a US policy of intimidation or aggressive Israeli campaigns. He wanted to assure the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance that they are not alone in their legitimate struggle. * The writer is former Al-Ahram correspondent in Washington DC. He also served as director of United Nations Radio and Television in New York.
