Iran Buys Time for Nuclear Enrichment with Proxy War in Lebanon

Hezbollah, the Shi’ite militia in Lebanon which is funded by Iran and armed by Syria, decided to go to war with Israel last week, and Israel decided to respond in kind. There are now hundreds dead, mostly Lebanese civilians, and there is no end in sight. Israel wants Hezbollah moved out of missile range of Israel, and Hezbollah isn’t going to move simply because it is being bombed from above. This ends in a stalemate at high levels of violence, or an Israeli invasion a la 1982, that risks a broader war. However, Iran has achieved its objective.

With the “Cedar Revolution,” Lebanon freed itself from Syrian occupation, but Syrian infiltration of the Lebanese army and intelligence forces remained. Moreover, Hezbollah was the only militia not disarmed after the Syrians left. The Lebanese army could force Hezbollah to disarm only at the price of civil war. As Leonidas said to Xerxes before Themopylae when the latter demanded he lay down his arms, “Come take them!” So, Hezbollah has a nice patch of the Beka’a Valley from which to shoot missiles at Zionists.

Last week, the Iranian and Syrian cat’s paw decided to take two Israeli soldiers prisoner hostage, (the western press seems to think they were kidnapped, but they were, in fact, taken prisoner after a skirmish, and are better defined as prisoners of war). The Israelis, having already had another trooper snagged by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and having a prime minister without much in the way of military credentials, decided to lash out blindly to make things look good domestically. Which is where the world is now.

Israel has said it wants the soldiers back and Hezbollah out of missile range of Israel. It has bombed the airport at Beirut, blockaded the Lebanese coast and even attacked a Lebanese army barracks (killing 8 as of this morning). Hezbollah doesn’t seem to want to agree to that, rather it wants to keep launching missiles and pretend to be defending the Islamic world from the Jewish state. It is interesting to note that not a single Sunni government has come out in support of Hezbollah – apparently, the obliteration of the militia by the Israelis serves their purposes while leaving their hands clean.

In the end, as America has learned to its dismay, controlling land requires troops on the ground. If the Lebanese army won’t move Hezbollah out, the Israeli Defense Force will. Or Israel will have to accept a continued missile threat from its north. Of course, that doesn’t matter. The real purpose here was to divert western attention away from Iran’s nuclear program during the G-8 summit. On Sunday, Iran said the latest offer was an “appropriate basis, an acceptable basis” for negotiation – it was not an acceptance. The G-8 summit is over, and Iran has bought itself more time. Lebanon and Israel just happened to be useful devices to achieve that.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

Home