Notes on the Lebanese Current Political Crisis (Part 2)

Before starting, I would like to stress that I am not, nor will ever be, a supporter for Hezbollah or any other political party in Lebanon. I am just a political analyst and writer and I am just analyzing the situation in Lebanon without being affected by any camp.

1-      I do not believe that Hezbollah is the murderer of Rafiq al-Hariri and I doubt the legitimacy of the international tribunal, the judges, the investigators, and the evidence in Hariri’s assassination. This is Due to many reasons:

a.       There are the false witnesses’ files that the tribunal refuses to discuss as well as refuses to consider knowing that the first results of the investigation were built on it.

b.      The tribunal is only showing few circumstantial evidence. If they were to be presented in any court in the United States, the case would be dismissed at once and not hold trail. The tribunal also hides the evidence that its recent subpoena was based on (to protect the soundness of the investigation as they claimed). How are the accused supposed to defend themselves then???????? Is that a rational thing??????? Why do they hide it if they are confident of their accusations and procedures?????? How can there be a just trail if the accused cannot defend himself against the prosecutors’ evidence????? This procedure is unacceptable by any court of law in the whole world.

c.       The tribunal is oriented towards one idea and that is the Hezb, and refuses to consider other evidence and scenarios. The evidence that Hezbollah provided were never investigated by the tribunal. such as the Israeli air surveillance of Hariri’s movements in the months before his assassination, the activities of the Israeli intelligence and the Lebanese traitors also in the months before and after his assassination, the suspicious and outrageous activities of the investigators in Lebanon, the transportation of the 97 computers that belonged to the investigation committee through Israel instead of Beirut airport, and many more evidence the Hezb talked about.

d.      The tribunal’s investigators gathered personal, civil, demographic, topographic, communication, and criminal information about ALL Lebanese people such as fingerprints, blood type, DNA, phone numbers, houses, family ties and members, passports, and so on and so forth. This information, by the way, was on the computers that were transported through Israel. Can you or anyone tell me WHY the tribunal needed this information about ALL THE LEBANSES???????  …Are all Lebanese accused of Hariri’s assassination? Is there any suspension that ALL Lebanese are involved????.... Shouldn’t acquiring such information be limited to individuals related to the assassinations (suspects or people involved directly or indirectly)?????......

This tribunal is politicized 100%. At first, Syria was accused and forced to get out of Lebanon (not that any Lebanese objected it). Then, and after the July 2006 war, the Hezb became suddenly the murderer and its accused members happened to be among its elite fighters. Isn’t that suspicious?????????????????????

2-      Hariri’s son Saad cares less about finding his father’s murderer. In fact, no one (in 14 March camp or the international society) wants to find Hariri’s real murderer. All of them want to invest this incident politically as much as possible. It is like having our own Holocaust. Most politicians who visited Lebanon (depending on their ranks and on the side they support) put flowers on the grave of Hariri in downtown Beirut, Hilary Clinton did. Moreover, whenever someone dares to contradict and oppose 14 March camp, they immediately provoke the memory of Hariri. Hariri’s son Saad was prepared to sell his dad’s tribunal in order to stay a Prime Minister and that is documented and signed by him.

3-      I stress that the balance of terror between Israel and Hezbollah is the most crucial cause preventing the outbreak of war. This time, Hezbollah missiles will reach deep inside the Israeli state. The Targets (as the Hezb declared many times) this time are civilian, military, commercial and many other vital centers. The Israelis themselves acknowledge this fact and anyone can review the Israeli newspapers to check this.  On the other side, Israel will destroy Lebanon with its advance weapons (that is that).  

The balance of terror then is what makes both sides think twice before initiating any act of aggression.  Exchanging threats is the only political outlet available at present. In light of this fact, you might understand the reasons behind accusing the Hezb of Hariri’s murder. When the Israeli government could not take it down or even weaken it in 2006 war, the Israelis realized that direct confrontations between organized armed forces and an armed militia is worthless. Thus, the alternative was to weaken the home front that Hezb relied on for support, to force the Lebanese themselves to disarm Hezbollah.

4-       No one can disarm the Lebanese, the same as no one can disarm the rednecks in the US. The Lebanese sects were always armed long before the civil war not because they wanted to protect a farm or a wealth, but because each was, is, and will always be ready to protect its existence in Lebanon.

5-      One needs to understand that Lebanon is not a state in the sociopolitical meaning of the word. It never had the components of a state. To stay united, it always needed an outside interference especially when we consider its geopolitical importance. Therefore, many regional and international powers are maintaining spheres of influence on Lebanese territories through each sect. The Lebanese used to joke about it saying that if an earthquake occurred in Brazil we will feel the aftershock in Lebanon.

      When talking about Lebanon, we must not consider questions like: what ought to be??... what is moral and immoral??? …What is rational and irrational???... And what is normal and abnormal???... The Lebanese politics, economics, society and mentality are always under irrational and abnormal circumstances. Thus, to understand Lebanon we must only think of power politics.

Notes on the Lebanese Current Political Crisis (Part 1)

Western press sees the situation in Lebanon through the eyes of 14 March camp. I might add that they sometimes cultivate their opinions and structure their analysis based on the Israeli government point of view. The deterrence game that is played now between Hezbollah and the Israeli state is the only thing  preventing any clashes between the two and making the process of extracting oil and gas from the Lebanese international waters by the Israelis proceed slowly especially that Hezbollah threatened to blow up any Israeli oil installations.

  

Hezbollah can never dominate the Lebanese government or the Lebanese society due to many reasons among which:

1.       Shia constitute only one third of the Lebanese population. Each sect resides its own historical territory and has its share in business, finance, politics, tourism, and all other aspect of the Lebanese state acknowledged by the other in written and unwritten accords. Being only one third of the population, the Shia cannot control society or establish an Iranian-like theocratic state.

2.       Not all Sunni support Hariri’s camp especially that he allied with Sameir Jaja’ who was a civil war lord during the 1980s and the murderer of Prime Minister Rsheid Karami, President Franjieh’s son Tony and his family, and hundreds of Muslims. Many Sunni reject Hariri’s political agenda such as the Former Prime Ministers Huss, Karami, and Miqati and their supporters. A well as Some Sunni civil and Islamic organizations such as part of the Brotherhood and the AICP (whose members clashed with Hezbollah members in Beirut in 2010 yet continued supporting 8 of March camp despite Hariri’s attempts to sway them to his camp). Most of this Sunni camp rejects Hariri’s orientations not because they support Hezbollah or his camp but because Hariri’s project for Lebanon is suspicious. They believe he is taking the country to civil war under the false slogan of finding the truth about his father’s murderers.

3.       Hezbollah keeps a close eye on Lebanese politics, but it is not concerned with controlling it. This movement’s participation in the government is not only minimal but his two ministers do not even hold sovereign ministries. Hussein al-Hajj Hassan is the Minister of Agriculture and Mohammad Fneish is the Minister of Administrative Development.

4.       Every Lebanese knows that Hezbollah and ‘Amal’ movement, led by Nabeeh Berry, were never on good terms in the last two decades. Each was competing for expanding his sphere of influence among the Shia. They only became allies in 8 of March camp to face the Hariri-Western project that was devised for Lebanon after the assassination of Rafeq el-Hariri in 2005. Therefore, do not think that with the number of their ministers in the government they can control the Lebanese political landscape.

5.       Lebanese politics reflects the diversity and complexity of the Lebanese society. It is not possible for any sect by itself to control any part other than what is decided for it in the written and unwritten accords throughout the Lebanese history.

6.       It is true that Hezbollah has advanced weapons that grant him more power compared to other sects. Yet, all sects in Lebanon are armed, trained, and ready to fight another civil war. In the clash that I mentioned before between Hezbollah and the AICP members, a small-scale street war broke out in few seconds between both parties and expanded into many neighborhoods. There were four human casualties and a lot of material damage.

This is Lebanon. To analyze it accurately, you cannot just read about it, you need to live it.

A Fact About the Middle East

When analyzing the situation in the Middle East, it is important to understand the people’s perceptions of themselves and their political environment as well as the background of those perceptions. Thus, Western scholars should have understood by now that the tribal and sectarian inheritance influences the Middle Easters mentality when it comes to their political order. Tribes always had one leader with entangled family ties with almost all members of that tribe. The same goes for the sects. If we added to this the history of the consecutive political regimes in the region, most Middle Easters are accustomed to one-leader regimes. If we understood this fact well, we can analyze the reasons why part of the Syrians supports Bashar al-Assad while the other part opposes him. The former constitute of al-Assad’s own sect and people who benefit from his rule. The later constitute mostly of Islamists who wants to bring about their own political order that -in turn- is headed by one ruler (the calipha or Ameer –prince-).  Therefore, do not mistake the opposition revolutions taking place in Syria as a democratization wave in the region. Democracy –to Middle Easters- is a foreign product. It is not produced by the natural development of society and culture and thus it is not applicable –at least in the present-. It can only be used as a mean to reach an end especially in the Islamists strategies.

The Current US-Iran Relations

The relationship between the United States and Iran have never been very good in the past 30 years. It sank to a low ebb when Bush was in the White House. Bush famously bracketed Iran with North Korea and Iraq in the "axis of evil" in his state of the union speech in 2002, a year before the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. This relation has been in a state of flux with a new administration in Washington.

            The United States government’s policy focused mostly on internationally threatening Iran. It labeled Iran as a state that: sponsored international terrorism, pursued weapons of mass destruction, threatened Arab neighbors in the Persian Gulf, supported anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism notions, opposed the Arab-Israeli peace process, and had a record of human rights violations. An accusation of Iran's harboring of al Qaeda operatives had been added to the list during the early years of war on terrorism, but it had proven to be false. The United States also took provocative actions against Iran such as supporting opposition to induce regime change, attempting to increase collective and unilateral sanctions, and deploying additional military assets in the region.

            As a retaliation, Iran devised a deterrence strategy to prevent any possible military action  by the United States and its allies. This strategy included: first, improving Iranian retaliatory capabilities inside and outside Iran. Second,  modernizing its weapons locally. Third, developing indigenous missile and antimissile systems. Fourth, proliferate nuclear weapons while spreading doubts about its exact capabilities. Fifth, neutralizing US attempts to contain it through undermining the US interests in the region, and expanding its own sphere of influence in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestinians, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq. In addition, Iran made a great effort to move closer to states that could counterbalance the US such as Russia, China, and Turkey. 

           

Realist Explanation of US-Iran relations

In the post 9/11 era, the United States government became increasingly involved in trying to advance American security interests on the international arena. It started a war in Afghanistan in 2001 and invaded Iraq in 2003. Both actions destabilized the region and created a whole new range of potentially more dangerous security dilemmas.

Iran, on the other hand, exercised regional power and worked to export its this power to other regions in order to maximize its own security interest. This behavior exacerbated the security dilemma. The United States will be in direct conflict with Iran (a potential hegemon in the region) when it threatens to upset the balance of power and cause any risk to American national interests. On the other hand, Iran viewed the United States as a threat to the existence of the Islamic Republic and to the Iranian geopolitical interests in its prospective sphere of influence.

Constructivist Explanation of US-Iran relations 

The root of conflict in the US-Iran relations goes back to the establishment of the current Iranian theocratic state known as the 'Islamic Republic of Iran' in 1979. Iranian ideas about the American and Western imperialism and interference (backed by the historical realities of America's role in the 1953 coup and support for the Shah) helped motivate the creation of dogma based on hatred to the U.S (as the great devil) and the West (as the source of all evil). Meanwhile, the US early encounter with post-revolutionary Iran was the horrifying incident of the American embassy in Tehran and subsequent 444-day hostage crisis. This event helped to establish the image of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a radically hostile enemy in American eyes. Relations between the two countries have thus arguably been halted over the last three decades by the intersubjective ideas that were the products of  hostility, trauma, and distrust. According to Constructivists then, the nature of US-Iran relations cannot be blamed on conflicting geopolitical, military, or economic interests. Instead, it is the result of exchanged beliefs, ideas, and culture of grievance and threat developed in each country about the other.

Criticism of both theories

            Constructivism explanation has clear strengths. It provides a theoretical base for cultural explanation of conflicting US-Iran relations. It analyzes the causes independent of the material aspects of the relationship.Yet it is not without flaws. From a realist point of view, it does not give sufficient consideration to the material aspects of the conflicting relation. Both states are taking advantage of their geopolitical and economic assets in order to maximize their power and protect their interests.  For realists then, the real issues of US-Iran conflicting relation can be understood by the rational analysis of competing interests defined in terms of power. However, the realist explanation over emphasizes the US and Iran race to maximize their power. It fails to see how changing identities can effect state’s interests and goals and lead to shifts in state’s policies. For example, if the civil unrest in Iran succeeded in toppling the mainstream order and new open government initiated new policies and new relations with the international society, the realist can not employ this change in their explanation. Thus, from a constructivist point of view, the realist explanation fails to adequately explain long-term changes that might occur.