Iran’s new Mission of Conflict

Tension in Lebanon between Hezbollah and its rivals mounted yesterday with the Shiite faction’s leader threatening “war”. Militants of Hezbollah entered rival Sunnis’ neighborhoods and took control of key strategic points. They cut off local TV channels and destroyed a newspaper publishing office, which happens to be owned by Coalition members according to reports from www.haaretz.com

Lebanon has a fragile and divided society. Hezbollah is a Shiite supported militant group, who controls South Lebanon and has a long established agenda to fight against Israel and the West.  However, it has only  minor representation in the government. Nevertheless, its leader, Sheik Hessian Nasarallah tries to present Hezbollah as representing the majority of public opinion.

On the other side, there are the Sunnis, whose current representative is prime minister, Fouad Seniora. The government Coalition Leader, Saad Hariri is also viewed as opponent to Hezbollah, and as per now, both the Lebanese Prime Minister and the Coalition Leader are surrounded by Hezbollah militants in their homes.  The militants threaten to break into the house in any moment.

The third stream in Lebanon is the Druze (Some have close family ties in Israel’s Arab society), who possess almost 25% of the general public support. Their leader, Sheik Walid Gublat is currently in hiding as the Druze a not only political rivals of Hezbollah, but also represent long friendship relationship with the West.

The U.N. Security Council members are urging all parties to remain calm and work together toward a peaceful resolution. In an emergency security meeting in Egypt, the Arab League delegates deny any terrorist action and called all parties to go back to table and avoid loss of civil life. So far 11 people have been killed in clashes in Beirut (www.haaretz.com).

On Thursday, Saad Hariri called for Hezbollah to work with him to bring an end to fighting that had broken out in Beirut. Appearing on television yesterday, Hariri called on Hezbollah “to pull fighters off the street … to save Lebanon from hell”. The last civil war in Lebanon raged on from 1975 to 1990 and left the Lebanese society deeply divided, with a struggling economy where tourism was basically eliminated and corruption had spread out all over the country. Some government officers immigrated with their families to past-French ruled African nations only to return in the 1990’s.

Although the war was over, Lebanon had lost political and some defensive control (in some areas) to Syria, who “saved Lebanon from the West”. Syrian presidents (Past and present) have a long-lasting interest: having a wider border with Israel, so they can inflame a wider Middle-Eastern conflict any given moment. Today, the clashes in Beirut reflect Iranian interest in the area, which are far from peaceful ones.

Whatever the Iranian leadership couldn’t accomplish in Iraq, using the forces of Al-Qaeda, they try to do in Lebanon, using Hezbollah. Iran wants to use Hezbollah to establish terrorist colonies in the Middle East. Their President would like to capture vast Islamic public supports and engage them all in his “Holy Jihad”. It is in our, the West’s, strongest interest, to make him unsuccessful.