The current conflict between Israel and Hizballah terrorists is the first step to weakening the power of Iran in the Middle East

In an interview broadcast on July 23 on the Iranian News Channel, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared: “In my opinion, Lebanon is the scene of an historic test, which will determine the future of humanity. (…)Some (…) have buried their heads in the sand. (…) For them, this is ‘the Day that all things secret will be tested’.”

APOCALYPTIC PRESIDENT

Last November, the eccentric Iranian President startled the world when he announced that during his address to the UN Assembly he suddenly felt himself surrounded by light.

It wasn’t the stage lighting, he said, it was light from heaven.

Ahmadinejad is said to believe that he is destined to bring about the “End Times” by paving the way for the return of the Shia Muslim messiah.

That the leader of Iran believes that these are the last days is a matter of personal conviction.

For him to possess a military arsenal including Shibab 3 missiles with a range of 1300 kilometers which could be equipped with chemical and biological warheads at the same time as developing his country’s nuclear capacity and maintaining close ties with terrorist organizations is a concern for the whole world.

In the last decade, Iran has gradually increased its influence in the Middle East by training and equipping terrorist organizations operating in different countries (including Hizballah in Lebanon) and forging a strategic military alliance with Syria.

(Recently the Al-Quaeda terror network has also rallied behind Hizballah’s war with Israel, making the regime even more dangerous.)

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here is a fear on the part of both America and its Western allies as well as Sunni Muslim states that with the strengthening of Iran the balance of power in the Middle East would be tilted in favor of fundamentalist regimes and terrorist entities.

That is why Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and even the PLO have condemned Hizballah, which has acted as Iran’s proxy in the recent confrontation with Israel.

In an interview with the Saudi government daily Okaz, the chairman of the Lebanese Al-Mustaqbal party said: „The position of the /Saudi/ kingdom, Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf states was positive, and those hypocrites /i.e. Syria and Iran/ calling for battle, are in fact the people most distant from this struggle. They want to bring the region into an all-out war.”

THE PRICE OF FEAR

The Lebanese and the Israelis are paying a high price for Iran’s regional ambitions and their own toleration of the growth of a cancerous Nasrallah abscess on their mutual border.

The lesson is clear: in the Middle East, the ostrich method does not work.

The terror organization exploited the weakness of the Lebanese government and Israel’s political preference to maintain the relative quiet on its northern border instead of uprooting the Hizballah terror infrastructure and risking war.

Some 1,200 missiles from Hizballah militants in southern Lebanon have fallen on northern Israel since 12 July killing at least 41 Israelis.

Given the negative results of the Lebanese withdrawal coupled with those of the Gaza disengagement, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert’s plan for further unilateral disengagement in the West Bank will be permanently postponed.

As the Arab League stated, the peace process is dead, perhaps for a decade or more. Israel’s massive bombardments of Lebanon put more nails on the coffin of peace. So far around 390 Lebanese, primarily civilians, have died, which will have a terrible long-term impact on Israeli-Arab relations.

The UN’s aid chief January Egeland has accused Israel of using excessive force, yet he also accused Hezbollah of deliberately increasing the number of civilian casualties by “cowardly blending in among women and children”.

The UN has launched a $150m (£81m) aid appeal for Lebanon.

Mr Egeland said the money was needed to help feed and shelter about 800,000 civilians caught up in the conflict. It is estimated that 70 percent of the inhabitants of South Lebanon and 50 percent of Northern Israelis are relocated. Prime Minister Fouad Saniora bitterly complained to Condoleeza Rice during her visit to Lebanon that Israel “is taking Lebanon backward 50 years and the result will be Lebanon’s destruction”. Other Lebanese, however, are blaming Hizballah and its Iranian and Syrian masters for their country’s disaster. Saad al-Hariri, the son of the assassinated former Prime Minister said “These adventurers put us in a difficult situation.”

Clearly, Nasrallah and his Teheran masters have overplayed their card. Israel rightfully took advantage of the situation obliquely threatening to enlarge the conflict attempting to obtain the cessation of logistical, financial and military support by Iran and Syria to radical Islamic groups in Lebanon and in the Palestinian territories.

“Israel is weary of Hizballah’s role in supplying weapons to Palestinian terrorists, like the ‘Karine A’ story, as well as organizing suicide attacks and attacks on Israeli border towns. It also tries to push the US and Western countries to be harder on Iran, especially with regards to its nuclear program.” – says Brig. Gen. (Res.) Shalom Harari.

CONTAINMENT

Clearly, the West and the Sunni Arab governments are expecting that Israel’s destruction or at least weakening of the Hizballah would strike a major blow against one of the most important elements of the Iranian war machine.

After this step is completed, they would be in a better position to tackle the problem of the nuclear program of Iran. With attempts first to persuade Russia and China stop the flow of unsafeguarded technologies and expertise into Iran and later Europe’s promise to give advanced technologies without the fuel cycle failing, there remains little else than to execute a preventive attack to stop Iran from attaining nuclear capacity.

In such an event, however, the Western world would have to neutralize and weaken Iran’s capacity to strike back (which includes crippling its capacity to mobilize its terror networks).

Ironically, Iran and Syria might have assumed at first that by bullying Israel into a military confrontation with Hizballah they would be able to divert international attention from Iran’s nuclear development, which was at the forefront of the upcoming G8 talks.

Walid Jumblatt, the Lebanese Druze leader is reported to have remarked: “It is an Iranian war. Iran is telling to the United States: You want to fight me in the Gulf and destroy my nuclear program? I will hit you at home, in Israel.”

However, Iran and Syria have made a mistake, since, according to Prof. Gerald Steinberg from the Bar Ilan University in Israel, “The current conflict increases the attention on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Europe, seeing the attitude of Iran and Syria, is beginning to understand that the diplomatic option to evade the completion of their nuclear program is coming to a dead end.”

This piece ran in the last week of July in the Hugarian Business Weekly

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