WarSclerotic

Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group is preparing for a possible war with Israel to relieve perceived Western pressure to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad, its guardian ally, sources close to the movement say.

The radical Shi’ite group, which has a powerful militia armed by Damascus and Iran, is watching the unrest in neighboring Syria with alarm and is determined to prevent the West from exploiting popular protests to bring down Assad.

	Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah addressing supporters on a giant screen during a rally near Beirut on August 3, 2010
	Photo by: Reuters

Hezbollah supported pro-democracy movements that toppled Western-backed leaders in Tunisia and Egypt, but officials say it will not stand idly by as international pressure mounts on Assad to yield to protesters.

It is committed to do whatever it takes politically to help deflect what it sees as a foreign campaign against Damascus, but it is also readying for a possible war with Israel if Assad is weakened.

“Hezbollah will never intervene in Syria. This is an internal issue for President Bashar to tackle. But when it sees the West gearing up to bring him down, it will not just watch,” a Lebanese official close to the group’s thinking told Reuters.

“This is a battle for existence for the group and it is time to return the favor (of Syria’s support). It will do that by fending off some of the international pressure,” he added.

The militant group, established nearly 30 years ago to confront Israel’s occupation of south Lebanon, fought an inconclusive 34-day war with Israel in 2006.

Hezbollah and Syria have both denied that the group has sent fighters to support a military crackdown on the wave of protests against Assad’s rule.

Hezbollah believes the West is working to reshape the Middle East by replacing Assad with a ruler friendly to Israel and hostile to itself.
“The region now is at war, a war between what is good and what is backed by Washington… Syria is the good,” said a Lebanon-based Arab official close to Syria.

He said the United States, which lost an ally when Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in February, “wants to shift the crisis” by supporting protests against its adversary.

“For us this will be confronted in the best possible way,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Analysts rule out the possibility of a full-scale regional war involving Syria, Iran and Lebanon on one side against Israel backed by the U.S. A war pitting Hezbollah against Israel was more likely, they said.

“There might be limited wars here or there but nobody has the interest (in a regional war),” said Lebanese analyst Oussama Safa. “The region is of course heading towards radical change… How it will be arranged and where it will lead is not clear.”

Hezbollah inflicted serious damage and casualties by firing missiles deep into Israel during the 2006 conflict, and was able to sustain weeks of rocket attacks despite a major Israeli military incursion into Lebanon.

Western intelligence sources say the movement’s arsenal has been more than replenished since the fighting ended, with European-led UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon powerless to prevent supplies entering mostly from Syria.

Syria, which borders Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey and Jordan, has regional influence because of its alliance with Iran and its continued role in Lebanon, despite ending a 29-year military presence there in 2005. It also has an influence in Iraq.

“If the situation in Syria collapses it will have repercussions that will go beyond Syria,” the Arab official said. “None of Syria’s allies would accept the fall of Syria even if it led to turning the table upside down — war (with Israel) could be one of the options.”

The Lebanese official said: “All options are open including opening the fronts in Golan (Heights) and in south Lebanon.”

Palestinian protests last month on the Lebanese and Syrian frontlines with Israel were “a message that Syria will not be left alone facing an Israeli-American campaign,” he said.

Israel and Syria are technically at war, but their frontier had been calm since the war in 1973, when Israel repelled a Syrian assault to recapture the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

For Syria’s allies in Lebanon, the first step to support Damascus has already been taken. After months of delay, Prime Minister Najib Mikati formed a new Lebanese government last week dominated by pro-Syrian parties, including Hezbollah.

That followed five months of political vacuum after Hezbollah and its allies toppled Western-backed Saad Hariri’s coalition in a dispute over a UN-backed tribunal investigating the killing in 2005 of statesman Rafik Hariri, Saad’s father.

The tribunal is expected to accuse members of the Shi’ite group in the killing, and some Lebanese had believed that the delay in forming a government was deliberate, to avoid the crisis a new government might face when indictments are issued.

“Our people thought at first the vacuum would be in our interest but after the events in Syria we have noticed that the vacuum is harmful,” said the Lebanese official.

The still confidential indictment was amended last month after the prosecutor said “new evidence emerged” but Syria and its allies suspect it will now target Syrian officials. Both Syria and Hezbollah deny any role in killing Hariri.

The official said the new government might halt the state’s cooperation with and contribution to funding the court, as well as withdrawing Lebanese judges from the tribunal.

“The government in its new form will not allow Lebanon to be used against Syria, or those who are promoting the American agenda on the expense of Syria,” he said.

Tension in Lebanon increased in the first weeks of the uprising against Assad when Syria accused Hariri supporters of funding and arming protesters, a charge they denied.

“As Syria stood by Lebanon’s side during the July war in 2006 (between Hezbollah and Israel), Lebanon will be on its side to face this war that is no less dangerous,” the official said.

So far, Syria’s allies believe that Assad has things under control and that the unrest, in which rights groups say 1,300 people have been killed, has not posed a threat on his rule.

While Hezbollah’s fate is not linked exclusively to Assad’s future, his departure would make life more difficult for the group, which depends on Syria’s borders for arms supply.

“Syria is like the lung for Hezbollah…it is its backup front where it gets its weapon and other stuff,” said another Lebanese official who declined to be named.

Formed under the guidance of Iran’s religious establishment, Hezbollah had a thorny start with late President Hafez Assad, but later emerged as a powerful Syrian ally. Relations improved further after Bashar succeeded his father in 2000.

“Hezbollah is extremely tense and they are concerned about the developments in Syria,” said Hilal Khashan, a political analyst at the American University in Beirut.

“The storm is building up now and after it everything will change…In all cases, no matter what happens in Syria, developments there will not be in favor for Hezbollah.”

While he dismissed the possibility of a regional war, Augustus Richard Norton, author of a book on Hezbollah, said an Israeli Lebanese war may be possible, adding he believed Israel was likely to strike first.

“It is not too challenging to imagine a scenario for a war between Israel and Lebanon to erupt, especially given the Obama administration’s diffident and permissive approach to Israel.

“It is far more likely that Israel will pursue a war with the goal of crippling Hezbollah and punishing Lebanon than that a war will be intentionally provoked by Hezbollah,” he said.

In the meantime Hezbollah, which has praised other Arab uprisings and enjoys strong support among ordinary Arabs over its confrontations with Israel, has seen its image tarnished because of its support for Assad.

“The events in Syria have not impacted Hezbollah in a significant strategic sense, but have certainly put the party in an uncomfortable position,” said Elias Muhanna, a Middle East scholar at Harvard.

“The fact that (Hezbollah leader Hassan) Nasrallah has supported the regime’s war against the opposition in Syria while attacking similar regime actions in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen has been pointed out by many as a blatant double standard.”

Hezbollah argues there is no contradiction in its position, saying Assad has popular support and is committed to reform.

“When the regime is against Israel and is committed to reforms then Hezbollah decision is to be by the side of the people and the leadership through urging them for dialogue and partnership,” the Lebanese official said.

“That is why the group is in harmony with itself when it comes to Syria. It has its standards clear,” he added.

“For the resistance and Iran, the partnership with Syria is a principal and crucial issue, there is no compromise. Each time Syria is targeted there will be a response.”

VIENNA – The procession of cars carrying Fereidoun Abbasi Davani sped down Vienna’s Wagramer Strasse this Monday and into the underground car park of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Outside the building, on the bank of the Danube River, some 30 protesters from the Stop the Bomb movement demonstrated, waving signs denouncing the Iranian nuclear scientist. But Iranian security officers seemed more concerned about the prospect of someone trying to exploit Abbasi Davani’s controversial visit to finish the job.

On November 29, 2010, anonymous assailants tried to assassinate Abbasi Davani as he emerged from his home in Tehran. He and his wife, seated next to him in the car, were hit by gunfire, but survived the assassination attempt. Iran blamed the Mossad for the failed operation.

	Technicians measuring parts of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant in this undated photo.
	Photo by: AP

The assassins were more successful in a different attack launched that same day, which killed another nuclear scientist – Majid Shahriari.

The Iranians claimed that Abbasi Davani was nothing but an innocent physics professor. Intelligence sources countered that his university position was just a cover for his secret activity as one of the leading experts in Iran’s weaponization, which is working on the final and decisive stage of developing a nuclear weapon under the auspices of the Revolutionary Guards. His name appears on the UN Security Council’s blacklist, compiled after the council voted in March 2007 to impose sanctions on companies, organizations and individuals involved in Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. It also appears on similar lists compiled by the United States and the European Union, which ordered that his assets be frozen.

About two months after Abbasi Davani was shot, in January 2011, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appointed him as his vice president and as head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, a defiant move that seemed to say Iran would continue its nuclear program and no one could stop it.

Some two weeks prior to his arrival in Vienna to take part in the IAEA’s Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety, Abbasi Davani announced that by the end of the year, Iran would triple the amount of uranium it has enriched to a level of 20 percent. Though uranium enriched to this level is intended mostly to fuel Tehran’s small nuclear research reactor, which produces medical isotopes, it also bolsters the knowledge of Iranian nuclear experts and their ability to control all stages of enrichment – including to a level of 93%, which enables the production of fissile material used in making a nuclear weapon.

This announcement by the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization was very disturbing to Israel, the United States and other Western countries. It indicates that Iran is determined to continue its nuclear program at full speed and is even accelerating the pace. It means Iran’s leadership is undaunted by the sanctions imposed on the country, or by the damage the Stuxnet computer worm caused to the program that operates the centrifuges at the uranium enrichment facility in Natanz. The Stuxnet worm has been ascribed to a sabotage operation undertaken by the Mossad and the CIA. According to foreign sources, it is one of the major achievements of former Mossad head Meir Dagan.

In the same announcement, Abbasi Davani said Iran has developed an advanced centrifuge model whose rotors spin at greater speed, thus enabling the enrichment of a larger amount of uranium in a shorter time. Such centrifuges, he said, will be constructed at the second uranium enrichment site that Iran built secretly near the Revolutionary Guards base just outside of Qom.

According to the reports of IAEA inspectors who visited it, the site, built deep inside a mountain, looks like a fortified facility made to withstand aerial bombardments. Its existence was revealed in September 2009 thanks to information obtained by the intelligence agencies of Israel, the U.S. and Britain. According to both diplomatic sources in Vienna and intelligence experts, the site at Qom, which contains only 3,000 centrifuges, can only have one goal – enriching uranium for the production of a nuclear weapon.

Worrying new questions

Two crucial new questions are now worrying all those who follow Iran’s nuclear program. One is whether Qom was chosen as a site for uranium enrichment due only to its strategic location, or if any meaning should be attached to the fact that Shi’ites consider it a holy city, the place of residence of Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic.

Ahmadinejad and several of his ministers, as well as senior commanders in the Revolutionary Guards, belong to a small but influential group in the Iranian government that adheres to a mystical belief in the coming of the Mahdi – the Twelfth, or hidden, Imam – who is considered the Shi’ite messiah. One of the conditions for the Mahdi’s coming is that a huge proportion of the world’s population be annihilated in a great war.

This radical Shi’ite doctrine has parallels in the idea of the War of Gog and Magog in Christian eschatology, which is prophesied to take place in the Jezreel Valley not far from Tel Megiddo (Armageddon in the Greek translation ). Is the site at Qom Ahmadinejad’s Armageddon, where a weapon will be developed that will annihilate the unbelievers and hasten the coming of the Messiah?

Another cause for concern is an article published about two months ago on a Revolutionary Guards website. In it, for the first time, the author talked about “the day after” Iran carries out a successful nuclear test that would transform it into a nuclear power. Previously, Iranian government officials had always maintained strict silence on this subject. Was the article a fluke, the result of negligence by inattentive censors, or was it written to prepare public opinion, both at home and abroad?

It is difficult for a Western rationalist to accept the possibility, even if its likelihood is negligible, that Iran is motivated by religious belief in its determination to obtain a nuclear weapon, and might even use such a weapon for religious reasons. After all, aside from Ahmadinejad’s domestic troubles, including calls in parliament for his ouster, the one who decides on sensitive strategic issues like the nuclear one in Iran is not the president, but supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who is not known to have any messianic leanings.

But the sum total of all these developments – the appointment of Abbasi Davani, his announcements about the acceleration of enrichment and its transfer to Qom, the unusual article – all these, especially in light of the Arab revolutions that have diverted the world’s attention from Tehran, may indicate that Iran is closer to reaching a decision than experts had previously thought. This may also be the background for the outspoken warnings by Dagan, who fears a hasty, reckless decision by the prime and defense ministers to order the Israel Air Force to attack Iran.

Speaking after the inauguration in Paris of Israel’s booth at the Le Bourget Air Show, Barak said: “Lately we saw the accomplishments of Iron Dome in intercepting rockets from Gaza – an exceptional achievement of Israel’s defense industries.”

“I intend to initiate a national emergency program that will lead to the deployment of Iron Dome and Magic Wand over the entire state,” he announced. “Iron Dome can be completed and deployed across the entire country in about two and a half years, and Magic Wand in five years at the most.”

“The overall situation as regards defending the Home Front and the country’s citizens during times of emergency will change as a result of this deployment, deeply and fundamentally.”

The Iron Dome system is intended for interception of short-range missiles, such as the Kassam, and has been proven successful in shooting down terrorist ‘Grad’ Katyusha missiles fired from Gaza this year. The Magic Wand is intended against medium range missiles such as those Hizbullah might fire at central Israel from Lebanon.

A third system, the Arrow, is intended against ballistic missiles such as the Syrian Scud and the Iranian Shahab, with ranges of hundreds of kilometers. It has already been deployed in two batteries and a third may already be operational.