In the Crosshairs of the Syrian-Iranian Axis

Michael J. Totten
http://www.michaeltotten.com/
11 October 09

The South Lebanon border area is what Robert D. Kaplan calls a "shatter zone," a region where government authority is either diluted or non-existent and where conflict is therefore all the more likely, if not inevitable. "Like rifts in the Earth's crust that produce physical instability," he wrote in Foreign Affairs, "these shatter zones threaten to implode, explode, or maintain a fragile equilibrium. And not surprisingly, they fall within that unstable inner core of Eurasia: the greater Middle East, the vast way station between the Mediterranean world and the Indian subcontinent that registers all the primary shifts in global power politics."

I've visited a number of these shatter zones in the lands of the former Ottoman Empire, sometimes while they're on fire and other times afterward. The conflicts in these places almost always seem to be fought along ethnic or religious-sectarian lines -- between Turks and Kurds in Anatolia, Arabs and Kurds in Northern Iraq, Sunnis and Shias in Mesopotamia, Slavic Christians and Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo, Turks and Greeks on the island of Cyprus, Arabs and Israelis in the Holy Land, and between just about every ethnic and sectarian faction imaginable in Lebanon.

After the Syrians were thrown out of Lebanon in 2005 and the central government reclaimed most of its sovereignty, the south along the frontier with Israel remained strictly off-limits and under Hezbollah control. While sovereignty in that area is now technically shared with the state, Hezbollah can still do what it wants without interference. The "March 14" government would adhere to the de-facto armistice between Lebanon and Israel if it could, but it can't. The Lebanese-Israeli border therefore remains a potentially hot front-line in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

And because Hezbollah is nothing if not a proxy for the Islamic Republic regime in Iran, South Lebanon is a potentially explosive front-line in the Iranian-Israeli conflict. If Israel launches air strikes against Tehran's nuclear weapons facilities, or if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ali Khamenei believe a nuclear weapons arsenal means they can activate Hezbollah and Hamas with impunity, South Lebanon may become one of the two most dangerous shatter zones in the entire Middle East. (The other would be Iran itself.)

Last time I visited Beirut, before the Hezbollah-led "March 8" bloc lost the recent election, I spent several hours with Eli Khoury, one of the smartest regional political analysts I have yet met. I try to see him every time I'm in country to discuss this stuff because his analysis almost always turns out to be right when everyone else's -- including my own -- turns out to be wrong.

He's the president of the Lebanon Renaissance Foundation, publisher of NOW Lebanon, and an informal advisor to a number of Lebanese political leaders. This time we discussed, among other things, the war in Iraq, the election of Barack Obama, how to engage and not engage Syria, and Iran's imperial ambitions in the Middle East.
(Full Aticle)
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