NOW..
30 August '13..
Pity Hezbollah. After years of hearing earnest observers tell you what a quintessentially Lebanese party it was, and a revolutionary one at that, now we can plainly see that it is merely the Foreign Legion of the Iranian leadership – there to march or die at Tehran’s behest – as well as, more recently, cannon fodder for Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
With the United States intending to attack Syria for the regime’s use of chemical weapons in the Ghouta east and west of Damascus, Hezbollah may again be placed at the forefront of a retaliatory plan.
Iranian parliamentarians have warned that any attack would provoke a response against Israel. “In case of a U.S. military strike against Syria, the flames of outrage of the region’s revolutionaries will point toward the Zionist regime,” Mansur Haqiqatpur, an influential parliamentarian said on Tuesday. Hossein Sheikholeslam, who heads the Iranian parliament’s international affairs committee, warned that “the first victim of an attack on Syria will be the Zionist regime.”
Most analysts, however, see such statements in the context of implicit red lines set by the Iranian regime. They also note that threats made by parliamentarians, even important ones, do not necessarily have the same impact as those issued by senior security or political figures, perhaps buying Iran a margin of maneuver.
Iran’s red line, evidently, is this: If the United States limits its attacks both in time and scope and does not undermine the Assad regime, then the Iranians will not retaliate, or ask Hezbollah to retaliate. However, if American action takes longer than a few days and is seen as tipping the balance in favor of the rebels, then Iran and its allies will widen the war, most probably by firing rockets at Israel.
But let’s pause for a moment and look at what that means. It means, first, that Hezbollah is likely to find itself once again in a conflict with Israel. Speculation that rockets might be fired from Syria makes little sense. Any Israeli response to that would be directed against the Assad regime, which is precisely what the Iranians want to avoid.
So, instead, we can expect that Lebanon would become the front line in a new war, and Hezbollah tasked with firing its rockets across the southern border. The party would not have the choice to say no; after all, if obscure Iranian parliamentarians thousands of kilometers away say something will happen, it is the party’s duty to implement it.
