Iran turns crisis into
opportunity By Jason Motlagh
Regardless of whether or not the Hezbollah
attack on Israel that triggered the Mideast crisis
was green-lighted by Iran, the Islamic Republic's
hardline regime is poised to reap spoils that will
ultimately advance its end game - to become a
regional power player.
The timing of the
July 12 cross-border kidnapping of two Israeli
troops by Hezbollah militants led some observers
to speculate the move had been coordinated with
Tehran, which still bankrolls the Shi'ite movement
and has built up a weapons arsenal of
10,000-12,000 rockets or more.
Iran sought
to divert international attention from its nuclear
program, the argument goes, so it deliberately
ordered its Shi'ite proxy in southern Lebanon to
make a move that was sure to elicit
a
strong reprisal. With its nuclear file referred
back to the United Nations Security Council and
the Group of Eight summit fast approaching, where
leaders were slated to chew over possible
sanctions, Iran was in a bind. President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad had furthermore told the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) his country would
answer its request to halt its uranium-enrichment
program by August 22 - plenty of time to create a
smokescreen.
On Sunday, Iran's Foreign
Ministry warned that Tehran would abandon the
international community's package of nuclear
incentives if the UN Security Council approved a
resolution against Iran. The ministry said that if
the US passed any resolution against Iran on
Monday, when it was due to meet, Iran would no
longer consider the package.
A draft UN
resolution gives Tehran until August 31 to suspend
uranium enrichment or face the threat of
international sanctions.
Hezbollah
calling the shots Most experts agree it is
doubtful Iran called the shots over the
kidnapping. They note that since its formation in
1982, Hezbollah has operated with greater autonomy
from its patron.
It is undisputed that
Iran has provided more advanced missile
technologies, including mid- and long-range
rockets that could in theory strike as far as Tel
Aviv. Yet Iran provides between US$25 million and
$50 million a year to Hezbollah, or roughly half
of what mainstream reports claim; and the numbers
of Revolutionary Guard advisers dispatched to aid
militants are said to be negligible compared with
years past.
"Historically, Iran threw
abundant support Hezbollah's way as its forward
position against Israel," Cliff Kupchan, director
of the Eurasia program at the Eurasia Group
think-tank, told Asia Times Online. "There's no
sign of Iran's master hand in this case."
Ken Pollack, an Iran expert at the
Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, echoed
this view at a press briefing. "Hezbollah has been
acting much more independently of Iran, especially
since the end of the Cedar Revolution, and I
cannot rule out the possibility that they
[Iranians] were absolutely blind-sided by this."
While Hezbollah's intransigence may look
like an attempt by Iran to remind the West of the
destructive capabilities it can muster when
threatened by harsh policies, an aggressive stance
that supports violence hurts Iran on the nuclear
issue. Aside from asserting that it would use all
"potentials" in the event Israel attacked Syria,
Iran has kept a low profile as the fighting rages
on. By some estimates, Israel and Hezbollah could
exchange blows deep into autumn, a prospect that
undoubtedly appeals to an Iranian leadership that
has stalled at every turn in the face of
international maneuvers to stop its nuclear
program.
Even by conservative estimates,
however, Iran is five to 10 years from having a
nuclear weapon to leverage, so there are other
more imminent ramifications to consider. Hezbollah
only need survive to win its war with Israel; this
amounts to victory by proxy for Iran against its
arch-enemy, which seems feasible given Hezbollah's
vast weapons stockpiles and low numbers of
casualties despite relentless Israeli bombardment.
Hezbollah has used but 3% of its rockets, and its
home advantage already is readily apparent in the
failure of Israel Defense Forces ground troops to
make any headway.
Iran realizes that to
command legitimate respect vis-a-vis the United
States and Israel it needs a nuclear deterrent.
But the Mideast crisis is an opportunity to
cultivate soft power further under circumstances
that might finally transcend the Sunni-Shi'ite
divide that has long polarized the region and
undercut designs for a sweeping Shi'ite
revolution. "If Hezbollah prevails in this
conflict," said Brookings' Pollack, "that will
greatly raise the prestige, the strength, the
influence of Iran's great proxy in the Levant.
"It will draw other countries into Iran's
orbit ... Iraqi Shi'ite militias further into
Iraq's orbit because Iran will be seen as the ...
efficacious state able to stand up to the United
States, Israel and its other allies in the Middle
East."
Such a scenario dovetails with the
mullahs' revolutionary objective to strengthen
what King Abdullah of Jordan has called the
"Shi'ite crescent" - an Iranian-led bloc spanning
from Iran to Lebanon. Although Shi'ites account
for just 10% of the Muslim world, they are near
parity with Sunnis across these countries and
dominate the oil-rich regions of Iran, Iraq and
eastern Saudi Arabia. Riyadh's fear of Iran's
ascendance to protector of the Arab world's
Palestinian cause celebre has of late
chilled its support for Hezbollah.
According to Anthony Cordesman, a strategy
expert at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, Hezbollah implicitly "shows
the Arab and Muslim world that Iran is a
government willing to strike at the Israeli enemy
- even though it is not Arab or Sunni". He added:
"Israel's reprisals ... make it seem in Arab and
Muslim eyes as if Iran supports 'freedom
fighters'."
While it remains to be seen to
what degree Sunnis and Shi'ites can shelve age-old
differences to rally against a common enemy, the
off-chance cannot be dismissed. In a statement
last week by al-Qaeda No 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri,
announcing that the terror franchise would avenge
Israeli aggression on Lebanon and the
Palestinians, he used a Koranic term often
employed by the late ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini,
the father of Iran's Islamic revolution. Some
have interpreted this to be an overture toward an
alliance with Shi'ites, a view buoyed by
additional hints from Zawahiri that his
organization might help Hezbollah carry out
attacks against Israeli targets. Were Lebanon to
become an Iraq-style honey pot for Islamic
militants of all stripes, experts say that US and
Israeli engagements across the region would play
to Iran's favor.
For Ahmadinejad and his
fundamentalists, pursuit of a regional
conflagration may be driven by an apocalyptic
vision. The Twelver Shi'ism branch of Islam they
subscribe to holds that there were 12 successors
(imams) to the Prophet Mohammed, the last of whom
never died but went into hiding in the 10th
century. The 12th "hidden" imam, or Mahdi, is
expected to return to bring justice and peace to a
world corrupted, but not before a terrible wave of
war is unleashed.
The debate persists
among Twelvers over whether the Mahdi's return is
destined to follow widespread chaos or if the
faithful must establish a just order to summon him
from hiding. Ahmadinejad, the son of a blacksmith
who has pledged that Israel will one day be "wiped
off the map" of the Middle East, has repeatedly
made his case for the former.
In his own
words, the Islamic "Revolution's main mission is
to pave the way for the reappearance of the 12th
imam, the Mahdi". During a speech to the UN
General Assembly last year, enveloped in "green
light", he indicated the end of the world was
near. He often praises martyrdom and has presided
over an influx of "martyrdom-seeking operations"
to enlist volunteers, hundreds of whom have signed
up to fight in Lebanon if necessary. One of his
first acts on taking office was to donate $17
million toward the construction of the Jamkaran
Mosque, where it is believed the Mahdi might one
day appear.
But Ahmadinejad's brand of
zealotry has irked many prominent Iranian clerics,
who have accused him of using religious matters
for political gain. As massive capital flights
abroad continue and unemployment nears 30% in a
country where two-thirds of the population is
under 30, a potential erosion of his grassroots
support base could have a sobering effect.
For the time being, the attention of
Iranians and the international community is
dead-fixed on the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict.
Israel has announced plans to call on 30,000
reservists as the likelihood of a full-scale
ground offensive looms. Hezbollah chief Hassan
Nasrallah has vowed to launch deeper missile
strikes against Israel to herald a new phase of
the war. And casualties pile higher, with at least
50 Israelis and more than 400 Lebanese, mostly
civilians, killed since violence erupted two weeks
ago.
Iran's possible nuclear-weapons
agenda, meanwhile, has again slipped beneath the
radar, but experts say it may yet try to emerge as
a peacemaker. According to Pollack, if the
fighting drags on and the West is unable to broker
a ceasefire, the Iranians may take the stage and
offer to rein in Hezbollah in exchange for
abandoning the latest nuclear package on offer.
"If the Iranians ... said we can turn off
Hezbollah, but you've got to back off our nuclear
program ... that would make Iran look like a force
for stability in the region," said Pollack. "It
would make Iran look like a peacemaker, and that
would greatly undermine this international
consensus to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear
technology."
Curiously, Ahmadinejad told
the IAEA that Iran would have an answer for a
proposed incentives package to cease its
uranium-enrichment activities by August 22. This
date just happens to coincide with the
Islamic-calendar date Rajab 28, when the Kurdish
Muslim warrior Saladin conquered Jerusalem.
Jason Motlagh is deputy foreign
editor at United Press International in
Washington, DC. He has reported freelance from
Saharan Africa, Asia and the Caribbean for various
US and European news media.
(Copyright
2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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