HOW
HEZBOLLAH DEFEATED ISRAEL PART 3: The political
war By Alastair Crooke and
Mark Perry
(For Part 1 in this three-part
series, Winning the intelligence war, click here. For Part 2,
The ground war, please click here.)
In the
wake of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, a public
poll in Egypt asked a cross-section of that
country's citizenry to name the two political
leaders they most admired. An overwhelming number
named Hassan Nasrallah.
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad finished
second.
The poll was a clear repudiation
not only of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who
had made his views against Hezbollah known at the
outset of the conflict, but of those Sunni
leaders, including Saudi King Abdullah and
Jordan's Abdullah II, who criticized the Shi'ite
group in an avowed attempt to turn the Sunni world
away from support of Iran.
"By the end of
the war these guys were scrambling for the exits,"
one US diplomat from the region said in late
August. "You haven't heard much from them lately,
have you?"
Mubarak and the two Abdullahs
are not the only ones scrambling for the exits -
the United States' foreign policy in the region,
even in light of its increasingly dire deployment
in Iraq, is in a shambles. "What that means is
that all the doors are closed to us, in Cairo, in
Amman, in Saudi Arabia," another diplomat averred.
"Our access has been curtailed. No one will see
us. When we call no one picks up the phone."
A talisman of this collapse can be seen in
the itinerary of US Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice, whose inability to persuade President George
W Bush to halt the fighting and her remark about
the conflict as marking "the birth pangs" of a new
Middle East in effect destroyed her credibility.
The US has made it clear that it will
attempt to retrieve its position by backing a
yet-to-be-announced Israeli-Palestinian peace
plan, but America's continued strangulation of the
democratically constituted government of the
Palestinian Authority has transformed that pledge
into a stillborn political program. The reason for
this is now eminently clear. In the midst of the
war, a European official in Cairo had this to say
about the emotions roiling the Egyptian political
environment: "The Egyptian leadership is walking
down one side of the street," he said, "and the
Egyptian people are walking down the other."
The catastrophic failure of Israeli arms
has buoyed Iran's claim to leadership of the
Muslim world in several critical areas.
First, the Hezbollah victory has shown
that Israel - and any modern and technologically
sophisticated Western military force - can be
defeated in open battle, if the proper military
tactics are employed and if they are sustained
over a prolonged period. Hezbollah has provided
the model for the defeat of a modern army. The
tactics are simple: ride out the first wave of a
Western air campaign, then deploy rocket forces
targeting key military and economic assets of the
enemy, then ride out a second and more critical
air campaign, and then prolong the conflict for an
extended period. At some point, as in the case of
Israel's attack on Hezbollah, the enemy will be
forced to commit ground troops to accomplish what
its air forces could not. It is in this last, and
critical, phase that a dedicated, well-trained and
well-led force can exact enormous pain on a modern
military establishment and defeat it.
Second, the Hezbollah victory has shown
the people of the Muslim world that the strategy
employed by Western-allied Arab and Muslim
governments - a policy of appeasing US interests
in the hopes of gaining substantive political
rewards (a recognition of Palestinian rights, fair
pricing for Middle Eastern resources,
non-interference in the region's political
structures, and free, fair and open elections) -
cannot and will not work. The Hezbollah victory
provides another and different model, of
shattering US hegemony and destroying its stature
in the region. Of the two most recent events in
the Middle East, the invasion of Iraq and the
Hezbollah victory over Israel, the latter is by
far the most important. Even otherwise
anti-Hezbollah groups, including those associated
with revolutionary Sunni resistance movements who
look on Shi'ites as apostates, have been humbled.
Third, the Hezbollah victory has had a
shattering impact on America's allies in the
region. Israeli intelligence officials calculated
that Hezbollah could carry on its war for upwards
of three months after its end in the middle of
August. Hezbollah's calculations reflected
Israel's findings, with the caveat that neither
the Hezbollah nor Iranian leadership could predict
what course to follow after a Hezbollah victory.
While Jordan's intelligence services locked down
any pro-Hezbollah demonstrations, Egypt's
intelligence services were struggling to monitor
the growing public dismay over the Israeli
bombardment of Lebanon.
Open support for
Hezbollah across the Arab world (including,
strangely, portraits of Hezbollah leader Hassan
Nasrallah carried in the midst of Christian
celebrations) has put those Arab rulers closest to
the United States on notice: a further erosion in
their status could loosen their hold on their own
nations. It seems likely that as a result, Mubarak
and the two Abdullahs are very unlikely to support
any US program calling for economic, political or
military pressures on Iran. A future war - perhaps
a US military campaign against Iran's nuclear
sites - might not unseat the government in Tehran,
but it could well unseat the governments of Egypt,
Jordan and perhaps Saudi Arabia.
At a key
point in the Israel-Hezbollah contest, toward the
end of the war, Islamist party leaders in a number
of countries wondered whether they would be able
to continue their control over their movements or
whether, as they feared, political action would be
ceded to street captains and revolutionaries. The
singular notion, now common in intelligence
circles in the United States, is that it was
Israel (and not Hezbollah) that, as of August 10,
was looking for a way out of the conflict.
Fourth, the Hezbollah victory has
dangerously weakened the Israeli government. In
the wake of Israel's last lost war, in 1973, prime
minister Menachem Begin decided to accept a peace
proposal from Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. The
breakthrough was, in fact, rather modest - as both
parties were allies of the United States. No such
breakthrough will take place in the wake of the
Israel-Hezbollah war.
Israel believes that
it has lost its deterrent capabilities and that
they must be retrieved. Some Israeli officials in
Washington now confirm that it is not a matter of
"if" but of "when" Israel goes to war again. Yet
it is difficult to determine how Israel can do
that. To fight and win against Hezbollah, Israel
will need to retrain and refit its army. Like the
United States after the Vietnam debacle, Israel
will have to restructure its military leadership
and rebuild its intelligence assets. That will
take years, not months.
It may be that
Israel will opt, in future operations, for the
deployment of ever bigger weapons against ever
larger targets. Considering its performance in
Lebanon, such uses of ever larger weapons could
spell an even more robust response. This is not
out of the question. A US attack on Iranian
nuclear installations would likely be answered by
an Iranian missile attack on Israel's nuclear
installations - and on Israeli population centers.
No one can predict how Israel would react to such
an attack, but it is clear that (given Bush's
stance in the recent conflict) the United States
would do nothing to stop it. The "glass house" of
the Persian Gulf region, targeted by Iranian
missiles, would then assuredly come crashing down.
Fifth, the Hezbollah victory spells the
end of any hope of a resolution of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, at least in the
short and medium terms. Even normally
"progressive" Israeli political figures undermined
their political position with strident calls for
more force, more troops and more bombs. In private
meetings with his political allies, Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas castigated those who
cheered on Hezbollah's victory, calling them
"Hamas supporters" and "enemies of Israel". Abbas
is in a far more tenuous position than Mubarak or
the two Abdullahs - his people's support for Hamas
continues, as does his slavish agreement with
George W Bush, who told him on the sidelines of
the United Nations Security Council meeting that
he was to end all attempts to form a unity
government with his fellow citizens.
Sixth, the Hezbollah victory has had the
very unfortunate consequence of blinding Israel's
political leadership to the realities of their
geostrategic position. In the midst of the war
with Lebanon, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
adopted Bush's language on the "war on terrorism",
reminding his citizenry that Hezbollah was a part
of "the axis of evil". His remarks have been
reinforced by Bush, whose comments during his
address before the UN General Assembly mentioned
al-Qaeda once - and Hezbollah and Hamas five times
each. The United States and Israel have now lumped
Islamist groups willing to participate in the
political processes in their own nations with
those takfiris and Salafists who are bent
on setting the region on fire.
Nor can
Israel now count on its strongest US supporters,
that network of neo-conservatives for whom Israel
is an island of stability and democracy in the
region. These neo-conservatives' disapproval of
Israel's performance is almost palpable. With
friends like these, who needs enemies? That is to
say, the Israeli conflict in Lebanon reflects
accurately those experts who see the
Israel-Hezbollah conflict as a proxy war. Our
colleague Jeff Aronson noted that "if it were up
to the US, Israel would still be fighting", and he
added: "The United States will fight the war on
terrorism to the last drop of Israeli blood."
The continued weakness of the Israeli
political leadership and the fact that it is in
denial about the depth of its defeat should be a
deep concern for the United States and for every
Arab nation. Israel has proved that in times of
crisis, it can shape a creative diplomatic
strategy and maneuver deftly to retrieve its
position. It has also proved that in the wake of a
military defeat, it is capable of honest and
transparent self-examination. Israel's strength
has always been its capacity for public debate,
even if such debate questions the most sacrosanct
institution - the Israel Defense Forces. At key
moments in Israel's history, defeat has led to
reflection and not, as now seems likely, an
increasingly escalating military offensive against
Hamas - the red-headed stepchild of the Middle
East - to show just how tough it is.
"The
fact that the Middle East has been radicalized by
the Hezbollah victory presents a good case for
killing more of them," one Israeli official
recently said. That path will lead to disaster. In
light of America's inability to pull the levers of
change in the Middle East, there is hope among
some in Washington that Olmert will show the
political courage to begin the long process of
finding peace. That process will be painful, it
will involve long and difficult discussions, it
may mean a break with the US program for the
region. But the US does not live in the region,
and Israel does. While conducting a political
dialogue with its neighbors might be painful, it
will prove far less painful than losing a war in
Lebanon.
Seventh, Hezbollah's position in
Lebanon has been immeasurably strengthened, as has
the position of its most important ally. At the
height of the conflict, Lebanese Christians took
Hezbollah refugees into their homes. The Christian
leader Michel Aoun openly supported Hezbollah's
fight. One Hezbollah leader said: "We will never
forget what that man did for us, not for an entire
generation." Aoun's position is celebrated among
the Shi'ites, and his own political position has
been enhanced.
The Sunni leadership, on
the other hand, fatally undermined itself with its
uncertain stance and its absentee landlord
approach to its own community. In the first week
of the war, Hezbollah's actions were greeted with
widespread skepticism. At the end of the war its
support was solid and stretched across Lebanon's
political and sectarian divides. The Sunni
leadership now has a choice: it can form a unity
government with new leaders that will create a
more representative government or they can stand
for elections. It doesn't take a political genius
to understand which choice Saad Hariri, the
majority leader in the Lebanese parliament, will
make.
Eighth, Iran's position in Iraq has
been significantly enhanced. In the midst of the
Lebanon conflict, US Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld privately worried that the Israeli
offensive would have dire consequences for the US
military in Iraq, who faced increasing hostility
from Shi'ite political leaders and the Shi'ite
population. Rice's statement that the
pro-Hezbollah demonstrations in Baghdad were
planned by Tehran revealed her ignorance of the
most fundamental political facts of the region.
The US secretaries of state and of defense were
simply and unaccountably unaware that the Sadrs of
Baghdad bore any relationship to the Sadrs of
Lebanon. That Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki
would not castigate Hezbollah and side with Israel
during the conflict - and in the midst of an
official visit to Washington - was viewed as
shocking by Washington's political establishment,
even though "Hezbollah in Iraq" is one of the
parties in the current Iraqi coalition government.
We have been told that neither the
Pentagon nor the State Department understood how
the war in Lebanon might effect America's position
in Iraq because neither the Pentagon nor the State
Department asked for a briefing on the issue from
the US intelligence services. The United States
spends billions of dollars each year on its
intelligence collection and analysis activities.
It is money wasted.
Ninth, Syria's
position has been strengthened and the US-French
program for Lebanon has failed. There is no
prospect that Lebanon will form a government that
is avowedly pro-American or anti-Syrian. That
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could, in the
wake of the war, suggest a political arrangement
with Israel shows his strength, not his weakness.
That he might draw the correct conclusions from
the conflict and believe that he too might
successfully oppose Israel is also possible.
But aside from these possibilities, recent
history shows that those thousands of students and
Lebanese patriots who protested Syria's
involvement in Lebanon after the death of Rafiq
Hariri found it ironic that they took refuge from
the Israeli bombing in tent cities established by
the Syrian government. Rice is correct on one
thing: Syria's willingness to provide refuge for
Lebanese refugees was a pure act of political
cynicism - and one that the United States seems
incapable of replicating. Syria now is confident
of its political position. In a previous era, such
confidence allowed Israel to shape a political
opening with its most intransigent political
enemies.
Tenth, and perhaps most
important, it now is clear that a US attack on
Iranian nuclear installations would be met with
little support in the Muslim world. It would also
be met by a military response that would collapse
the last vestiges of America's political power in
the region. What was thought to be a "given" just
a few short weeks ago has been shown to be
unlikely. Iran will not be cowed. If the United
States launches a military campaign against the
Tehran government, it is likely that America's
friends will fall by the wayside, the Gulf Arab
states will tremble in fear, the 138,000 US
soldiers in Iraq will be held hostage by an
angered Shi'ite population, and Iran will respond
by an attack on Israel. We would now dare say the
obvious - if and when such an attack comes, the
United States will be defeated.
Conclusion The victory of
Hezbollah in its recent conflict with Israel is
far more significant than many analysts in the
United States and Europe realize. The Hezbollah
victory reverses the tide of 1967 - a shattering
defeat of Egypt, Syria and Jordan that shifted the
region's political plates, putting in place
regimes that were bent on recasting their own
foreign policy to reflect Israeli and US power.
That power now has been sullied and reversed, and
a new leadership is emerging in the region.
The singular lesson of the conflict may
well be lost on the upper echelons of Washington's
and London's pro-Israel, pro-values,
we-are-fighting-for-civilization political elites,
but it is not lost in the streets of Cairo, Amman,
Ramallah, Baghdad, Damascus or Tehran. It should
not be lost among the Israeli political leadership
in Jerusalem. The Arab armies of 1967 fought for
six days and were defeated. The Hezbollah militia
in Lebanon fought for 34 days and won. We saw this
with our own eyes when we looked into the cafes of
Cairo and Amman, where simple shopkeepers, farmers
and workers gazed at television reports, sipped
their tea, and silently mouthed the numbers to
themselves: "seven", "eight", "nine" ...
Alastair Crooke and Mark
Perry are the co-directors ofConflicts
Forum, a London-based group
dedicated to providing an opening to political
Islam. Crooke is the former Middle East adviser to
European Union High Representative Javier Solana
and served as a staff member of the Mitchell
Commission investigating the causes of the second
intifada. Perry is a Washington, DC-based
political consultant, author of six books on US
history, and a former personal adviser to Yasser
Arafat.
(Research for this article was
provided by Madeleine Perry.)
(Copyright
2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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