Expected and Undisturbed Hezbollah Coup

The Lebanese government last week tried to put a stop to Hezbollah's blatant takeover of the country. Authorities outlawed Hezbollah's illegal parallel telecom network and fired the airport's head of security, a Hezbollah ally who had authorized installations of spy cameras in order to monitor the movements of majority leaders.

Saying it amounted to a declaration of war, Hezbollah used its overpowering force to seize most of the Sunni areas of Beirut and shut down the airport and the majority-owned media.

Why is anyone surprised by these latest events?

The Arab league and Western diplomats seem to be speechless and several nations asked their citizens to leave the country. But the writing was on the wall. In December 2007 in an article entitled, “Hezbollah in Beirut's driver seat,” published by the Middle East Times, I wrote that “unsurprisingly Hezbollah has been planning and implementing a secret coup for some time using a multi-pronged strategy.”

What has been a surprise and a major disappointment for the Lebanese people is the decision of the army not to get involved in the fighting. While it is true that the army needs to remain neutral since it is composed of personnel from the various religious communities, it is no secret that Hezbollah has infiltrated it. The army was perceived as the only functioning part of the government, but the past few days have shown that this was just a bad assessment. Finally this should not have come as a major shocker since the chief of the army and only presidential candidate, Gen. Michel Suleiman, appears to be more and more taking orders from Damascus.

Suleiman played a major role in getting Syria off the hook when he allegedly allowed the leadership of the terror group Fatah al-Islam, including its leader Shaker al-Absi, go free after the battle in Nahr al-Bared. According to a number of reports Fatah al-Islam is believed to be a Syrian product and not an al-Qaida affiliate as Suleiman wanted the world to believe.

Damascus' role in the latest Hezbollah show of force is undeniable. The official Syrian newspaper Al-Baath deemed that “the opposition and in particular Hezbollah have rectified the situation.” Interestingly, portraits of Syrian President Bashar Assad are reappearing in the streets of Lebanon.

Damascus is not alone as Tehran is the real driving force behind Hezbollah. It is important to note that Hezbollah never really changed its final aim since its inception by Iran in 1982.

Iran wanted to spread its Islamic revolution around the Muslim world, focused first on Lebanon, and Hezbollah was going to be the “vehicle” used to attain that end. While many experts in the West were convinced that Hezbollah had abandoned terrorism to become a “regular” political party, events of the past two years prove otherwise.

According to Lebanese expert Antoine Basbous, Iran and Syria have invested over $30 billion in the past 25 years to make Hezbollah their armed wing in the Mediterranean.

Iran's priority, as mentioned in the past few months by various leaders, is to turn Lebanon into a base from which it could attack Israel and the United States. Hezbollah has been rapidly rearming. It has now close to 45,000 rockets, more than before the onset of the summer 2006 war with Israel.

Now that it is becoming clear that Hezbollah and Iran are in charge of Lebanon, what is the international community going to do about it? The Arab league has been vastly ineffective in coming up with any solution to the Lebanese conundrum and this time around should be no different.

When it comes to the United Nations, the real force behind anything that has to do with Lebanon is the Franco-American couple. The two nations have been working hand in hand since 2005, making it a point to draft and pass U.N. Resolution 1559 that called, among other things, for Hezbollah to disarm (needless to say that nothing has been done on that front).

While U.S.-French cooperation has improved since Nicolas Sarkozy came to power, French diplomacy has been surprisingly more wobbly than the Jacques Chirac administration on the Lebanese issue. In fact, Sarkozy engaged Damascus to no avail except being humiliated by Assad. Numerous observers are afraid that France is going to appease Hezbollah and Syria because of the potential risks associated with having 2,000 French soldiers serving with UNIFIL in south Lebanon, who could become targets for Hezbollah militants.

What is significant is that Hezbollah broke its promise not to turn its weapons against Lebanese citizens, bringing their political capital close to nil. But will that really matter in the long run? To the Lebanese people who have suffered much in the past 33 years what matters more is how the international community will react.