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Disassembling Tehran’s Proxies: We Must Back Siniora and Maliki

Nicholas M. Guariglia - 7/25/2006

For those still suffering from the moral quandary of not knowing where to place blame in the recent Mideast war, consider the following as a locus classicus: amongst the prisoners Hezbollah is demanding to be released in return for two kidnapped Israeli soldiers, is Samir Kuntar –– a romanticized folk hero on the Arab street –– who serves a prison sentence for killing four Israelis in 1979. One of Kuntar’s victims was a four-year-old girl, who was murdered as Mr. Kuntar held her head onto a large rock and crushed her small skull with the butt of his rifle –– which he used to kill the other three.

Hezbollah has good reason to suspect the Israelis will capitulate into a prisoner swap for their two abducted soldiers. Twenty years ago, one of Kuntar’s companions who also took part in the 1979 slaughter, Ahmed Abarrass, was released in exchange for three captured Israeli soldiers. Having learned that prisoner swaps only further encourage more kidnappings, the current Israeli cabinet seems dedicated to the release of its current captive citizens without succumbing to terrorist demands; we will see, though, no doubt.

But beyond the blatant provocation of a cross-border raid into sovereign Israeli territory, and the continued rocket attacks on Israel’s third largest city, are the complex issues of geopolitics, counterterrorism, and self-defense, which are now all intertwined during the current hostilities in Lebanon. While it may seem unimaginable after hearing the understandably angry rhetoric of Fouad Siniora, the Lebanese parliament, for the most part, is an ally and democratic achievement worthy of preservation –– even as the punishment of destroying Lebanese infrastructure remains necessary.

In what is a fine example of how things can go from good to bad (and fast) in the Middle East, the Lebanese did not capitalize on the Syrian withdrawal from their country last year. What was a big part of the proverbial Arab Spring, a hoped-for Renaissance in the Muslim world, instead became a prime opportunity for a small section of Lebanese society –– created and manipulated by their puppet masters in Tehran –– to hijack Lebanese democratization and attempt to turn it into Khomeinist theocratization.

Never should the Lebanese have allowed Hezbollah to participate in a parliamentary process. Often the Hitler analogies run sour, and the comparison is not to parallel the Nazis with Hezbollah –– although their racist, fascistic, and anti-Semitic overtones are strikingly similar –– but, if there is one viable linkage between the two, it is on the issue of hijacking a liberalizing society. We must recall that the Third Reich, like Il Duce in Rome, came to power democratically and then destroyed the liberal institutions and ended the consensual mechanisms that brought the regime to power in the first place. Hezbollah, backed by a foreign power antithetical to secular liberal democracy, should not have been legitimized as a political bloc while it essentially owned a state within a state with its massive jihadist militia.

As the yin-yang represents, where there is crisis there is opportunity. The problem we are currently dealing with in Iraq is identical to the problem the world is now confronted with in Lebanon, although the former has hundreds of thousands of security forces, native and foreign, while the latter has next to nil. Iran, through its surrogates, is attempting to disrupt secular and constitutional progress militarily, while simultaneously trying to get what it can out of these processes politically.

That is why you see Shi’ite warlords and hooligan militias in southern Iraq causing havoc in the name of a theocratic state, while those very same militiamen have parliamentarian representation, albeit small, in the new Iraqi government. In an ironic twist, the Iraqi premier Nouri Maliki –– member of the Shi’a, religious Dawa political party –– now claims the disbanding of his country’s Shi’ite militias, spearheaded by the criminal Muqtada al Sadr, to be his administration’s top priority. A politician who was once seen as too theological, too Shi’ite, too tied to militiamen, and perhaps too deferential to the Iranian mullahs, has made dismantling, by carrot or stick, Iranian-backed jihadist mercenaries and outlaw militias his modus operandi.

The transformation of Mr. Maliki, as seen in the eyes of the United States, is just one of many unexpected twists and turns we have experienced in postbellum Iraq. This conversion was so profound that the top American ambassador to Baghdad, the honorable Zalmay Khalilzad, hailed Maliki’s nomination to the premiership as a serious blow to Iran, who hoped Ibrahim al Jaafari, the transitional prime minister supported by al Sadr, would remain in office.

And now the United States, aiding the infant parliament in Baghdad, must work to ensure native Iraqi forces cleanse not only the Sunni insurrectionists in the central provinces but all of the tribalism and warlordism that remains prevalent in the Shi’ite south. If the last phase of that objective sounds familiar in regards to the current Lebanese conflict, it is because that is precisely what the Israelis, and the world, must urge the Lebanese government to do in their own territory. Besides the current fiery anti-Israel condemnations by Siniora and the Beirut government, expect that legitimate regime –– in the aftermath of the Israeli offensive –– to ironically represent Israel’s greatest peace partner in the region, and, if things go accordingly, a truly sovereign state capable of independent counterterrorist operations.

Here is where things can get interesting; where the Bush administration ought to tap into its strategic thinking cap and form a regional alliance amongst the few Middle Eastern democracies –– Lebanon, Iraq, Israel –– to eradicate, on a tactical level, all of Ayatollah Khamenei’s tentacles. Whereas some have described a military confrontation with Iran proper as inevitable, it need not be if we take Tehran’s proxy wars and raise them our own.

You deal with asymmetrical entities asymmetrically –– fire with fire. In an article written in early April, entitled Heads and Platters, I spoke of the need, should war with Iran occur, to address their ganglia first and foremost. Three hotspots, and three figureheads, were given: Gaza and Hamas chieftain Ismail Haniya, the Hezbollah enclave in Lebanon led by Nasrallah, and southern Iraq and Muqtada al Sadr’s rebels.

The prospect here, or shall we say the opportunity, is in cutting off the snake’s body, leaving only the head in Tehran. We can do this and it need not require additional wholesale U.S. interventionism –– indeed, scaling back force-levels in Iraq seems likely –– or any intermingling with nasty autocratic governments. In the short term, Israel should continue to pound jihadist fortifications and promise Beirut and Damascus that their communications and infrastructure are valid targets –– and their generals and defense ministers are big fans of William Tecumseh Sherman.

The Olmert administration ought to continue the neutralization of Hezbollah’s rockets, weaponry, camps, and buttresses. There should be no stated timetable for this effort, although it shouldn’t take any longer than three weeks (about the same amount of time it took to capture Baghdad). In the aftermath, we’re going to have to lead the international community in efforts to not only rebuild Lebanese infrastructure, but to craft and train a humane, antiterrorist native security force. This means Lebanese introspection: forces loyal to Hezbollah in the parliament and rudimentary armed forces must choose sides, or be cleansed out. It seems as if many in the U.N. thought Resolution 1559 –– ending a terrorist network, let’s not mince words here –– could be implemented bloodlessly, as if the jihadists would gladly hand over their weapons without a fight, or not take up arms against whatever anti-Hezbollah forces were deployed.

Meanwhile, many on the Old Right see the democratically elected Siniora chastise Israel over Hezbollah, and the elected Maliki condemn Tel Aviv, and suggest these democrats hurt our interests. But there is a banal shortsightedness in that archaic realpolitik. Both the Lebanese and Iraqi democracies –– infant, imperfect, and illiberal for sure –– are filled with many parliamentarians who have grievances with the United States. This does not mean they are not allies worth defending. Mr. Maliki may oppose Israeli bombardment of Hezbollah, and a hypothetical U.S. air assault on Iran, but then again he opposed American efforts to dethrone Hussein in the first place.

And herein lies the beauty of free societies and creating, empowering, and protecting them. As warplanes bomb Lebanon, in the end, the disagreements between Siniora and Olmert will take a back seat once the international community presses Beirut to enforce international law and end Hezbollah. Iraqi and their American counterparts may disagree on much –– how best to investigate Haditha, for example –– but in the end, the institutions of constitutional democracy guarantee both the Iraqi and American national interests are largely intertwined. Both want to destroy al Qaida, oppose militia-rule, and want to see Iraq stabilized.

So how should this all play out? In a month’s time, let’s propose a four-nation summit, in Beirut, that includes Prime Minister Siniora, Nouri Maliki, Mr. Olmert, and President Bush. Air all grievances, swap disagreements, demand and give compensations and statements of responsibility. Who knows, perhaps Lebanon and Israel could officially make peace since they have been technically at war for decades? Coming out of this hypothetical summit should be a bilateral agreement between Washington and Beirut that we already have reached with the governments of Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Algeria: if we send SOCOM operations-forces to craft and train Lebanese security forces, they in return will hunt down jihadists, militiamen, and terrorists like Hassan Nasrallah and the infamous Imad Mugniyah (who undoubtedly had a hand in this) inside their own territory. A competent NATO force in southern Lebanon, with small cadres of Green Berets to tutor Lebanese soldiers, should do the trick: call it Afghanistan-lite.

If the Lebanese can eventually assert sovereign control over southern Lebanon, and the Iraqis can disband the Mahdi militia in southern Iraq, the world can then get on with the business of pressuring the young Assad in Damascus to comply with the U.N. investigations of his regime to see if he or someone close to him had a role in assassinating Lebanese dissidents. Mr. Assad has several face-saving cards, (handing over Hamas financier Khaled Meshal, being one).

Undeniably if Tehran’s surrogates in Sadr City slums, the Bekaa Valley, and Gaza Strip are disarmed, disbanded, dismantled, or dissolved by their respective governments –– along with isolating and crippling, or perhaps even flipping like Libya, the Syrian Ba’athists –– chances of a future overt war with Iran dwindle dramatically. And if such a war did occur, it would be considerably less devastating across the broader region. While most of the world concentrates on Iranian nuclear ambitions, we must recognize that the problem isn’t the status of the Iranian arsenal, per se, but the inherent nature of the clerical mullahs overseeing such an arsenal.

The world has a golden opportunity to take away all of Khamanei’s instrumentalities. This, coupled with support for the oppressed Arab, Azeri, Baluchi, Kurdish, and Turkmen minorities of Iran –– as well as the well-educated Persian secularists –– would constitute a magnificent change in American policy. Much like rolling back Soviet expansionism meant tackling Russian proxies in Latin America, Africa, and Southwest Asia, we must understand that the same is needed now. Much as we boldly supported democratic dissidents behind the Curtain, we must do so now, get away from our fixation and fear of “instability,” and understand you cannot contain fascistic pathology. You can only discredit it.