15/10/2010 Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spent two epochal days in Lebanon at a time the country and essentially the whole region is witnessing changes, or maybe rise and fall of key players and decision makers.
After spending two very busy days in Lebanon, Ahmadinejad left the country back to Iran, leaving behind many questions about the outcome of this historic visit on the local level and its impact on Israel, the US, and the pro-western camp in Lebanon.
Deftly organized and compacted festivals in Beirut’s southern suburb and south Lebanon were a disturbing spectacle for some foreign diplomats who will find quite a hard time trying to relay, in a comprehensible way, the whole picture of Ahmadinejad’s visit and reception.
The US led a $500 million campaign over the past five years to demonize Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Iran’s main ally (as former Ambassador Jeffery Feltman declared).
Ahmadinejad was very careful not give the West or pro-western players in Lebanon the impression that he sought to support a group against another. The country has already been perching on a precarious precipice over the international tribunal’s indictment, strongly expected to implicate Hezbollah in martyr Rafiq Hariri’s assassination. For the Iranian president, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon is a Lebanese matter.
In all his speeches, he underlined unity in Lebanon and reminded that Israel, the common enemy, was the sole beneficent from any strife in the country. Martyr Hariri for the Iranian president was a “dear friend who was killed so that friends would be accused, signaling Syria and Hezbollah, and perhaps the Islamic Republic afterwards.
Ahmadinejad did not visit Hariri’s grave. Likewise, he did not visit martyr Imad Moghniye’s tomb. Instead, the visiting president laid a wreath at the Statue of (all) Martyrs in Lebanon.
On the second day of his visit, Ahmadinejad invited Sunni, Shiite, Druze, and Christian scholars, party leaders, officials, and former prime ministers (former PM Fouad Saniora and the Mufti of the Republic Sheikh Mohamad Rashid Qabbani failed to show up). He told his guests that Lebanon’s enemies had the illusion that the country was the weakest in the Middle East, while Lebanon proved them wrong, when it resisted them.
Iran, among other nations including Qatar, helped Lebanon come out from under the rubble of the 2006 war. Both Iran and Qatar decided to oversee – in detail - the expenditure of their reconstruction donations. Other countries, like Saudi Arabia, chose then-PM Fouad Saniora and his government to deal conclusively with their donations. As a result, Saniora failed to fully compensate the afflicted people until this very day, and most of the money is still unaccounted for.
Israel’s media was impressed by the overall popular welcome of the Iranian president and they ruled out the turnout was due to pressure by Hezbollah and its ally the Amal Movement.
“Many analysts argued yesterday that the presence of tens of thousands of people at the rally was the result of Hezbollah pressure on the people. But this is inaccurate. Many residents of southern Lebanon received aid from Iran after the Second Lebanon War to repair damaged houses or build new ones. Tehran is the one behind the reconstruction of southern Lebanon: homes, schools, hospitals, utilities, and infrastructure. The population owes a lot more to Ahmadinejad than it does to Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri. To them, the Iranian president is the real star,” Haaretz said.
Still, the US and Israel have declared that Ahmadinejad’s visit to Lebanon was an unnecessary provocation aimed at tightening the Iranian grip on the Middle East (especially after Saudi Arabia lost its battle in forming the next Iraqi government to Nouri-Al-Maliki, and consequently to Iran and Syria.) Some, in Lebanon, reiterated this stance although in a relatively less tense tone.
In Israel, everyone was irked by the visit in general and concerned about Ahmadinejad delivering a speech from the southern town of Bint Jbeil, where after the 2000 pullout, Hezbollah S.G Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah said his famous words: “Israel was weaker than a spider’s cobweb.”
Bint Jbeil is just 4 kilometers from the border with occupied Palestine, and Israel's Channel 2 Television said Thursday that echoes of Ahmadinejad's welcoming ceremony were audible on the Palestinian side minutes before the Iranian president arrived.
The Iranian president did not make a fiery speech in Bint Jbeil, but he reminded Israel that the Lebanese can protect their own country and that sooner or later the Zionist entity will stop existing. "The world should know the Zionists are mortal ... today the Lebanese nation is alive and is a role model for regional nations," he said.
Before the Bint Jbeil and Qana tours, Lebanese Forces MP Antoine Zahra said, in an interview with Egypt’s weekly Al-Yom Al-Sabe’a, that Ahmadinejad’s visit to south Lebanon was tantamount to an “insult and a breach of Lebanon’s sovereignty.” Zahra and his Lebanese Forces (of Samir Geagea) however failed to make similar stances when US Ambassador to Lebanon Michel Sisson and her military attachés breached all diplomatic protocols and paid several suspicious visits to south and north Lebanon without the consent of the Lebanese concerned authorities.
Zahra, and other March 14 members have been aiming at Ahmadinejad’s visit long before it took place. Tension in Lebanon reached its maximum level in the past week. Apparently, all parties have agreed to ease down the tense political rhetoric over the false witnesses issue in the Hariri assassination case, until Ahmadinejad wraps up his visit, and parties reassess the situation.
Local observers expect that next week might just not be as politically calm as this week.
River to Sea
Uprooted Palestinian
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