HOW HEZBOLLAH DEFEATED ISRAEL
PART 3: The political war
By Alastair Crooke and Mark Perry
14 October 2006 |
Asia Times
(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 of
Conflicts 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
the late Yasser Arafat.
(Research for this article was provided by Madeleine Perry.)
