The Road to Fatima Gate: The Beirut Spring, the Rise of Hezbollah, and the Iranian War Against Israel

by Michael Totten

  There would be no solution, however, while Khamenei and Ahmadinejad ruled. Islamic Republic officials spent years and millions of dollars acquiring hard power assets in the Middle East, and they were on the brink of acquiring the greatest hard power asset of all—a nuclear weapon. And in October 2010, Ahmadinejad visited South Lebanon and was treated to a hero’s welcome by Hezbollah officials and cheering local residents, symbolically affirming what had been true for some time—Fatima Gate was no longer “The Good Fence.” It was effectively the Iranian border with Israel.

  Western engagement wouldn’t likely lead anywhere. Offers of economic incentives and normal relations with this gang in return for their voluntary amputation of overseas instruments like Hezbollah was a fool’s quest. For thirty years they made it abundantly clear that they would rather rule a poor but powerful and confrontational nation than a prosperous and moderate one.

  President Barack Obama had his choice of bad and worse options with the current regime, but an internal overthrow of the leadership would cut the Gordian Knot and resolve a host of problems all by itself.

  A Resistance Bloc without an Iranian head might violently thrash out its death in the bush for a while, but it would become, over time, significantly less dangerous than it was. Diplomatic engagement with Syria could be worthwhile at that point. Bashar al-Assad, assuming Ahmadinejad and Khamenei fell first, would have to recalculate his interests all over again. It would no longer be necessary to lure Damascus away from Tehran if a liberal or moderate Iran pushed al-Assad away first.

  A new government would almost certainly reestablish ties with the United States in short order and would most likely open up to Israel, too, even if the latter took a bit longer.

  Iranian author Amir Taheri explained in his book The Persian Night that Israel and Iran had no logical reason at all to be enemies. “There is no history of enmity between Iranians and Jews,” he wrote.6 “On the contrary, most historical narratives on both sides radiate with genuine warmth and affection. Ancient Persians helped save the Jews from extermination in Babylon. Jews always remained loyal to Iran, fighting and dying for it whenever given an opportunity. Even when Israel was reborn as a state, few Iranian Jews were prepared to choose it over Iran. Iran and Israel do not face any of the problems that set one nation-state against another. There is no border dispute between them. They are not competing over access to rare natural resources or markets. They do not suffer from a collective memory of hatred and war. Any Western visitor to Iran would quickly realize that Iranians do not hate Jews and would not be prepared to sacrifice them for the Arabs.”

  Hezbollah would find itself terribly vulnerable if its patrons and armorers were jailed, exiled, or killed. A post-Khomeinist Iran would be no more likely to support the Party of God than postcommunist Russia was willing to sponsor insurgencies in Asia and Latin America. A moderate or even merely different regime in Iran may well act directly against Hezbollah, first by cutting off the arms and largesse, and second by throwing its diplomatic weight, for the first time in decades, behind Lebanon’s legal authorities. Hezbollah would suddenly realize that, like it or not, Beirut, not Tehran, is its capital. Eventually, the party would come up short on money and guns like Fidel Castro did when Moscow abruptly cut off aid shipments to Cuba after its communist empire burst.

  Nasrallah might try to maintain an alliance with al-Assad in Damascus, but their partnership was never anything but cold and tactical anyway. Hezbollah’s ideology wasn’t Pan-Arabist as al-Assad’s was, nor did Syria’s secular Alawite government have any interest whatsoever in radical Islam or violent Shia sectarianism.

  A huge number of Lebanese Shia children—though fortunately not all of them—were raised on Hezbollah’s toxic education curriculum, and it might take a generation or longer to undo the psychological damage. Eventually, though, Lebanon’s Shias would have little choice but to come to terms with their countrymen and recognize the authority of the state, just as the Sunnis and Druze finally did after their own radical causes proved as destructive as they were impossible.

  Messy as it was, Lebanon’s system worked, more or less, when it was not being assaulted and undermined from countries on the outside and by their proxies on the inside. Just as Eastern European nations quickly and naturally turned democratic after the fall of the Soviet Union, despite still having powerful communist parties at home, Lebanon might finally be sort of okay in a world without a Khomeinist Iran and its partner in Damascus that used terrorism and war as tools of imperial destabilization.

  One day, eventually, Hezbollah’s state within a state will wither away or be smashed like Yasser Arafat’s was, even if Lebanon is torn to pieces and succumbs to authoritarian rule again in the meantime. Lebanon has a terrible and sometimes frightening dark side, but its liberal and democratic ethos is real and resilient. It can be forced underground for a while, but no one has ever been able to drive it from the country entirely.

  Iran likewise has a liberal and democratic ethos that never quite goes away.

  By the time the Constitutional Revolution was finished in 1911, Iran, for the first time, established a parliament. The 1979 revolution tragically led to the establishment of a fascist-like state, but the revolution itself was not fascist. Khomeini was only able to lead a revolt of leftists, Islamists, and liberals against the Shah because he promised that clerics would be absent in the chambers of power and that Iran would be a democracy with freedom for all its citizens. And he only managed to make himself the head of the new state by using brute force to bludgeon his liberal and leftist former allies into submission.

  The spirit not of Khomeinism but of 1979 itself came roaring back strong as ever after Ahmadinejad and Khamenei mounted their coup. Iranian liberalism may have finally reached maturation during the radical ferment against the most tyrannical government in its people’s memory. One day the activists are bound to prevail. Totalitarian regimes are always self-defeating and temporary, and Islamism, once discredited, will have a hard time returning as a governing force.

  Iranian writer Reza Zarabi said the regime not only destroyed its own legitimacy but also the religion it professed to practice. “The name Iran,” he wrote,7 “which used to be equated with such things as luxury, fine wine, and the arts, has become synonymous with terrorism. When the Islamic Republic government of Iran finally meets its demise, they will have many symbols and slogans as testaments of their rule, yet the most profound will be their genocide of Islam, the black stain that they have put on this faith for many generations to come.”

  When Iran’s incomplete revolution is finally finished, Lebanon’s will stand a chance again, too. While there aren’t many reasons for optimism in the short run, the Resistance Bloc—like every other Middle Eastern empire in history—will one day be destroyed by a more vital force. There may be real peace at last in the Eastern Mediterranean when the citizens of Iran seize the levers of power, when al-Assad’s family loses its control over Syria, and when Lebanon is the final home for all her children.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would first like to thank everyone at Encounter for turning my manuscript into a book, especially Roger Kimball, Heather Ohle, Nola Tully, Lauren Miklos, Sam Schneider, Emily Pollack, and Elissa Englund. Thanks also to my agent, John Mason, who helped this book find a home, and to Rita el-Haddad, Faerlie Wilson, and Charles Chuman for fact-checking my first draft. I take sole responsibility for any mistakes that remain, but there are fewer now thanks to their efforts.

  Thanks are also due to a number of newspaper and magazine editors who published my work from the Middle East before I even thought of writing this book: Barry Gewen at the New York Times; James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal; Marc Cooper at the LA Weekly; Brian Anderson at City Journal; Nick Gillespie at Reason; David Hazony at Azure; Michael Young at Beirut’s Daily Star; Josh Greenman at the New York Daily News; Jonathan Foreman at Standpoint ; John Podhoretz, Sam Munson, Abe Greenwald, and Kejda Gjermani at Commentary; and Roger L. Simon a
t Pajamas Media.

  I will always be grateful to Glenn Reynolds, Andrew Sullivan, Charles Johnson, Matt Welch, and Ken Layne for bringing me out of obscurity long ago. Without them, even my early freelance writing career may not have been possible. Thanks also to Joe Katzman and Marc Danziger for letting me write at Winds of Change once in a while and to Michael Yon for inspiring me with his unique and outstanding war correspondence.

  My friends, colleagues, and comrades in Lebanon deserve an especially warm thanks: Faerlie Wilson, Lee Smith, Charles Chuman, Eli Khoury, Elie Fawaz, Michael Young, Tony Badran, Toni Nissi, Abu Kais, Anssi Kullberg, Hassan Mohanna, Wissam Youssef, Makram Rabah, Hanin Ghaddar, and Andrew Tabler.

  The same goes for my friends, colleagues, and comrades in Israel: Noah Pollak, Benjamin Kerstein, Lisa Goldman, Allison Kaplan Sommer, Martin Kramer, Stefanie Pearson, Yaacov Lozowick, Richard Landes, Aliza Landes, and Michael Oren.

  I also appreciate assistance, advice, and encouragement from Christopher Hitchens, Paul Berman, Jason Epstein, Jim Hake, Jamie Kirchick, and Andrew Apostolou.

  Many thanks to all the readers of my website who donated money for travel and equipment expenses, and thanks especially to Kevin Hassinger, Patrick M. Neeley, Carl Hoffman, Philippe Kalaf, Asher Abrams, John Maloney, Virginia Pigot, and James D. Woolery for extremely generous donations.

  Closer to home, I’d like to thank Scott William Carter for twenty years of mutual support sessions over coffee while we learned to write professionally together, and Nancy Rommelmann for her invaluable feedback and advice.

  My parents, John and Gena, and my brother, Scott, have been fantastically supportive through my entire life and I can hardly thank them enough.

  Last and most important of all, thanks to my lovely wife, Shelly, for ten wonderful years and counting, for putting up with so many of my long and sometimes dangerous trips abroad, for patience while I spent the better part of a year holed up in my office writing this book, and to Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch for teaching me how.

  ENDNOTES

  INTRODUCTION: THE BEIRUT SPRING

  1 “Record Protest Held in Beirut,” BBC News, March 14, 2005.

  2 “Hama,” GlobalSecurity.org, http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/syria/hama.htm.

  3 Thomas Friedman, “When Camels Fly,” New York Times, February 20, 2005.

  4 Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook, October 27, 2010.

  5 Eli Reed and Fouad Ajami, Beirut: City of Regrets (W. W. Norton and Company, 1988), p. 31.

  6 Robert Fisk, “Lebanon Does Not Want Another War. Does It?” The Independent, May 11, 2008.

  7 Alice Fordham, “Talking To: Christopher Hitchens,” NOW Lebanon , February 21, 2009.

  8 William Harris, The New Face of Lebanon: History’s Revenge (Markus Wiener Publishers, 2006), p. 281.

  9 The Beirut Spring (Quantum, 2005), p. 52.

  10 Nicholas Blanford, Killing Mr. Lebanon: The Assassination of Rafik Hariri and Its Impact on the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p. viii.

  11 William Harris, The New Face of Lebanon: History’s Revenge (Markus Wiener Publishers, 2006), p. 291.

  12 http://www.fas.org/asmp/resources/govern/108th/pl_108_175.pdf.

  13 Omar Raad, “No Stability for Lebanon Says Syria’s President,” Ya Libnan, October 11, 2007.

  14 Nicholas Blanford, Killing Mr. Lebanon: The Assassination of Rafik Hariri and Its Impact on the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p. 101.

  15 http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/41516a7e4.html.

  16 “Kansou Vows to ‘Crucify Jumblat above History’s Garbage Dump,’” Naharnet, February 4, 2005.

  17 The Beirut Spring (Quantum, 2005), p. 61.

  18 Nicholas Blanford, Killing Mr. Lebanon: The Assassination of Rafik Hariri and Its Impact on the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p. 81.

  19 William Harris, The New Face of Lebanon: History’s Revenge (Markus Wiener Publishers, 2006), p. 302.

  20 The Beirut Spring (Quantum, 2005), p. 55.

  21 “Lebanese Ministers Forced to Quit,” BBC News, February 28, 2005.

  22 “Huge Beirut Protest Backs Syria,” BBC News, March 8, 2005.

  23 The Beirut Spring (Quantum, 2005), p. 61.

  24 Joe Klein, “Appointment in Damascus,” Time, March 6, 2005.

  25 Charles Glass, Tribes With Flags (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990).

  26 Michael Young, “Thanks So Much but It’s Time to Leave,” Daily Star, February 17, 2005.

  27 Lee Smith, “A Talking Tour of Beirut,” Slate, March 10, 2005.

  28 Charles Krauthammer, “Three Cheers for the Bush Doctrine,” Time, March 7, 2005.

  29 Tony Badran, “Thanks So Much but It’s Time to Leave,” Across the Bay, February 17, 2005.

  30 Tony Badran, “The Wrong Nationalism,” Across the Bay, February 20, 2005.

  31 Samir Kassir, “Beirut Is the Arab Spring,” An-Nahar, March 4, 2005.

  32 Michael Young, “Republic of Fearlessness?” Reason, June 8, 2004.

  33 Joshua Landis, “Syria Will Have to Withdraw from Lebanon,” Syria Comment, February 16, 2005.

  34 Sandra Mackey, Lebanon: A House Divided (W. W. Norton and Company, 1989) p. 18.

  CHAPTER ONE: STATE WITHIN A STATE

  1 http://www.standwithus.com/pdfs/flyers/hezbollah_program.pdf.

  2 Hassan Krayem, “The Lebanese Civil War and the Taif Agreement,” American University of Beirut, http://ddc.aub.edu.lb/projects/pspa/conflict-resolution.html.

  3 “Hezbollah Warns against Disarmament,” Washington Times, May 25, 2005.

  4 Eric Hammel, The Root: The Marines in Beirut, August 1982 – February 1984 (Zenith Press, 2005), p. 148.

  5 Eli Reed and Fouad Ajami, Beirut: City of Regrets (W. W. Norton and Company, 1988), p. 23.

  6 Vali Nasr, “The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future,” Carnegie Council, October 18, 2006, http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/resources/transcripts/5400.html.

  7 Fouad Ajami, The Vanished Imam (Cornell University, 1986), p. 22.

  CHAPTER TWO: HANGING WITH HEZBOLLAH

  1 Marylin Raschka, “Body Dumped in Beirut Identified as Buckley’s,” Los Angeles Times, December 28, 1991.

  2 Augustus Richard Norton, Hezbollah: A Short History (Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 74.

  3 Ibid.

  4 Ibid., p. 79

  5 John Mintz, “U.S. Bans Al-Manar, Says TV Network Backs Terror,” Washington Post, December 22, 2004.

  6 David Aaronovitch, “We Can’t Bear Pictures of the Dead. Hezbollah Want to See Nothing Else.” The Times of London, August 1, 2006.

  7 Jeffrey Goldberg, “In the Party of God (Part I),” The New Yorker, October 24, 2002.

  CHAPTER THREE: WE KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE

  1 Michael J. Totten, “Meeting Hezbollah,” October 7, 2005, http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/000963.html.

  2 Daniel Byman, “Should Hezbollah Be Next?” Foreign Affairs, November/December 2003.

  3 Herbert I. London, “Why the U.S. Is Silent,” Hudson Institute, October 11, 2006, http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=4241.

  CHAPTER FOUR: THE SHATTER ZONE

  1 Robert D. Kaplan, “The Revenge of Geography,” Foreign Policy, May/June 2009.

  2 “The Cairo Agreement,” Daily Star (Beirut), Research Index, http://www.dailystar.com.lb/researcharticle.asp?article_id=42.

  3 http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/unifil/.

  4 Thomas L. Friedman, From Beirut to Jerusalem, rev. ed. (Farar, Straus, and Giroux, September 1, 1991), p. 155.

  5 Ibid., p. 158.

  6 http://tinyurl.com/e3wt8.

  7 Magnus Ranstorp, Hizb’Allah in Lebanon: The Politics of the Western Hostage Crisis (Macmillan Press, 1997), p. 114.

  8 http://www.4mothers.org.il/.

  9 James J.F. Forest (ed.), The Making of a Terrorist: Training and Root Causes (Praeger, November 30, 2005), pp. 254-255.

  CHAP
TER FIVE: WELCOME TO HEZBOLLAHLAND

  1 Uri Ash, “Ghajar Says ‘Don’t Fence Me In,’” Haaretz, June 4, 2002.

  2 Azi Bar’el, “Getting Rid of Ghajar,” Haaretz, May 10, 2009.

  3 Abbas William Samii, “Syria and Iran: An Enduring Axis,” Mideast Monitor, April/May 2006.

  4 Thomas L. Friedman, From Beirut to Jerusalem, rev. ed. (Farar, Straus, and Giroux, September 1, 1991), p. 77.

  5 Joshua M. Landis, “Islamic Education in Syria: Undoing Secularism,” Prepared for Constructs of Inclusion and Exclusion: Religion and Identity Formation in Middle Eastern School Curricula, Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University, November 2003, http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/L/Joshua.M.Landis-1/Islamic%20Education%20in%20Syria.htm.

  6 James Minahan, Encyclopedia of the Stateless Nations: Ethnic and National Groups around the World, Volume IV, S-Z (Greenwood, April 30, 2002), p. 82.

  CHAPTER SIX: SOMETHING DARK IS COMING

  1 “Border Fighting after Mehlis Rejects Syria Offer,” Daily Star (Beirut), November 22, 2005.

  2 Abu Kais, “Hizbullah and Israel Meet in Arrogance,” From Beirut to the Beltway, November 23, 2005.

  3 “Security Council Endorses Secretary-General’s Conclusion on Israeli Withdrawal from Lebanon as of 16 June,” United Nations press release, June 18, 2000, http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2000/20000618.sc6878.doc.html.

  4 “Iran: U.S., Israel Destroyed Iraqi Shrine,” Associated Press, February 23, 2006.

  5 Amir Taheri, The Persian Night: Iran Under the Khomeinist Revolution (Encounter, March 25, 2009), p. 155.

  6 Foaud Ajami, The Foreigner’s Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq (Free Press, July 4, 2006), p. 153.