Iran and Israel
February 11th, 2009 by Torstein Schiøtz Worren
A well-written and nuanced article dealing with the historical dynamic that led to the current relations between Iran and Israel from Conflicts Forum
Imagined affinities, imagined enmities: The strange tale of Iran and Israel
By Alastair Crooke, Le Monde diplomatique, February, 2009
The early Zionists never believed they would be accepted in the Arab world and pinned their hopes on the non-Arab periphery instead, particularly Iran. Israel reversed that policy by opening talks with a weakened Arafat in the early 1990s. But peace with the Palestinians did not happen and the ‘radicals’ grew more radical.
“We had very deep relations with Iran, cutting deep into the fabric of the two peoples,” said a high-ranking official at the Israeli foreign ministry just after the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Israeli (and US) officials then saw it as madness to view Iran as anything other than a natural interlocutor. Thirty years later, western policy-makers, and particularly Israelis, see Iran as a growing threat. Could this fear be based on a misreading of Iran’s revolution?
David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, did not see Israel as part of the Middle East, but as part of Europe. From 1952, Ben-Gurion repeated that although Israelis were sitting in the Middle East, this was a geographical accident, for they were a European people. “We have no connection with the Arabs,” he said. “Our regime, our culture, our relations, is not the fruit of this region. There is no political affinity between us, or international solidarity” (1).
Ben-Gurion called for a concerted effort to persuade the United States that Israel could be a strategic asset in the Middle East. But President Dwight Eisenhower (1953-61) repeatedly declined Israel’s entreaties, believing that the US was better placed to manage US interests independently of Israeli assistance.
As a result of these rebuffs, Ben-Gurion evolved the concept of the “alliance of the periphery” which aimed to balance the vicinity of hostile Arab states by forming alliances with Iran, Turkey and Ethiopia. It was an attempt to strengthen Israeli deterrence, reduce Israel’s isolation and add to its appeal as an “asset” to the US.
In parallel, Ben-Gurion developed another idea: the “alliance of the minorities”. He argued that the majority of the inhabitants of the Middle East were not Arab, referring not only to the Persians and the Turks, but also to religious minorities such as the Jews, Kurds, Druze and (Christian) Maronites of Lebanon. The aim was to foster nationalist aspirations among minorities in order to create islands of allies in the ocean of Arab nationalism.
Iran emerged against this background in the late 1950s as a “natural ally” of Israel. In Treacherous Alliance (2) Trita Parsi has traced the cooperation with the Shah, such as the joint training and arming of Kurdish insurgents between 1970 and 1975 that was intended to weaken Iraq. Parsi also notes the empathy between Israel and Iran on account of the cultural superiority felt by the two peoples towards the Arabs – even though the supposed affinity had its limits. Israelis were puzzled and irked at the Shah’s insistence on keeping the relationship quiet; Israel wanted it publicly acknowledged.
The sense of close affinity persisted beyond the Iranian Revolution, and prompted even hard-headed Israeli politicians of the right – including prime minister Menachem Begin – to reach out to the new Iranian leadership. Ayatollah Khomeini’s pragmatism in foreign policy was read by Israelis as evidence that the revolution had been an aberration. Iran, surrounded by Arab hostility, understood only too well its need for Israeli friendship – and the technological advantages it could bestow on its friends. Yossi Alpher, a former Mossad official, noted that the periphery doctrine was so “thoroughly ingrained” in the Israeli mindset that it had become “instinctive” (3). It was out of this conviction that Israel inveigled the US to sell weapons to Iran in the mid-1980s, a prelude to the Iran-Contra scandal (4).
Begin’s electoral victory in 1977 entrenched a more radical vision than that of the Labour Party, that of the Revisionist Zionist leader, Vladimir Jabotinsky. The latter had argued in his seminal “Iron Wall” article in 1923 that there could never be agreement with the Arabs. Begin shared Jabotinsky’s view that “only when there is no longer any hope of getting rid of us… will they drop their extremist leaders,” and moderates would emerge who would “agree to mutual concessions” and could then benefit from the Zionist “five hundred year cultural advance” on them.
Relations with the periphery declined
The right tried to put the strategy of the “alliance of the minorities” into practice. In 1982, Ariel Sharon invaded Lebanon with the aim of ousting the Palestine Liberation Organisation and establishing a friendly Christian Maronite hegemony in Beirut – so inflicting a devastating defeat on Syria, a major pillar of Arabism. It proved a miscalculation, for it precipitated the decline of the Maronites and encouraged Shia mobilisation in the south and in the Bekaa valley, from which a formidable new enemy, Hizbullah, emerged.
At the same time as this failure in Lebanon, Israel’s relations with the periphery declined – at least with Iran (which made a strategic alliance with Syria, a key Arab enemy). This was because of a misperception by Israel, shared by the US: the Iranian Revolution was seen in the West as no more than a discontinuity in the western narrative of a historical progression from backwardness to western-style secular modernity. It was an aberration, a reaction against modernity that would be corrected over time. The ideological basis to the revolution was seen as “hollow”; “pragmatists” would soon pull it back on to the path of western material progress, the only course that made sense in the western optic. This is why both Israel and the US have been so preoccupied by signs of pragmatism and an obsessive hunt for “moderates”. And whenever Iran’s revolutionary leadership has shown any signs of pragmatism in its foreign policy, it reinforced the US and Israeli view that this would lead eventually to an alliance with Israel.
In reality, it was the West’s materialist “modernity”, on which Israel’s doctrine was justified, which repelled Iranian leaders the most. But though they were at odds with the US and Israel over their vision of society and their efforts to spread a culture of secular, materialist and free-market society across the region (which many Iranians saw in turn as archaic, and even colonialist), they did not want to defeat Israel militarily. The revolution was not conceived with an aggressive regional ambition; it did not threaten Israel or the US in conventional military terms.
In 1988, after a messy, debilitating war lasting eight years, Iran reached a ceasefire with Iraq. But the years 1990-2 saw two events that changed the outlook for the whole region: the Soviet Union imploded and Saddam Hussein was defeated in the first Gulf war (1990-1). These events removed both the Russian threat to Iran and Iraq’s threat to Israel. It left Iran and Israel as unchallenged rivals for leadership and pre-eminence in the region, and it saw the US emerge as a unipolar, unchecked power.
Israel’s main fear was to be seen as a liability by the US during the Gulf war, rather than a friend. At the same time the prospect of Iran emerging as a pre-eminent regional power threatened Israel’s hegemony by opening the possibility of a US-Iranian rapprochement that risked eclipsing Israel’s relationship with the US. More seriously, Israel risked its military deterrence: its survival depended on its military supremacy, which a resurgent Iran might remove.
When the Labour government under Yitzhak Rabin, elected in 1992, decided to drop the strategy of wooing the periphery and instead opted to make peace with the Arabs, this was a radical reverse of strategy. This shift placed Israel and Iran on opposite sides in the new equation, and the change was as intense as it was unexpected: “Iran has to be identified as Enemy No 1,” Yossi Alpher, at the time an adviser to Rabin, told the New York Times four days after Bill Clinton’s election victory. And Shimon Peres, the other most senior Labour figure, warned the international community in an interview in 1993 that Iran would be armed with a nuclear bomb by 1999 (5).
Exaggerated nuclear threat?
But many inside the Clinton administration felt the Iranian threat was exaggerated, as did many within the Israeli establishment. Shlomo Brom, a senior member of the Israeli intelligence apparatus, told Parsi mockingly: “Remember, the Iranians are always five to seven years from the bomb. Time passes, but they are always five to seven years from the bomb.” In 2009, the Iranians are, according to US intelligence estimates, still “five to seven years away from the bomb” (6).
Israel, therefore, began to cut a deal with Yasser Arafat, greatly weakened by the Gulf war. Rabin and Peres then used the demonisation of Iran as a lever with which to divert the US Jewish Lobby: the Lobby could focus on the existential threat from Iran rather than turn their anger on Israel’s leaders for betraying Jabotinsky by supping with the enemy – Arafat and the Arabs.
The US was devising a parallel strategy too: a realignment of pro-western Arab states against enemies lying beyond the periphery – barbarians bearing down on the values, institutions and liberties of western civilisation, led by Iran. US power had become the instrument that would “spell the death knell for the Iranian revolution” as William Kristol, a leading US conservative, wrote in May 2003. The defeat of Iran had become the means to deliver a double blow to the Arab and Muslim psyche as well as to the Islamist resistance. The Arabs would become docile, and the Middle East would succumb, like so many dominoes.
Not surprisingly, despite Iran’s cooperation with Washington during the war in Afghanistan (2002) and Iraq (2003), its attempts to reach a so-called “grand bargain” with the US were all rebuffed or undercut by senior members of the Bush administration. The 2003 proposal to open talks with the US that appeared to acknowledge US security concerns – including the demand for an end to Iran’s support for Hizbullah and Hamas and to its nuclear programme, and recognition of Israel – has become a part of legend. But to assume that pressure caused Iran to offer to sever its links to the resistance and come to terms with Israel is to misread Iran’s intent. Iran’s offer was a nuanced reformulation of an earlier proposal for partnership and a discussion of all issues in contention. To interpret the 2003 episode as a signal that “pressure works”, and that more pressure on Iran will yield these and further concessions, may lead to a catastrophic error of policy.
The US swing towards a Manichaean vision of pro-western moderation versus Islamist extremism has taken regional polarisation well beyond Ben-Gurion’s more modest objective of creating a balance of forces and deterrence. In their aim to break the resistance throughout the Muslim world to a secular, liberal vision for the future, the US and its European allies have instead provoked mass mobilisation against their own project, as well as radicalisation and hostility to the West.
The non-existence of religious prophets
November 19th, 2008 by Torstein Schiøtz Worren
MÜNSTER, Germany — Muhammad Sven Kalisch, a Muslim convert and Germany’s first professor of Islamic theology, fasts during the Muslim holy month, doesn’t like to shake hands with Muslim women and has spent years studying Islamic scripture. Islam, he says, guides his life.So it came as something of a surprise when Prof. Kalisch announced the fruit of his theological research. His conclusion: The Prophet Muhammad probably never existed.
This is the rather entertaining beginning of an article in the Wall Street Journal. The professor, who apparently belongs to the Zaydi branch of Shia-Islam, argues that just as in other religions, the principal Islamic prophet is an idea and principle that has been made into a person in later religious writings to add strength to the religious claims. He interestingly enough points out that there are few reliable sources that mention the rasul (the prophet) until the third Islamic century. A wider discussion and additional information from the German interview can be found in this article.
The interesting thing is not really the fact that someone claims that the prophet never existed, as there has been a small body of academics who’ve claimed this for a while now. What makes it different is that the professor is a convert to Islam and that the critique thus comes from “the inside” and is not part of the often radical and anti-Islamic rhetoric of Western critics and polititicians. Furthermore, it’s an academic work following rules of referencing and citations.
Not suprisingly, he’s been branded a heretic just for making the suggestion and this would probably have been the case had he belonged to the majority Sunni school (and not already belonging to a ‘heretical’ sect). Still, it’s an intriguing thought even if it is just a theory. Hopefully it will trigger constructive debate, although it is more likely to result in rabid rejection and excommunication.
The hypocricy over the Georgia debacle
August 28th, 2008 by Torstein Schiøtz Worren
Although Russia is showing scary tendencies in its new and aggressive foreign policy, the American and European outcry that followed the Russian intervention in Georgia and the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, is hypocritical to the extreme.
First of all, what took place was that the president of Georgia chose to use force of arms to reclaim a territory where the inhabitants, albeit after expelling a large part of the original and ethnic Georgian population during the civil wars of the 1990s, do not want to be part of Georgia. It does not excuse the subsequent and aggressive Russian intervention, but it was still reckless and dangerous. Russia had admittedly been escalating the confrontation in the months building up to the war, but Georgia is to blame for starting the conflict and for atrocities in South Ossetia.
Russia has been widely and rightly criticised for its bombing of infrastructure and civilian targets in Georgia when war first broke out, but the attacks follow a pattern used by the USA and Western European countries in similar conflicts. In Serbia, when the decision was made to intervene in the conflict in Kosovo in 1999, NATO aircraft bombed targets that were supposedly dual-use, meaning they were used both for military and civilian purposes. This meant that bridges, factories, power plants, and communication networks were targeted. Similarly, in Iraq in 1991, when a coalition of forces were liberating Kuwait from the occupying Iraqi forces, the whole country was reduced to rubble, inflicting damage that at the time was expected to take decades to rebuild (which of course did not happen as the subsequent sanctions left the country with no income and killed off more civilians than Saddam Hussein was able to do on his own). As always, it is the civilians that are left to suffer the consequences. To Russians, the intervention was just as legitimate as other Western interventions in regions of strategic importance.
Instead of focusing on the reasons for the conflict, the EU and the US are competing to be the loudest in the condemnation of Russia and for coming up with the most impressive and escalating response. We have only ourselves to blame for the deteriorating relations.
First of all, the recognition of independence for Kosovo set a dangerous precedence for future conflicts. Instead of letting Kosovo remain a semi-autonomous part of Serbia, what actually took place was that NATO granted the new country its independence through force of arms. Instead of trying to build a system whereby two peoples can co-exist peacefully in one state, the organisation implied that co-existence would not be possible and South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transnistria/Transdniestria, Kurdistan, Uyghurstan and all the world’s little corners with plans for independence could hope for international recognition if they only get the West on their side.
Furthermore, the rabid Russian response is also a result of the West’s lack of concern for security concerns that are very legitimate to Russia. The missile shield is going ahead regardless of Russian misgivings and is an obvious provocation. Planning to expand NATO to Georgia, an indefensible outpost with an aggressive leadership right on the Russian border that has unresolved territorial disputes with the military giant, is unnecessary and silly.
And now, after NATOs actions in the Balkans, the West is lining up behind the Serbia of the Caucasus and threatening sanctions and escalation with Russia. Surely, this will make Russia think twice about its actions and come crawling back to the negotiating table to repent?
Yemen’s Houthi rebellion and Bani Hushaish: what’s really going on?
June 16th, 2008 by Torstein Schiøtz Worren
Since 2004 the Yemeni government have fought several wars in Yemen’s northernmost governorate Sa’da against a movement calling itself The Believing Youth, mostly known as ‘The Houthis’ after its late founder Badr ad-Din al-Houthi. According to the government, the movement is aiming to re-establish the Shia-Zaydi imamate that ruled Yemen until the republican revolution of 1962. However, anyone who has spent time in Yemen knows that government sources cannot be trusted, and due to the information blackout that has been in effect related to anything to do with the conflict, hardly any independent sources exist. The few journalists who have braved the government ban on writing about have been arrested. The most well-known is Abdulkarim al-Khaiwani who only last week was sentenced to six years in prison for ‘belonging to a terrorist cell’ after writing about the wars in Sa’da.
Very little information exists about what is going on in Sa’da. According to human rights activists and NGOs, 100 000 people have been displaced in the province since 2004, 50 000 only this year. How many that have been killed are not known, but conservative estimates are in the thousands; and many of the victims are civilians. The government’s tactics of indescriminate bombing of whole villages is what journalists like al-Khaiwani have been punished for trying to uncover. Although the conflict has been going on since 2004, there have been various mediation efforts, and an official comittee from Qatar has been to Yemen several times to broker a peace deal. When cease-fire agreements have broken down, both sides have been quick to blame the other. What seems clear, though, is that the government has only agreed to negotiations in the first place when the military offensives have stalled in the extremely hostile and difficult mountainous terrain of northern Yemen.
So who are Houthis and what is really going on?
Trying to portray the movement as an illegitimate force of extremists, president Ali Abdullah Saleh and his ministers increasingly paint the conflict in sectarian rhetoric. They say that the Houthis are extremist Zaydis, a branch of Shia Islam that was established in the northern part of Yemen in the 9th century, and claim that the Houthis seek to establish themselves as a Hizbollah-like organisation with the backing of Iran. What the president forgets to mention is that the Zaydis constitute between 35-50 percent of the population of the country and that he himself, as are most Yemenis north of the Sumara Pass halfway to Aden, is Zaydi.
Historically, there have been relatively little friction between the Zaydis and Sunnis (of the shafi’i school) of Yemen as there are few doctrinal differences between the two. Yemeni Zaydiism has few of the elements that are typical of the Iranian ‘Twelver’ Shiism. What has happened in Yemen instead, is a slow ‘Sunnification’ of the mainstream Zaydi population in a Sunni-Wahabi direction. Extremist Islamism has long had a relatively free reign in Yemen and the government has been accused of making deals with extremists whereby they are excluded from persecution in Yemen as long as they do not target Yemeni interests. The extremists are furthermore useful for the regime as private militias doing the dirty work in the various conflicts. They were widely used when the government in 1994 crushed an uprising of loyalists of the former Marxist South Yemen unhappy with North Yemen’s dominant role in the unified Yemen, and they are reportedly being used again in Sa’da to fight their Shi’a enemy. Most people in the former North Yemen rarely contemplated their religious affiliation before the current conflict. Now, however, sectarian identity is being brought to the fore, as the government labels the rebels heretics and traitors. Random imprisonment of Zaydis in areas of conflict is taking place, and in Sana’a Zaydi imams are reportedly being removed from mosques in favour of Sunni preachers.
This sectarian rhetoric is a very dangerous development in a conflict that is probably mostly about politics. The political exclusion of large segments of the Yemeni population (see earlier article) has lead to various counter-reactions in the population. In a country like Yemen, where the government’s power extends only as far as the asphalt road, armed uprisings in the countryside should come as no surprise. The Yemeni government, and above all the president himself, has always bought legitimacy through the linking of loyalty and development. Powerful tribes and their sheikhs have been tied into the political system by the promise of roads, wells and schools. In the remote areas, though, few have seen the benefits of joining the Yemeni state. Political disillusionment is a likely catalyst for the rebellion.
Fighting just outside of Sana’a
Until now, few people have taken an interest in the conflict as it was confined to a far-away governorate on the border with Saudi Arabia and seemingly waged against a band of rugged tribal elements with unknown grievances. However, since the latest flare-up that began in April that has lead to the heaviest fighting since 2004, the conflict has taken a worrying turn. It started with the spread to Harf Sufyan in Amran governorate only two hours’ drive north of the capital. Then, a month ago, the government reported that it was combating Houthi fighters who had infiltrated the Bani Hushaish district, one of the most fertile districts of northern Yemen, just outside of Sana’a and overlooking Sana’a International Airport. By the end of May, the rebels had supposedly been defeated and the approaches to Sana’a were said to be secure, but for the past two weeks the fighting has continued with the government’s use of helicopters, fighter jets and artillery. The huge security presence in the capital shows just how worried the government is, and this turn of events points to a different dynamic that is only now becoming clear.
What until now has been portrayed as a limited tribal conflict could in fact have become a much larger uprising against the increasingly repressive regime of President Saleh. The fighting in Bani Hushaish points to a shift in loyalties and the recruitment of local tribes in Bani Hushaish to join the rebellion. If this is the case, the potential for an escalation as new tribes join with the Houthis to overthrow the regime, is likely. Yemen is already struggling with widespread unrest in the southern governorates that sees the former North’s domination as colonialism. Rising food and fuel prices are making life difficult for the large segments of population that are living in poverty. Could this mean that people of different tribes and backgrounds are drawn to the Houthis in order to generate change, basically at any cost?
Not surprisingly, the government response is more of the same: increased repression. Sa’da governorate is already largely cut off from the rest of the country with telephone and mobile networks closed and strict control of all traffic and trade. In the government view, the civilian population is largely to blame for letting the rebels operate in their towns and villages, and this is how any outbreak of violence is perceived. According to the latest edition of the English-language newspaper the Yemen Times, Bani Hushaish is facing a blockade of petrol and foodstuffs. According to an official of the office of the Sana’a governorate, the aim is to make life as difficult as possible for the locals to make sure they stop supporting the rebels. The logic is similar to that of economic embargos elsewhere:
“The way Yemeni society is structured in tribal areas would never allow state control without the locals’ acceptance. By creating this siege, we are pushing the locals to understand that they must cooperate with the state against the Houthis even if they are their relatives or neighbors,” said the Sana’a Governate Office source. “When they begin to starve and their source of income is interrupted, they will eventually hand over the Houthis in their area. Also, we try to prevent any ammunition or supplies from reaching the Houthis in Bani Hushaish in order to weaken them,” he added.
This strategy has so far failed miserably in Sa’da and only led to more suffering and resentment. If the strategy will lead to the banishment of the Houthis from Bani Hushaish remains to be seen, but it could also mark the beginning of a much more dangerous turn in the conflict.
Yemen’s Failing Democracy
June 11th, 2008 by Torstein Schiøtz Worren
Another article written by me and published in the brand new magazine ‘The Arab‘, this time about the political crises in Yemen.
An Iran on the Mediterranean?
May 23rd, 2008 by Torstein Schiøtz Worren
I wrote a reply to a friend of mine about Lebanon and figured I might as well publish an edited version here. My issues, as always, comes from how Lebanon’s problems (that is to say the government and the opposition) are portrayed in the media. From here it all looks very simple: The freely-elected and Western-backed coalition of Lebanese religious and sectarian groups are clinging to power under the onslaught of the Shia Hizbollah, a terrorist group that seeks to extend its power over all the country and turn it into an “Iran on the Mediterranean” as the Lebanese government put it. I am no fan of Hizbollah, but it benefits no one to portray what is going on in Lebanon in this way.
1. The whole notion of Lebanese democracy
The idea that there exists a democracy in Lebanon is a Western idea based on someone fighting someone we don’t like through the political system. True, Lebanon has VOTING, but that is not the same as a democracy. Democracy requires representation, and that is a dubious term in Lebanon, not least because those in power are scared to do another demographic census (last one was in the 1940s if I remember correctly) because they know the situation has changed a lot since then. The Lebanese political system is based on a Lebanese invention of The Confessional System where the different religious groups and sects are given positions and seats in parliament according to their percentage of the population (70 year ago). Here’s a cut from Wikipedia:
The Parliament is elected by adult suffrage (majority age for election is 21) based on a system of proportional representation for the various confessional groups. Most deputies do not represent political parties as they are known in the West, and rarely form Western-style groups in the assembly. Political blocs are usually based on confessional and local interests or on personal/family allegiance rather than on political affinities…
Lebanese political institutions often play a secondary role to highly confessionalized personality-based politics. Powerful families also still play an independent role in mobilizing votes for both local and parliamentary elections. Nonetheless, a lively panoply of domestic political parties, some even predating independence, exists. The largest are all confessional based.
Democracy in the Western sense is “one man one vote”, where vote implies that you can vote for whoever you want. This is not the case in Lebanon. Politics is run by the same families that have always controlled different sects in different areas. The fact that they prevent an opening of the political system to let anyone vote for any party or person is clearly because they stand to loose out in a new and truly democratic system. As it stands now, most of Lebanon’s politicians are more concerned with their own power and privileges than creating opportunities for all the Lebanese. This disdain for the politicians can be found on all levels of society and in all sects.
2. The ‘Everyone against Hizbollah-syndrome’
In the media, the political conflict in Lebanon is portrayed as the Western-backed alliance of Sunnis/Christians/Druze against the Shias of Hizbollah. However, what is always left out is that there are two huge political ALLIANCES that are opposed to eachother in Lebanon. It is not as if all non-Shia Lebanese are on one side and Hizbollah and Amal on the other. The sectarian system in Lebanon requires alliances with ALL sects in order to be a viable political alternative (as the president has to be Christian, the prime minister a Sunni etc). Hizbollah is the most powerful partner in the opposition, but they are allied with political parties from the other sects in Lebanon, including Christians, Sunnis and Druze as this is the only way to fill all positions in government and parliament. Now, you could say that the others are only in there for their own personal gain, but that describes the situation for Lebanese politics in general. In other words, the conflict is more political than sectarian. What Hizbollah wants is representation, something they feel is being denied to them. That’s where any conflict resolution needs to start as that is the basic grievance. And this is where they have now come to agreement in discussions in Qatar. Now, if everyone was against Hizbollah, giving them their proper representation (which is considered to be around 40 percent or maybe a bit less) it would not give them the ability to control the government as they do not have the majority. This is where the ALLIANCE comes in, as their allies would give them a majority in parliament. That might be frightening as it is an unknown force, but that is the weakness with democracy. Is democracy only a good system as long as a country’s inhabitants vote for people we like? Or does it give them the right to vote for whoever they want (as long as they follow the constitution of course)?
3. Hizbollah as a foreign import.
Portraying Hizbollah as a foreign import simplifies the matter in a way that is very dangerous, a simplification that is related to the idea that Iraqis would welcome foreign soldiers just because they hated Saddam Hussein so much. True, Hizbollah was formed as a resistance movement in the second half of the civil war, largely in opposition to Israeli interventions. But it is an inherently Lebanese phenomenon built on Lebanese experiences and politics. A lot of the time it is described in terms of being an extension of Syrian and Iranian interests, but that is to put the problem on its head. A lot of the time there are converging interests between the three, but this does not make it a foreign import. “My enemy’s enemy is my friend” applies here as elsewhere and Hizbollah, especially as long as they have a ‘valid’/'acceptable’ reason to struggle (politically or militarily) they are going to take support from whoever is willing to give it to them (just like the Christians of Lebanon have been supported by Israel and just like all factions in the political struggle in Lebanon currently have foreign sponsors, as they’ve always had). This is why Hamas, a strict Sunni-Islamist organisation takes money from Shia Iran. Hizbollah is concerned with Lebanese interests and not Iran’s interests (which is why they stay out of the whole Sunni-Shia conflict elsewhere in the Middle East). The reason it’s portrayed as a foreign import by the current government is of course because they know this is what triggers support from abroad. They therefore describe the conflict as “The beleaguered democrats”, that are clearly identifiable and easy to sympatise with from our perspective, against “the crazy fundamentalists working for the Axis of Evil that want to take away everyone’s freedom”.
4. Hizbollah as crazy fundamentalists
This is where it’s getting tricky as it’s hard to make judgements about an organisation that has never been forced to convert its rhetoric to actual national politics. However, there is a lot more to the story than Islamism. Even if Nasrallah wanted a country where everyone is forced to live according to the sharia, he knows this is not conceivable nor possible. And he has said as much, expressing all sects’ right to live according to their own rules (as has always been the case). Analysing Hizbollah only according to the black and white idea of good (non-Muslim) secularists versus bad (Muslim) fundamentalists is pointless. Hizbollah is a political movement. This is why (with the exception of revenge killings) Hizbollah is not on neither the UN’s nor the EU’s lists of terror organisation and the group has never used terror outside of Lebanon (and Israel of course). Furthermore, since the civil war the party has stayed on the political path in the internal conflict. Demonstrations, sit-ins and so forth are all legitimate political tools and is found in Europe also. This time they crossed the line and used force (only the target was militias and not the national army or government institutions.) Furthermore, Hizbollah is praised by many non-Shias for its integrity and honesty (which is always relative and becomes so clear-cut when opposed to the rest of Lebanon’s corrupt politicians) and I think it would get many votes from non-Shias if the voting system was changed to let everybody vote for whoever they wanted (just like many Shias would abandon it as they now had proper political representation).
Reality is never black and white.