Hezbollah is laundering weapons and power
Khairallah Khairallah/Al Arabiya
Friday, 8 May 2015
Lebanon is under increasing danger in light of Hezbollah’s accelerated pursuit of weapons laundering and its intention to be transformed into a power that would replace the legitimate power of the Lebanese State. It’s a different kind of laundering, a laundering of Hezbollah’s illegitimate power imposed by its armed strength on ordinary citizens who believe in Lebanon and its institutions. On May 25, the presidential vacancy will celebrate its first anniversary. Those who are maintaining this vacancy are well known, too well known. The country’s structure is under threat due to Iran’s intention of changing it definitively far from any parity between Christians and Muslims. This is its utmost goal: keeping the Lebanese Republic without its head.
Preserving a part of Syria
It is clear that Iran is trying to compensate for its loss in Syria, all of Syria, and in Lebanon. It is focusing on preserving a part of Syria as a passageway to regions dominated by Hezbollah in Lebanon. This cannot happen without an exhibition of Hezbollah’s weapons with all what it implies on the regime and its composition. According to many observers of the Iranian regime, its investment in Hezbollah for more than three decades remains far more important than its investment in the Syrian regime. In the eyes of Iran, Lebanon is more important than Syria despite all efforts exerted by Tehran in buying up land and changing the nature of the Syrian society.
Hezbollah’s military intervention in Syria had disastrous effects on Lebanon. As a brigade of the Iranian “Revolutionary Guards”, Hezbollah founded the grounds for a very dangerous precedent on the regional level through surpassing the Lebanese borders and prioritizing the sectarian bond over all national ties. In other words, the sectarian militia considered that supporting the minority Alawite regime in Syria is far more important than preserving Lebanese sovereignty.
Under the circumstances, every move towards immunizing Lebanon is more than useful. The visit of ex-Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri to Washington where he met top officials including Vice-President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry denotes that there is an awareness of the importance of immunizing this little country. Saad Rafiq Al-Hariri didn’t come out of nowhere. There is still a firm footed Lebanon which is still resisting in spite of all the attacks trying to suffocate it. This is why Hariri stressed during his meeting in the U.S. on the importance of electing the Lebanese president who is the only Christian head of state in the Middle East.
Hariri’s visit
Through Hariri’s visit to Washington and anticipated visit to Moscow soon, we realize someone is trying to offer Lebanon solutions or, more correctly, there is someone who wants to protect Lebanon instead of turning it into a base to attack any Arabic allegiance in the region.
There are simply two choices for Lebanon: to be an appendage to the Iranian project in the region and nothing more or to be an independent Arab. Another aspect of the Lebanese resistance and resilience is highlighted through the efforts of the Interior Minister Nouhad Al-Machnouq in setting the record straight and confirming that the Lebanese institutions belong to all the Lebanese and that security on Lebanese soil, including that of the southern suburbs, is indivisible. According to him, issues at hand can only be resolved calmly, carefully, wisely and seriously without cheap maneuvers wherever it may come from.
Pursuing this logic doesn’t mean to abandon one of the most important and incontestable convictions: that any weapon born out of the legitimate Lebanese authority is a threat to the country and serves Israeli projects and anyone who works to provoke sectarian instincts and terrorism in all its forms by supporting sectarian militias in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. In light of Hezbollah’s course of action, the din caused by Christian deputy Michel Aoun who serves Iran’s intention to triangulate the power between Shiites, Sunnites and Christians becomes irrelevant. Aoun’s mission is known. All that is needed is to freeze the presidential election in order to change the regime.
A cover up
Some Christians are participating in covering up Hezbollah’s power laundering attempts. Lebanese people who have the minimum level of patriotism won’t accept that. It is a pity that Michel Aoun is once more playing a role in destroying the Lebanese state institutions. He did that in the past and continues to do so. He helped the Syrian tutelage to put its hands on Lebanon in 1990 and now serves as an Iranian puppet in a project that transcends Lebanon. More unfortunate is that an 80-year-old man is refusing to learn from his past mistakes. He doesn’t have enough courage to even ask himself who really beneficiated from his futile wars when he was in Baabda palace in 1988, 1989 and 1990.
If it is that hard for him, why doesn’t he ask himself why he lives in Al Rabyeh, a region of Christian majority instead of Haret Hrek, his birthplace, which has become one of Hezbollah’s bastions?
