Focus shifts to Lebanon

TEL AVIV -- Lebanon's chief of general staff, Gen. Jean Kahwagi, began a five-day official visit to the U.S. on Monday despite constant domestic instability and possible government crisis in Lebanon.

Kahwagi's visit, at the invitation of Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was postponed several times in the past. The ongoing uprising in Syria and its possible regional ramifications, however, made Kahwagi's visit essential. Discussions with the Lebanese army chief will focus on three main subjects:

-- How the Lebanese army deals with the domestic political divide and how it will ensure that, in case of domestic crisis, the army will not disintegrate along sectarian affiliations, as it did during the 1975 civil war.

-- What guarantees can the army provide that possible American arms deliveries won't fall into Hezbollah's hands?

-- And, because of the ongoing events in neighbouring Syria, would the Lebanese army protect Syrian dissidents who seek refuge in Lebanon? In recent weeks, there were at least four cases where the Syrian army crossed into Lebanon and attacked the dissidents.

Since the 2005 Syrian army withdrawal from Lebanon, following the assassination of former prime minister, Rafiq Hariri, the U.S. has been providing Lebanon about $100 million a year in military assistance.

However, following Saad Hariri's resignation and the formation of a new government under multibillionaire Najib Mikati, with Hezbollah as his main coalition partner, the U.S. suspended (but did not cancel) its military assistance. Hezbollah is considered by the U.S. as a terrorist organization.

The American-Lebanese tension was also heightened because the Hezbollah-dominated Mikati government was not paying its share to the Special International Court that was established to investigate and prosecute the assassins of Rafiq Hariri.

The court's prosecutor, Canadian judge Daniel Bellmarre, named four Hezbollah operatives as the main suspects in the assassination.

Hezbollah vowed publicly, and in force, that it will never surrender the four suspects for investigation.

Last month, both Lebanese President Michel Suleiman and Prime Minister Mikati attended the opening session of the UN General Assembly in New York. In a meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama, Suleiman promised that Lebanon would pay its share to the court. A similar pledge was made by Mikati in a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

In a meeting with UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, Mikati went one step further: He promised that Lebanon will increase its contribution in order to adjust it to the new rate of exchange of the euro.

Soon, however, it became clear that both Suleiman and Mikati gave empty promises. Both were blocked by Hezbollah and its main coalition partner, Christian Gen. Michel Aoun. Hezbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nassrallah and Aoun even mocked Mikati.

They told him: You are a multibillionaire. So pay the share to the international court from your own pocket, but not as Lebanon's contribution.

In normal times, the U.S. would probably not have welcomed Gen. Kahwagi in Washington at this time. But these are not normal times. The Middle East is in the process of deep transformation and a new regional order is in the making. Iran is aspiring to become the only superpower in the oil-rich Persian Gulf, preferably with no western presence in the region. In the subtle, but constant Iranian-Turkish competition over Syria, Iran has for now the upper hand.

That's where Lebanon comes into the picture. The U.S. is determined to deny Iran a foothold in the Mediterranean through its Hezbollah proxy. The U.S. is convinced that both Israel and Turkey share this view. By welcoming Kahwagi, the U.S. is signalling to its allies in Lebanon that they are now stronger than they were earlier this year, before the Syrian uprising.

The U.S. wants Saad Hariri and his allies to comfort the Syrian refugees and to shield them against Syria.

Israeli scholars and strategists do not rule out the possibility that the "struggle for Lebanon" was among the subjects that were discussed by U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta during his surprising short visit to Israel and Egypt last week.

The U.S. wants both Israel and Turkey to give its Lebanese allies moral support, in an effort to block the Iranian-Syrian push in Lebanon. This is a situation similar to the situation in the autumn of 1958, when a joint Turkish-Israeli effort -- with discreet Saudi assistance -- helped the disintegration of the Egyptian-Syrian Union.

The dual telephone condolences messages of Israeli President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on the occasion of the death of his mother, fits very well into this puzzle.

Samuel Segev is the Winnipeg Free

Press Middle East correspondent.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 12, 2011 A11