Arguments as to the breaking away of Syria from Iran are generally rife with logical land-mines, fantastic delusions, and faulty readings of historical events, trends and agreements between the two ruling regimes in those countries over the past thirty years.
In Lebanon, however, a narrow fissure of divergence between the interests of the two autocratic states has been exposed through the
violent clashes between the Iranian-backed Hizballah and Syrian-backed Ahbash groups that occurred on August 24th in the Burj Abi Haidar neighborhood of the Lebanese capital, Beirut. Over the past several months Michael Young has done an excellent job of chronicling this
divergence, as well as the myriad of Lebanese politicians that have had to perform a series of political acrobatics to accommodate the contesting factions. A
recent subject of Young's discerning analysis was Walid Jumblatt (who today visited the Syrian ambassador to Lebanon, a day after having visited the Iranian ambassador - walk that tight rope Walid Beik).
Interesting/Entertaining/Illuminating/(Humiliating?) as Walid Beik's acrobatics have been, there is another politician whose attempts at balancing amid the turbulent waves of this intra-axis-of-terror (pardon the term) friction have most recently provided a source of illumination on the darker undercurrents of events shaking the country.
As the holder of the Shiite community's highest position within the Lebanese state, Nabih Berri is, for better or worse (mostly worse), the irrefutable representative and primary agent of that community's post-Taef participation in the Lebanese state. As a leading ally supplicant of the Syrian regime in the country, the Speaker of Parliament was instrumental in implementing that regime's attempted derailing of the establishment. Framed thus, the Speaker's recent rejection of the characterization of Lebanese Shiites as 'rebels' can only be aimed at Hizballah, an entity which continues to attempt to define itself as the definitive representative of that community while in itself operating completely outside the purview of the state.
Consider also the fact that even as the bullets and RPGs continued to fly through the streets of the Burj Abi Haidar neighborhood (and Basta, and Nabaa, etc...) Berri was quick to distance himself from Hizballah. The clashes came after the announcement of Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's upcoming visit to Lebanon. That visit will come in the wake of the joint Saudi-Syrian summit that took place in the country only one month ago, and in which Hizballah neither hosted nor was received by either of the two visiting foreign dignitaries - instead, the group had to contend with being relayed second-hand information by Berri. Contrast this with the image of Hassan Nasrallah walking in stride with Bashar al Assad and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Damascus. As
Tony Badran accurately predicted, Hizballah's primary answer to the Saudi-Syrian summit, which was ostensibly aimed at tempering the increasingly threatening war-drums sounded by Hizballah over the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, was found in violence in the South - the message was loud an clear: we still control events on the ground. Perhaps, this time ahead of a visit and not after, the Burj Abi Haidar clash was Syria's response.
In the broad picture of things, Syria is and will, of course, remain a staunch ally of the Iranian mullah-regime. At the same time, it will, of course, seek a military return to Lebanon, one in which it, and not Iran (through Hizballah) will be the primary agent of influence. Towards that end, the regime in Syria will continue to seek out and exploit triggers to chaos, instability or war in Lebanon. That the primary trigger for now is an increasingly well-armed militia made further neurotic by a delayed tribunal and with a nuclear time-bomb ticking overhead should be no surprise. The
message is all too clear, in Lebanon it is
us or the deluge.
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