An intricate political labyrinth unfolds...
Israel seeks to destroy hezbollah’s political position, and expose it as iran’s paid agent

(column by Edward N. Luttwak, Military Strategist & Consultant, Hebrew University, Jerusalem)

Iran’s quarrelling and competing leaders have decided, by their acts, to reject the offer by Europe and the United States of a nuclear reactor, aircraft spare parts, economic cooperation and more in exchange for giving up uranium enrichment. Many people hoped that Iran’s leaders, despite their extremism, would accept the offer if only to avoid sanctions, which are sure to come even if China and Russia refuse to support them in the United Nations Security Council. The US and Europe are united this time, and can effectively cut off Iran from world banking, bar Iranian leaders from traveling to the West, and stop exports to Iran of everything but food and medicine. Instead of waiting passively for sanctions, Iran’s leaders decided to start a middle-east crisis by organizing attacks against Israel.

Their aim is to discourage the US and the Europeans from starting another crisis – financial markets and everyday politics in Europe can tolerate only so much conflict. They may also hope to shatter the unified European Union and United States position that exists as of now. Moreover, Iran’s claim to leadership in the Muslim world is being undermined by the conflict in Iraq, where Iran supports the Shia militias that are killing Sunnis. Every bloody day of bombings and executions in Iraq reminds Arabs that the Iranians are neither Arab nor Sunni. But attacking Israel unites Muslims, and gains Arab gratitude. Iran’s move was prepared in a series of meetings with both Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Khaled Mashal, Hamas’s overall leader, who lives under Syrian protection in Damascus, traveled to Tehran, where he received some $50 million in badly needed cash. Although an off shoot of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, whose Arab financial supporters loathe the Ayatollahs, Hamas decided to cooperate in Iran’s scheme because it was diplomatically isolated and cut off from Western funding due to its refusal to recognise Israel. Hamas acted by increasing rocket attacks on nearby Israeli territory, and by launching a raid into Israel itself, killing two soldiers and capturing another. That provoked Israeli retaliation, starting the Gaza end of the crisis that Iran wanted. As for the impact on lives in Gaza, Hamas – like Yasir Arafat – has again shown itself to be more devoted to the idea of Palestine than to the welfare of the Palestinians.

It was far more costly to get Hezbollah to serve Iran’s strategy. While it retains a heavily armed, salaried, and uniformed guerrilla/terrorist force of some 5,000, its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has been striving for years to build Hezbollah into a legitimate political party and the main representative of Lebanon’s Shia. This effort was so successful that Hezbollah now has two ministers in the government. But to be accepted by other Lebanese, and to some extent even to retain the support of fellow Shia, Hezbollah had to agree to join the Lebanese consensus on the priority of reconstruction and economic recovery after years of civil war. That effectively meant avoiding a war with Israel. Hezbollah is under order by the UN Security Council to disarm and disband its militia, but it claimed that even after Israel’s full withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, it needed its weapons to continue to liberate the Lebanese territory.

That refers to a tiny fragment of land, the so-called Sheba farms, declared by UN inspectors to be in Israel, but which Hezbollah claims as part of Lebanon. Other Lebanese political parties agreed that Hezbollah could keep its weapons to fight there but only on condition that it keep the peace on the rest of the border. That is the condition Nasrallah violated by ordering an attack on an Israeli patrol nowhere near the Sheba farms and launching rockets into Israeli territory. With that, Hezbollah threw away its political position in Lebanon. For the Israeli coalition government headed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, matters are relatively simple.

It ordered the withdrawal from Gaza in order to stop the cycle of violence there, on the presumption that Israeli territory proper would not be attacked. But the possibility of attack was of course anticipated, and military planners determined that the only possible response was to counterattack as heavily and for as long as might be needed, until the Palestinian attacks would stop, whether they would stop from exhaustion or from agreement. Hamas’s control of the Palestinian Authority does not diminish or increase the need for Israeli military action, but it does increase its political benefits, because the fighting and destruction serves to communicate to the population of Gaza that their rulers are endangering their physical survival.

As for Hezbollah, the Israeli military response is by no means confined to retaliation. Over the years, Hezbollah has received and stored several thousand rockets and some one hundred longer range missiles from Iran. Recently, and very revealingly, two Iranian leaders threatened Israel with bombardment by Hezbollah’s rockets if Israel attacked Iran’s nuclear installations. Thus, Israel is using the opportunity brought about by the current fighting to search out and destroy Hezbollah’s underground and other hidden sites where it maintains its rockets and missiles. Israel’s actual political aim is to destroy Hezbollah’s position as a legitimate Lebanese political party by exposing it as the paid agent of Iran, which serves foreign interests at a grievous cost to Lebanon.

So Israel is blocking Lebanon’s ports from the sea, has breached the runways of all three jet-capable airfields, including Beirut’s international airport, and remains prepared to destroy generating plants and other high-value targets as well, if it be necessary, so as to generate sufficient political pressure from the Lebanese on the Hezbollah. If Lebanon’s political forces and Nasrallah’s followers cannot get him to revert to a truce, Israel can be expected to bombard more targets, including Nasrallah’s offices in south Beirut. If more missiles are launched, Israeli forces will surely cross the border and enter deep into Lebanese territory. Of course, in both Gaza and southern Lebanon, the outcome is pre-determined by the one-sided military balance. The only open question in both places is how much damage Israel will need to inflict to obtain new ceasefires.

(End of Edward N. Luttwak column)

Tony, heard about clint eastwood?
Blair accepts accusations of seat buying, displaying the worst times that the Labour Party has ever seen

(column by Niharika Patra)

‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’. Fortunately or unfortunately, the labour party in the UK has sported all the three characters in an absolutely downgrading manner within just over a year’s time. Those were the “good” old days not so long ago when the Labour party won the general elections (in 2005) for the third consecutive time. Then came the quintessential “bad” times, when the Labour party got whipped and thrashed, not only during the Parliamentary by-elections for two candidatures that took place in April 2006, but also during the local elections for a massive 2450 councillors that were held in May 2006. And now, as if with a stubborn need to prove the ridiculous trilogy correct, the Labour party and its members have taken it upon themselves to ensure that “ugly” becomes a second name for defining their character.

In early July 2006, Tony Blair and his peers were accused of gross political misconduct of buying seats in the House of Lords using exchequer money. Pitiably, and with pathetic emotion towards the now sullied and ugly image of the Labour party, on July 17, Tony Blair accepted his involvement in the issue. Rightly taking away undue credit, perhaps it wasn’t value based politicking that led to Blair’s nonchalant acceptance, but rather the shocking and unexpected arrest of Blair’s peer Lord Levy on July 12 that finally forced Blair to confess. Most regretfully, the pristine Labour image, assiduously and painstakingly “craft ed” during the last ten years, lies in a shambles, and there’s nobody else to blame but the party members themselves.

Recapitulating, it all began when the party suffered shattering losses in the May county elections. The party came third by somehow garnering 26% votes, against the Tories, who obtained a solid 40%. The Labour party’s wretched display was perhaps much more in evidence when it lost a massive 300 councillor positions that it had held in the past. This was the most embarrassing moment for the party, not only because they lost such a large number of seats, but also because the party’s public support in their ‘heartland positions’ (counties where Labour had never lost) was more or less erased. Hilariously, the loss of two Parliamentary by-elections in May – one in South Wales, and the other in suburban London – was comparatively an affair to rejoice!

Indisputably, these elections are but a snapshot of national opinion – in a poll conducted by The Daily Telegraph, the Labour party has been found trailing behind his youthful Conservative rival, David Cameron, for the first time in five years. Cameron bagged 44% in the poll, against 38% for a Labour administration led by Blair’s likely successor, Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) Gordon Brown. Blair has already announced his political retirement at the end of this tenure. But most unfortunately, the malaise has now spread beyond the personality of Blair, and even his announced retirement cannot repair the damage. The fault really lies with Blair, who deliberately ignored correcting various unbelievable blemishes – the seat buying incident being the latest. Dear Tony, the least you could have done was perchance do what Clint Eastwood would have finished with panache... Shoot the bad, and hit the ugly unconscious!... And you didn’t!

(End of Niharika Patra column)