A shift in course after change of command

His own difficult campaign notwithstanding, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently said that a victory of opposition parties in the Lebanese parliamentary elections would “change the status of the region … [and] strengthen the resistance'' as it struggles against Israel.

According to Ahmadinejad, both Hezbollah and Iran were determined to prevail, a sentiment that was echoed by newly reelected Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani.

Unlike the bombastic Ahmadinejad, Larijani cogently articulated why Iran stood by Hezbollah, insisting that the Party of God was “not a terrorist organisation'' but an institution that defended the dignity of the resistance.

Even if Lebanon was not Iran, critics of the latter's regional hegemony believed Tehran was bent on exporting its revolution and encouraging its allies to embark on perpetual conflict.

A Hezbollah parliamentary victory would surely mean dramatic transformation as far as the front with Israel was concerned, although the astute Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah knew that his primary focus must be the home front.

The dilemma of victory

Logically the secretary-general would need to reassure non-opposition voters who cast their votes for March 14 Coalition members that his “victory'' would not translate into perilous conditions, either resembling the dark May 7, 2008, bloodbath or a political coup that would replace President Michel Sulaiman.

In other words, a Hezbollah electoral victory followed by a rapid political confrontation would threaten internal stability if it degenerated into armed clashes. While the majority of Lebanese support Hezbollah's stand against Israel, few would tolerate their country's renewed militarisation.

Consequently, Nasrallah was hostage to a putative victory, as he would not simply activate his “confrontation state'' to please Iran or any other country.

And even if Hezbollah neutralised the politically ambitious Aoun by defending President Sulaiman's legitimacy, the victorious majority would have to persuade the latter to nominate a prime minister who will represent the entire Sunni community.

It would be asinine to insist on either Salim Al Hoss or Omar Karami, two men well advanced in years and who squarely fall outside the Sunni mainstream.

Naturally, there are several other Sunni opposition leaders who could head a government but none with the stature of a Sa'ad Hariri or a Najeeb Mikati.

In fact, Hezbollah's most urgent task in Lebanon would be to invent a new formula to govern without further alienating Sunnis, many of whom remain suspicious of the party's sense of responsibility towards the Constitution as amended by the 1989 Ta'if Accords.

The international tribunal

Hezbollah will also have to come to terms with Lebanon's role vis-à-vis the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) that is investigating the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri.

Remarkably, its reaction to an unofficial news story in the German magazine Der Spiegel, which alleged that party operatives assassinated Hariri, illustrated how problematic future ties would be.

While many Lebanese were wary of what such an accusation entailed — to avoid sectarian and confessional altercations — Hezbollah politicised the question, considering the publication as a Mossad operation, the goal of which was to stir up trouble for the community.

While there may be an element of truth in such manipulation, as Israel sought to assassinate Nasrallah and several party leaders, a Hezbollah-dominated government in Beirut cannot overlook such a report's political repercussions.

By reacting to the Der Spiegel story in such vociferous terms, Hezbollah engaged Israel in a battle neither of its making nor one it was able to win, given pro-Israeli sympathies in key Western countries.

A Hezbollah government must, therefore, avoid such traps and allow the tribunal to reach whatever conclusions it can present in a court of law. Only by doing so can it govern effectively at home, for few Sunnis and Druzes, and practically no Christian, will tolerate attacks on the STL.

In fact, many asserted that if both Hezbollah and/or Syria were blameless, both should allow the STL to gather facts and bring suspects to justice in the criminal case. After all, someone murdered Hariri and the assassin(s) is/are still at large.

It may be useful to recall that Nasrallah questioned the integrity of the tribunal after the release of four suspected Lebanese generals close to Syria and, critically, will have to make a political decision if it is entrusted with governance.

Under those circumstances, will the Party of God alter Lebanon's commitments to the tribunal and, more important, accept the new opposition's (March 14 Coalition) accusations that such decisions would represent nothing more than treason?

Furthermore, will it accept that Lebanon be humiliated in front of the entire international community, as such a re-interpretation was bound to generate?

Sunni-Shiite concerns

As if these concerns were not sufficient, by far the most serious challenge for March 8 would be to prevent a Sunni-Shiite rift in Lebanon, which would also have repercussions throughout the Muslim world. In the past, Nasrallah has accused the United States and Israel of trying to create strife between Sunnis and Shiites and between Arabs and Iranians.

If Egyptian Sunnis stood by Hezbollah after the 2006 war, for example, now there is little appeal.

While Nasrallah's popularity may once again rocket if Hezbollah fighters slug it out with Israel, such a confrontation is sure to lay Lebanon in ruins.

Inasmuch as there is no doubt that Hezbollah would like “to make inroads into the wider Sunni Arab world'', it faces serious challenges, including in Iraq, where it stands accused of training Shiite militiamen in conflict with the central government.

Still, while Iraq may be a very special case, the Party of God will find that a vast majority of Arabs are cold towards its overtures.

Nowhere is there a desire to embrace militancy and engage in Sunni-Shiite clashes, for fear that sectarianism will burn both sides.

Moreover, most Arab states are watching the new American administration's evolving policies towards Iran, confident that President Barack Obama will not forsake established ties to open an exclusive dialogue with Iran.

Though some Arab allies worry that such an outreach will leave them in the lurch, few understand the depth of the gulf that separates Washington and Tehran, and even fewer appreciate America's economic commitments to, and reliance on, a billion Sunnis.

Nevertheless the prospect of Hezbollah in power, even through a manicured coalition, has preoccupied key Western countries.

It was within such a context that timid British contacts were worth assessing, although London belatedly recanted its commitments, which seem wobbly at best.

Relations with foreign regimes

For such reasons, and while all governments will deal with whichever government comes to power in Beirut, many states are likely to distance themselves from a Hezbollah-run Lebanon. As stated above, Cairo accused the Lebanese group of organising a terrorist cell inside Egypt, ostensibly to carry out attacks against military and civilian targets.

Likewise, President Ali Abdullah Saleh has also accused Hezbollah operatives of training Shiite rebels in Yemen while Saudi Arabia repeatedly warned that the Party of God was spreading Iranian influence throughout the region.

Even Morocco reacted furiously earlier this year, unexpectedly cutting diplomatic relations with Iran, accusing it of spreading Shiite influence in that mainly Sunni nation.

Not surprisingly, Hezbollah rejected such accusations and insisted that it was a nationalist Lebanese organisation with no intention to interfere in any country's domestic affairs.

Nasrallah denied that the party meddled in Yemen and insisted that operatives who were arrested in Egypt were not setting up cells against any targets within the country.

Rather, Nasrallah explained, and his second-in-command Sayyed Naim Qasim confirmed, that the men were actively involved in organising weapons smuggling to neighbouring Gaza to assist the Palestinian uprising.

The revelation nevertheless startled Egypt, as its officials seemed unaware of Hezbollah's reach inside their country.

“We are not shy about providing the Palestinian people with the support they need,'' Hassan Izzedine, a party official, said. “But we don't intervene even if we are asked, when it is a problem between a regime and its people, or a regime and the opposition.''

Nevertheless, the confession suggested that Hezbollah banked on core support within the Arab world, as it stood by the hapless Palestinians.

An angry President Hosni Mubarak warned both Iran and Hezbollah not to interfere in his country's “security and stability'', which only drew Nasrallah's ire. Egypt, said the verbose cleric, was a “fading power''. That was fuel added to the fire.

As the prominent pan-Arab journalist, Jihad Al Khazen, wrote in Al Hayat: “I warned [Hassan Nasrallah] not to make a mistake with Egypt.'' Al Khazen worried that “we might end up seeing His Eminence brought to trial in Egypt with an Interpol subpoena for his arrest'', which was impossible to imagine if Hezbollah took over the Lebanese government.

The affable commentator concluded by declaring: “I see that the Sayyed's popularity in Egypt has dramatically dropped in comparison with summer 2006 and I beg him to reconsider his stances and to distinguish between the Egyptian state and government.''

Hezbollah and state authority

Irrespective of regional pressures, a Hezbollah-dominated majority will be pressured by several of its stars to govern with a particular cachet, namely to force President Michel Sulaiman to resign, or engage in a war against state institutions that will require the party to secure its arms.

In fact, throughout the past year, opposition tenors launched fierce campaigns against the president, accusing him of betraying his consensus role that was agreed upon in Doha.

Aoun, Nabeeh Berri and Nasrallah strongly objected to Sulaiman's assertiveness, as Baabda mounted a systematic global rapprochement with Arab and Western powers.

Despite the president's November 2008 visit to Tehran, opposition forces perceived Sulaiman as a pro-West leader who was not as flexible as they wished him to be.

Although all acknowledged his constitutional powers, opposition leaders dismissed Sulaiman as a partisan, which was odd, given the man's service to the flag and country.

In the event, what irked most were the president's decisions to uphold the law and state institutions, which prevented March 8 from manipulating him. Given these facts, an escalating rhetoric against the president did not bode well for what may be in the offing after June 7.

Though Aoun's attacks against the president may be explained politically, Hezbollah insists that May 7 was a “glorious day'' in the history of the Islamic Resistance, what occurred on that day — when Party of God and Amal thugs ransacked and killed with impunity — was a monumental error.

In the year since, Sulaiman has systematically exercised his constitutional authority, insisting that ministers must vote on administrative appointments.

His record on that score was mixed, as all 11 March 8 ministers refused him on several occasions by exercising a blocking-third privilege granted to them at Doha, although persistence paid off.

Against tremendous pressures, the Constitutional Council appointments were finally approved, whereas the state budget was postponed for yet another session.

It was when the president refused to link the two items against March 8 demands that the anti-Sulaiman campaign started in earnest.

Therefore, for Hezbollah to govern under President Sulaiman, assuming that Aoun does not prevail, would require the adoption of former president Emile Lahoud's playbook — namely, to support Hezbollah in everything.

That was not likely to occur, which may well force Hezbollah to initiate a parliamentary manoeuvre long before the next plebiscite scheduled for 2013, when Sulaiman would still be president.

This is the gist of a Hezbollah dilemma: Will it accept the president to be president?

Inasmuch as existing state institutions, such as the military and the Constitutional Council, exercise their independence, clear confrontation between the latter and Hezbollah cannot be ruled out, though the gravest danger is within the army, the most critical institution that plays a unifying role in Lebanon.

Key ties with the US

March 8 attacks on President Michel Sulaiman strengthen his international prestige, especially with the US, which recently dispatched its Vice-President Joseph Biden to Beirut.

Biden's stop was eminently political even if he insisted that that Washington did not back any Lebanese party or person.
Rather, the US supported the country's independence and sovereignty, even as he urged “those who think about standing with the spoilers of peace not to miss this opportunity to walk away from the spoilers''.

Everyone understood those remarks to have been aimed at Hezbollah and its allies, as the American further linked future cooperation with anticipated electoral results.

He underlined that the Obama administration “will evaluate the shape of our assistance programmes based on the composition of the new government and the policies it advocates'', which was a specific linkage between the $1-billion assistance package offered since 2006, most of which was allocated to the army and security forces.

Hezbollah dubbed the Biden visit “a clear and detailed interference in Lebanese affairs'' that raised “strong doubts about its real motivations'', but faced a conundrum as it favoured continued American assistance to the Lebanese army.

How a victorious Nasrallah would secure the flow of this aid — which would strengthen the army and hence ensure security and stability — is still unclear. Winning elections is indeed possible but governing a mosaic such as Lebanon is an entirely different proposition.

Dr Joseph A. Kechichian is an author, most recently of Power and Succession in Arab Monarchies, Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2008.