Mixed reactions over Ahmadinejad's visit

Bint Jbeil: From dozens of giant billboards mounted on overpasses and hundreds of smaller placards along highways near the Israeli border, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's image peers out, half-smiling and one hand held in an informal salute.

"Welcome," the signs say in Arabic and Persian. Today, the Iranian leader will make his first state visit to Lebanon — including strongholds of Hezbollah in the southern suburbs of Beirut and the mountainous south.

Iran's close ties to Hezbollah and Ahmadinejad's frequent calls for Israel's destruction have set the stage for geopolitical theatre with a bite.

Hezbollah officials say Ahmadinejad plans to deliver a speech in this town, which was at the centre of the month-long 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.

"Ahmadinejad must come to Bint Jbeil," said Ali Sagheer, a bookstore owner and Hezbollah supporter in the city, which was reduced to rubble and has been largely rebuilt with Iranian and Qatari cash.

"It's not a regular city any more. It's a symbolic place to the people here — the Stalingrad of the Middle East."

On a nearby hilltop with a clear view of the lush green farms of northern Israel, stands an Iranian-built and themed park complete with a golden-domed replica of the disputed Al Aqsa mosque in occupied Jerusalem, topped with an Iranian flag and surrounded by yet more portraits of Ahmadinejad.

In addition to the continuing tension with Israel, disputes between Sunnis and Shiites in Lebanon and fears of military action over Iran's nuclear programme add to worries that the visit could further unsettle the region.

Tiny Lebanon often finds itself a battleground of regional disputes. Power is shared locally among shifting alliances of Shiite, Sunni, Christian and Druze political camps grouped roughly into a pro-Western and Saudi-backed faction led by Prime Minister Sa'ad Hariri, and an Iranian and Syrian-allied camp led by Hezbollah.

More than 400,000 Palestinians, many of them packed into squalid camps, also live in Lebanon.

On Monday a previously unknown militant Sunni group calling itself the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, named after a veteran of the Afghan jihad against the Russians, warned that it would kill Ahmadinejad, a Shiite, should he step foot in Lebanon.

Conspiracy

"We will do the impossible to thwart this conspiracy," said a message posted to Arabic militant websites, according to local media. Most Lebanese officials have tried to play down Ahmadinejad's visit. Both Hariri and President Michel Sulaiman plan to meet him, as they would any other visiting head of state. The Emir of Qatar was also feted last summer when he visited the south.

Some observers see the visit by Ahmadinejad as a victory lap and a slap to the face of Israel, the US, its Arab allies in the region and Lebanon. Hariri's supporters privately complain that Iran is trying to turn their country into an Iranian base on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea.

"We have no objections to the official visit," said pro-Hariri lawmaker Fares Soueid, according to Lebanon's official news agency.

"As for the popular visit and the tour of the south, the Lebanese government should be aware of the inherent dangers, specifically in the current circumstances." But Hezbollah officials counter that support for "resistance" to Israel is enshrined in the government mission statement that Hariri and his allies signed on to late last year. They insist that any support by Ahmadinejad or Iran for Hezbollah, which is committed to Israel's ultimate destruction, was legitimate.