Lebanon army joins the Hezballah coup

Bret Stephens:

On Friday, Hezbollah gunmen set fire to the Beirut offices of Future TV, a Lebanese broadcaster. On a purely symbolic level, it was an apt demonstration of where the Party of God stands in relation to the future itself.

But that wasn't the worst of what has happened in the past week in Lebanon, where scores of people have been killed in interfactional violence. More ominous was the role of the Lebanese army, avowedly neutral and nominally under civilian control. "An army officer accompanied by members of Hezbollah walked into the station and told us to switch off transmission," an unnamed Future TV official told Reuters. So much for army neutrality.

The army also countermanded government orders to dismantle Hezbollah's telecommunications network at the Beirut airport and remove the brigadier responsible for airport security, who is said to be a Hezbollah pawn. "I have called on the army to live up to its national responsibilities . . . and this has not happened," Fouad Siniora, Lebanon's increasingly irrelevant prime minister, said on national TV.

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But even if Lebanon cannot escape its Shiite destiny, it is not ordained that it must also become a Hezbollah state, taking its orders from Tehran. So what are the U.S.'s policy options?

Inside Lebanon, they are few. No American president will send American troops back to Beirut and risk a reprise of 1983. Supplying the Lebanese army is a nonstarter; it is no longer clear whose side that army is on. Should the U.S. arm the anti-Hezbollah factions in the event of an all-out civil war? Some of them, like Samir Geagea's Lebanese Forces, have well-earned reputations as war criminals.

A more productive thought comes from Dwight Eisenhower, who observed that "if a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it." The reason the U.S. lacks for options in Lebanon is because it has no policy toward Syria.

In 2003, Congress passed the Syria Accountability Act, but the administration has observed only its weakest provisions. They could be enforced in full. A Syria Liberation Act, similar to the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, would be a step forward. So would international sanctions for Syria's violations of the Nonproliferation Treaty, exposed by Israel in its raid last year on an unfinished nuclear reactor. Bombing the runway of the Damascus airport for the role it plays in serving as a conduit for Iranian arms to Hezbollah would also be an appropriate signal of American displeasure.

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Syria is just another client state of Iran, if not yet another proxy. Iran is the problem. The Iraqi army has shown the way in dealing with Iranian proxy warriors. If only the Lebanese army did half as well, their country would be better off. While the Hezballah moves may have had some local reasons, I am sure they got their marching order from Tehran, which desperately wanted a distraction from the defeat their forces have had in Iraq in both Basra and Sadr City.

Recall the Iranian strategy in Iraq. When Maliki took his forces to Basra, the first thing Iran ordered was strikes on the Green Zone by its forces in Sadr City. With their loss in Basra and the building of a barrier to prevent future attacks on the Green Zone, they at first furiously attacked the construction of the barrier. When they were losing that battle they decided to enlarge the problem by creating a distraction in Lebanon where they had a better chance of success. Their action in Lebanon also drowned out the news of their capitulation in Sadr City.

Claudia Rosett gives background on Iran's colonization of Lebanon through its proxy force, Hezballah.