[A-List] Amal Saad-Ghorayeb: Questioning the Shia Crescent

["Yoshie Furuhashi" <critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx>]

<http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/841/op122.htm>
19 - 25 April 2007
Issue No. 841
Questioning the Shia crescent

In the first of two pieces examining Iran's rising regional role, Amal
Saad-Ghorayeb* argues that rather than building a sectarian alliance,
Iran in Iraq aims to confront US-led imperialism

The notion of an Iraq-inspired model of Shia empowerment, which an
emboldened Iran has exploited for the purpose of creating a "Shia
Crescent", grouping itself with Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, has gained
much currency in academic, media and political circles in the West and
the Arab world. Yet the theory is seriously flawed, underpinned by
faulty premises, not the least of which is the assumption that the
Shia experience in Iraq has raised the political consciousness of
Shias elsewhere on account of sectarian identity. Such a view
oversimplifies Shia identity politics by overlooking competing
interpretations of what it means to be Shia, and ignoring alternative
notions of Shia empowerment.

The accommodation of a significant segment of Shia political forces in
Iraq to the US occupation has been due in part -- or at least
legitimised by -- the politically quietist trend of Shia jurisprudence
typified by Ayatollah Abul-Qassim Khoei and his successor Ayatollah
Ali Al-Sistani who placed primacy on religious and scholarly matters
over political ones. Opposing this persuasion is the more widely
observed politically activist school of thought developed in the late
1960s and early 1970s by clerics such as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini,
Sayed Mohamed Baqir Al-Sadr, Imam Moussa Al-Sadr and Sayed Mohamed
Hussein Fadallah. As redefined by these jurists, Shiism is not merely
an ascribed cultural identity but a political one shaped by a
historical sense of injustice and rejection of oppression and
humiliation, as epitomised by Imam Hussein whose martyrdom served as a
revolutionary paradigm for Shia believers. In this understanding, the
concept of power is synonymous with resistance to oppression and
subordination, and the restitution of justice, freedom, dignity and
honour.

The "Husseini" political culture has been translated into a staunchly
anti-Israel, anti-imperialist, pro-resistance Shia political identity,
which finds its embodiment today in Hizbullah and Iran -- the true
models of political empowerment for Shias -- rather than the Shia
dominated Iraqi government. Both share a conceptualisation of
political power distinct from the Iraqi Shia conception. Thus,
contrary to popular wisdom, the protest campaign launched by Hizbullah
and its local allies does not aim at securing a greater share of
political power for the Shia community. The party's fundamental
objectives relate to protecting what it refers to as its "resistance
priority" in safeguarding Lebanon's sovereignty from US and Western
diktat.

In fact, neither after Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon in
2000, nor after its defeat in the July war of 2006, did Hizbullah seek
to make any meaningful political capital out of its military
successes. Hizbullah's Shia supporters give precedence to its
resistance over any political gains the party, or the community as a
whole, could potentially make in a more representative political
system.

According to the findings of a poll conducted in March by the reputed
Beirut Centre for Research and Information (BCRI), 98 per cent of Shia
respondents claimed they would refuse to disarm the resistance in
exchange for more political power for the Shia community should such a
trade-off ever be proposed. As perceived by Lebanon's Shias and
Hizbullah itself, the continued Israeli occupation of Lebanese land
and the perceived threat which Israel poses to Lebanon, coupled with
flagrant US and French intervention in Lebanese affairs, has seriously
compromised Lebanon's sovereignty and independence. A larger stake in
the political system, commensurate with the community's size, would
actually amount to disempowerment if it was won by acquiescing to the
US- Israeli demand for Hizbullah's disarmament and submitting to US
and French tutelage over Lebanon.

A similar logic governs Lebanese Shias' attitudes towards the Shia
dominated Iraqi government: 75 per cent of Shia respondents in the
BCRI poll claimed they did not view the Shia- dominated government as
a legitimate national entity, while 60 per cent could not find a
justification for the alliance of Iraqi Shia officials with the US.
For Hizbullah and the Lebanese Shia community, as well as others who
share this political identity, political power is not to be confused
with public office in a context of military occupation and/or
political domination. Real empowerment lies in resistance. It is
precisely this tendency to conflate being in power with empowerment
that has given rise to the misconception of an Iraqi Shia model of
communal empowerment. Viewed from the Shia activist lens, the
domination of Iraqi Shias in the Iraqi political system today has
merely substituted oppression under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship for
subservience to the US-led occupation. The notion of a Shia-dominated
state installed by occupation forces --none less than those of the
"Great Satan" -- does not constitute empowerment, and would in fact be
deemed oxymoronic if the state in question were a US-supported Shia
theocracy.

While Hizbullah's stand towards the Iraqi government has been shrouded
in ambiguity, one can detect a considerable degree of political
distance from Iraq's Shia dominated authority, which in several
instances earned Hizbullah the reproach of Iraqi Shias.

As such, Hizbullah has adopted a policy of constructive ambiguity, by
confining its vitriol to US occupation forces and supporting the Iraqi
resistance, while expressing only veiled criticisms of the government
so as to avoid alienating Iraqi Shias or creating an internal Shia
rift. Casting aside the as yet unsubstantiated reports of Hizbullah's
alleged involvement in resistance activities in Iraq, the party has
consistently and strongly denounced the US-led occupation which
brought the government to power and with which it is allied. In a May
2004 speech, the Hizbullah secretary-general, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah,
imputed the occupation of Iraq with the same degree of illegitimacy
and iniquity as Israel's occupation of Palestinian land: "this
occupation [of Iraq] is a replica of the same quality and identity [as
the Israeli occupation] in its hegemony, monstrosity, devastation,
perpetration and committing massacres under the same slogans of
civilisation, democracy and human rights." It necessarily follows that
armed resistance to this occupation becomes as religious and moral a
duty as is the resistance to Israeli occupation. This is signified by
Nasrallah's reference to the armed struggle against the occupation of
Iraq as a "jihad" and as Iraq's "salvation", in a January speech.

Though Hizbullah has not admitted as much, the fact that the
government -- with the exception of Muqtada Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army --
has not only failed to partake in the resistance to occupation, but
has capitulated to it, has most likely served to call its legitimacy
into question and set it apart from the Shia political identity which
characterises Hizbullah and its supporters. Nasrallah's call, on the
eve of the US-led invasion in March 2003, for reconciliation between
the Iraqi Shia opposition and the Saddam regime, along the lines of
the Lebanese Taif Accord, was a clear attempt to dissuade the Shias
from collaborating with the would-be occupiers and from making any
political gains out of the impending occupation. The implication of
Hizbullah's preference for a compromise with the former oppressor of
Shias, Saddam, over cooperation with the occupation forces, is that
the latter is more oppressive than the former and hence any political
authority associated with it, is devoid of legitimacy.

That Nasrallah only professes solidarity with the Iraqi "people" and
"resistance", at the exclusion of the Iraqi state or government, lends
further credence to this inference, as does his assertion in January
of this year: "they [the Iraqis] find their rectitude in the political
process. Should they ask me and according to my Lebanese experience...
I would say the Americans did not come to establish democratic
institutions in Iraq nor even a centralised democratic Iraq. The
Americans came to divide Iraq and the entire region." Despite its
circuitousness, the statement signifies Hizbullah's reluctance to
endorse the political process which swept Shia political forces, close
to the party's main ally, Iran, to power. Moreover, while members of
the United Iraqi Alliance, with the exception of Al-Sadr's movement,
have lobbied hard for a federal state, Hizbullah has repeatedly voiced
its rejection of an alleged American plot to partition Iraq, as the
above statement demonstrates. If Hizbullah truly did harbour ambitions
to join a Shia crescent, then it would have surely warmed to the idea
of an oil-rich Shia region, contiguous to Iran. In effect, Hizbullah
does not identify with Iraqi Shia authorities, let alone aspire to
join forces with them as part of a Shia strategic alliance.

Although Iran shares Hizbullah's interpretation of empowerment, in so
far as its foreign policy is characterised by political resistance to
"imperialist" powers and Zionism, its approach to Iraq is more nuanced
than Hizbullah's and fulfils wider strategic aims. As a state actor,
and a regional powerhouse, Iran has a definition of political power
that is identical with "soft power" -- the power to affect behaviour
by means of ideological or cultural influence. The endeavour to exert
soft power is essentially a political, not a cultural, exercise in
ideological infiltration; exporting political Shiism -- that is,
Shiism as a political identity -- rather than cultural
proselytisation. In turn, this type of influence ultimately serves
both Iran's ideological and strategic regional interests. Iran,
therefore, is projecting its power in Iraq as a state pursuing
national and ideological interests rather than as a Shia power bent on
creating a cultural or sectarian axis. While there can be no denying
that Iran has forged close cultural ties with various Shia groups and
individuals who make up the Iraqi government and religious
establishment, this political and cultural proximity is not an end in
itself. The ideological and strategic alliance between Iran and Sunni
Hamas, as well as secular and predominantly Sunni Syria, illustrates
the non-sectarian objectives that inform Iran's foreign policy.

Having said that, one cannot ignore the extent to which Iran's support
for the Iraqi government has become a liability for it in the short
term, in that its perceived Shia bias and alleged tacit collusion with
the US has undermined Iran's influence among Sunnis. However, Iran's
Iraq policy is in fact two-pronged in that backs the Iraqi government
on the one hand while providing some support to resistance groups on
the other. Branded a "schizophrenic policy" by Zalmay Khalilzad,
outgoing US ambassador to Iraq, this duality could be more accurately
labelled "calculated ambivalence", designed to secure Iran's interests
in Iraq and the region as a whole.

As many observers have noted, Iran has greatly benefited from the
ouster of Saddam Hussein who had waged a costly war against it in the
1980s. Accordingly, Iran took a "neutral" position vis-à-vis the
"fighting" that followed the invasion, since "both parties to the
conflict were oppressors", as articulated by Iran's Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Branding the invasion an act of "aggression",
Iran hailed democratic elections as the antidote to occupation as
early as March 2003 when Khamenei declared that, "the people of Iraq
can decide their future and their next government by going to the
polls and casting their votes." For Khamenei, elections were an
indication that the Iraqis were taking matters into their own hands,
thereby expediting an American withdrawal. In contrast to Hizbullah,
which tends to identify the political process in Iraq with the US-led
occupation, Iran views the elections as not only distinct from but
also anathema to US policy. Referring to the US's earlier attempt to
confine the scope of elections and to postpone them indefinitely, in
an August 2005 speech Khamenei praised the role of Ayatollah Sistani
and others in insisting on free and early elections.

This positive view of the political process has enabled Iran to confer
its legitimacy upon the Iraqi government and wholeheartedly support it
as the first truly "popular government" in Iraq, which defied US
wishes for a "puppet regime", as described by Khamenei. While
government forces have, by and large, chosen not to resist the
occupation, Iran sees in the Iraqi government a potentially
like-minded regional ally, which, under Iran's influence, could become
another anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist, pro-resistance outpost in the
region. Instilling such a sense of political identity in Iraq's Shias
therefore necessitates that Iran wrest Iraq away from the US, by
maintaining close ties with Shia political forces. Viewed from this
perspective, Iran's support for the Iraqi government undermines US
control over Iraq, just as military resistance does. Not only does
this strategy realise Iran's ideological objectives, but it also
serves its national interests by strengthening Iran's bargaining
position with the US. Though the viability of this strategy has yet to
be tested, the recent threat issued by Moqtada Al-Sadr -- whose Shia
movement was once one of the most autonomous from Iranian control --
to retaliate against US forces in the event of an attack on Iran,
suggests that Iran's policy appears to be reaping some early
dividends.

Harder to discern is the nature and extent of Iran's support for
resistance groups. As rhetorically and ideologically opposed to the
occupation of Iraq as Iran is, it has remained tight- lipped about the
need and obligation to resist. While Iranian officials express their
support for the resistance in Iraq -- though almost always in the same
breath as resistance movements in other countries -- this does not
translate into an active call to resist as it does in other regional
contexts such as Lebanon or Palestine. Unlike non-state actors such as
Hizbullah, Iran does not have the luxury of ideological posturing on
the merits of resistance, nor the political incentive to encourage it.

First, Iran is keen to avoid further blame for US military failure in
Iraq in a climate of abundant reports of Iran's increased support for
the Mahdi Army and its offshoots, among others, coupled with
accusations about Iranian arms shipments to Shia militant groups, the
most recent being that of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) used
against coalition forces. With US sabre rattling about striking
Iranian nuclear sites, Iran does not want to give its long time foe
ammunition to use against it. Second, Iran cannot provide full
political or military support to resistance groups as this would
undermine the Iraqi government and hence split Shias into Arab and
Persian camps while spiralling Iraq into unmanageable chaos. Finally,
a mass resistance campaign, with or without a US exit from Iraq, would
deprive Iran of a valuable bargaining card vis-à-vis the US, hence
Iran's preference for the current scope of resistance.

Though some have interpreted this preference as "collusion" with the
US, it is more akin to entrapment. The presence of American troops in
Iraq presents Iran with an ideal battleground in which it could
respond to a potential US attack on it. This line of reasoning is
reinforced by Sadr's threat to retaliate against US forces both
"inside and outside Iraq". It is even more clearly substantiated by
Khamenei's recent threat to respond to a US attack on Iran with "a
comprehensive reaction to the invaders and their interests all over
the world." As cited by an Iranian official in a 2005 International
Crisis Group report, the US occupation of Iraq has provided Iran with
"140,000 hostages". To keep the US hostage, Iran needs the right dose
of resistance activity with which it can slowly bleed US forces inside
Iraq, and enough losses with which to threaten the US.

This conclusion is bolstered by Al-Sadr's threat to retaliate against
US forces both "inside and outside Iraq". It is even more clearly
substantiated by Khamenei's recent threat to respond to a US attack on
Iran with "a comprehensive reaction to the invaders and their
interests all over the world".

In the final analysis, Iran's policy in Iraq has much less to do with
building Shia regional alliances than with confronting US hegemony in
the region.

* The writer is a leading Lebanese expert on Hizbullah and a visiting
scholar at the Carnegie Endowment Middle East Centre. She is the
author of Hizbullah: Politics and Religion, Pluto Press.

<http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/842/op12.htm>
26 April - 2 May 2007
Issue No. 842
What the moderate Arab world is

In the second of two pieces examining Iran's rising regional role,
Amal Saad-Ghorayeb* argues that attempts by "moderate" Arab leaders to
whip up popular fear of Iran are US-orchestrated and aimed to keep
in-check regional resistance to US-Israeli plans

Not only does the notion of an Iraq-inspired model of Shia empowerment
fail to stand up to scrutiny, but the so-called "Shia crescent" that
Iran allegedly seeks to fashion out of it is an equally unsound
proposition denoting a sectarian enterprise defined by an exclusively
Shia alliance, an all-Shia constituency, and a regional agenda that
caters solely to Shia communal interests.

Questioning the Shia crescent

Judged by these criteria, the regional alliance of which Iran and
Hizbullah are part, bears little, if any, resemblance to a Shia
crescent and much more to a cross-sectarian strategic front,
consisting of state and non-state actors, which commands the support
of the vast majority of both Shias and Sunnis in the region based on
its political and military confrontation to the US and Israel.

This quadripartite alliance is not confined to Shia actors such as
Iran and Hizbullah, but also incorporates the Sunni movement Hamas and
a predominantly Sunni Syria, led by a secular Baathist state. Although
many proponents of the Shia crescent theory insist, nonetheless, on
counting Syria as a Shia state on account of its Alawite regime, such
an attempt is an overstretch given the highly disputable
classification of Alawism as Shiism among Shia clerical circles. In
fact, it was not until 1973 that Alawites were deemed to belong to the
Shia sect by Imam Musa As-Sadr, who did so as a political favour to
President Hafez Al-Assad. The inclusion of Hamas and Syria in this
alliance, means that it cannot be considered Shia or even Islamic in
character and composition, but more accurately regional.

Yet, this has not prevented Arab leaders from trying to stoke fears of
an Iran-led Shia power grab in the region. Besides the now infamous
"Shia crescent" spectre raised by Jordan's King Abdullah, Egypt's
President Mubarak accused Shias of paying allegiance to Iran before
their own nation-states while Saudi officials have also publicly
expressed concern over Iran's cultural and political influence in the
region. To a large extent, this scare-mongering rhetoric has failed to
strike a chord among Arab Sunnis, despite reports to the contrary in
Western and some Arab media. Though Sunni-Shia tensions cannot be
discounted, they are far less the product of the ascent of a Shia
power in the region like Iran, or the looming threat of a Shia
crescent, than of concrete crises in Iraq, and to a much narrower
extent, Lebanon.

The current Sunni-Shia rift is fundamentally a political one that has
been fuelled by the ouster of Sunni leader Saddam Hussein in Iraq and
the institution of an American-backed, Shia- dominated state. Sunni
rage was further ignited by the Iraqi government's highly incendiary
execution of Hussein in December last year. While Iran is not feared
as a Shia power as such, its support for the Iraqi government and its
alleged links with Shia death squads in Iraq has earned it the
reproach of many Sunnis and soured Sunni-Shia relations overall. In a
similar vein, the crisis in Lebanon between the Siniora government and
the Hizbullah-led opposition, has been interpreted by some Sunnis in
the region as a flagrant Shia-instigated power struggle which has
derailed Hizbullah from its loftier campaign of resistance to Israel.

Having said all this, the scope and intensity of sectarian tensions
should not be exaggerated. Even in Lebanon, where the Sunni-Shia
divide is only second to Iraq in its rancour, two-thirds of Sunnis do
not support Sunni attacks against Shias in Iraq, while almost
three-quarters of them do not view the Shia crescent as a reality,
according to the findings of a Beirut Centre for Research and
Information (BCRI) poll. In the region as a whole, Sunnis do not
appear to be anywhere near as concerned as their leaders about Iran's
rise as a regional powerhouse and its attendant sectarian
implications. A joint survey conducted by Shibley Telhami and Zogby
International in November 2006, revealed that only six per cent of a
general sample of respondents from the predominantly Sunni countries
of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and UAE, in addition to
Lebanon -- states dubbed as "moderate" by the Bush administration --
regarded Iran as the greatest threat to their security, despite the
fact that significant majorities in each of these countries viewed
Iran's role in Iraq as negative. What these findings imply is that
while the vast majority of Sunni Arabs are highly critical of Iran's
policy on Iraq, they do not draw generalisations about Iran's Middle
East policy on this basis. In other words, they do not see Iraq as the
lynchpin of an incipient Shia crescent led by Iran that imperils their
security. In fact, any misgivings Sunni Arabs may have about Iran and
Hizbullah appear to be outweighed by the perception of these two
strategic players as bulwarks against US hegemonic designs and Israeli
territorial ambitions in the region.

As reported by the Telhamy-Zogby poll, 80 per cent of respondents see
Israel and the US as posing the greatest threats to their security.
Such fears have been prompted by the Bush administration's "war on
terror," that is defined in part by doctrines of pre-emptive war and
regime change that aim to reshape the face of the Middle East region.
The US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, with threats to do the same
in Syria and Iran, have combined with its orchestration of the Israeli
onslaught against Lebanon last summer and the international embargo it
organised against the Palestinians, starving them of needed funds, to
create an image of the US as not merely a civilisational threat to
Arabs and Muslims, but increasingly an existential one.

In this connection, Iran's right to nuclear power is supported by 61
per cent of Arabs, according to the results of the Telhami-Zogby poll,
although half of all respondents in the survey suspect that Iran's
nuclear programme is intended for weapons manufacture. For the
majority of "moderate" Sunni Arabs then, a nuclear- armed Iran is a
desirable counterweight to US and Israeli military dominance in the
region. This is further evinced by the fact that President Ahmadinejad
was ranked the third most popular leader in the Sunni Arab world, as
reported by the Telhami-Zogby survey, in light of his renowned
defiance of the US and his highly inflammatory anti-Israel rhetoric,
which, while not sitting well with all Iranians back home, wins him
much kudos in the Arab world.

Support for Iran also owes itself in large part to its longstanding
sponsorship of popular Islamist resistance movements in the region --
Hizbullah and Hamas. Although Arab regimes castigated Hizbullah for
its abduction of Israeli soldiers in July 2006, with Saudi Arabia
condemning Hizbullah's actions as "irresponsible adventurism", popular
Arab support for the movement reached its zenith in last summer's war,
given the scale of the Israeli offensive and the resistance's ability
to defeat the militarily superior Israeli army. As a consequence, the
stature of Hizbullah's secretary-general, Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, was
elevated to heroic proportions in much of the Sunni Arab world,
earning him the title of the "new Gamal Abdel Nasser" for his showdown
with Israel. In the Telhami-Zogby poll, Nasrallah was ranked the most
popular leader by Arab respondents, while in a BCRI survey
commissioned by Kuwait's Al-Qabas newspaper in December, Nasrallah
emerged as Sunni Kuwait's preferred leader, with 40 per cent of
Kuwaitis expressing their preference for him over other Sunni leaders.

In keeping with the growing tide of anti-Israel sentiment, Sunni
Islamist movements, including Muslim Brotherhood wings in Egypt,
Jordan and elsewhere, lent their full support to Hizbullah's war
effort, while Al-Qaeda's second in command, Ayman Al Zawahiri, jumped
on the anti- Israel bandwagon in support of the resistance. In turn,
Arab regimes, which had previously underestimated Hizbullah's
endurance and military strength, were compelled to considerably tone
down their earlier rhetoric in a desperate bid to salvage what
remaining legitimacy they had left with a staunchly pro-resistance
Arab public.

What facilitates the appeal of Shia Islamic actors like Iran and
Hizbullah to an Arab Sunni audience is their embrace of the core
principles of a once predominately Sunni Arabist movement. Arabist
slogans such as resistance to occupation, the liberation of Palestine
and the struggle against imperialism for regional independence,
resonate well with the Sunni Arab street. While Hizbullah's Arab
nationality somewhat mitigates its Shia identity, the notion of a
Shia-Persian power becoming the standard bearer of Sunni Arab causes,
appears more paradoxical. But judging from the level of Sunni Arab
support for Hizbullah and Iran, it appears as though the perceived
restoration of Arab pride and dignity that these two strategic players
have bought about overrides national and sectarian considerations.

In effect, the much promoted "Shia crescent" theory appears to be far
less of a political reality, or widespread social concern, than a card
played by "moderate" Arab regimes to whip up fears among their Sunni
publics within the context of a wider, US-orchestrated campaign to
enlist the support of Sunni Arab regimes in demonising and isolating
Iran. Since these regimes are unwilling to forgo their alliances with
the US, they feel compelled to invent an enemy to counter- balance and
deflect attention away from the US- Israeli threat, on which they
cannot deliver, with the purpose of winning back some popular
legitimacy via an imagined threat called "Shiism".

While the spectre of a Shia-Iranian security threat is one concocted
by Arab leaders, the Iran- Hizbullah model is a very real political
threat to the popular legitimacy and regional influence of Arab
regimes. What the "moderate" regimes of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia
fear is not so much the strategic threat posed to them by a
nuclear-emboldened Iran, or even a Shia conversion campaign in their
Sunni heartland, but rather, the model of political empowerment
represented by Iran and Hizbullah. Arab alarmism is therefore not
directed at the export of religious or cultural Shiism but, more
significantly, at political Shiism as defined by its anti-imperialist,
anti-Zionist, pro-resistance identity. That the US supports Saudi
efforts to play a more active role in resolving regional disputes, in
a last ditch attempt to eclipse Iran's regional soft power, is
indicative of the recognition by both parties of the extent of Iran's
influence and appeal among Sunni Arabs. And it is precisely because
Iran does not act like a Shia power, with distinctly Shia objectives,
that makes it such a formidable challenge to the US and its Arab
allies. For the US-allied moderate states, the gravest threat to the
longevity and stability of their regimes is a strategic regional
alliance that cuts across the Sunni-Shia, Persian-Arab and
religious-secular divides.

In effect, the new fault lines dividing the region are not between
Arab-led Sunnis and Persian-led Shias, nor between democrats and
autocrats, a la yesteryear's Bush doctrine. Nor is the now fashionable
"extremists" versus "moderates" schema an apt depiction of reality.
Today's fault lines centre on ideological and strategic orientations.
On one side of the divide lie Arab regimes, such as Egypt, Jordan,
Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as well as recently elected governments, all
of which have earned their "moderate" epithets by dint of their
alliances with the US and their moderation vis-à-vis Israel. Whether
authoritarian or democratically elected, these governments are fully
buttressed by the US, and are therefore widely accused of ceding their
nation's sovereignty and lacking popular legitimacy.

On the other side of the divide sits the strategic front represented
by Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas, formed in response to the US-
Israeli axis and thus essentially a reactive alliance. As a defensive
front, whose central objective is to actively resist US and Israeli
political intervention, security/intelligence infiltration, and
military occupation with a combination of cultural, political and
military means, the most suitable designation for this coalition of
forces is the "resistance and mumanaa front". While only Hamas and
Hizbullah are currently engaged in military resistance, the term
mumanaa -- derived from the Arabic word "to prevent" and which
connotes all forms of non-military resistance, confrontation and
rejection -- refers to the politically confrontational stands assumed
by Iran and Syria. Though none of the actors that constitute this
front actually label themselves as such, they often characterise
themselves as being part of a "resistance camp", " mumanaa front", or
"circle of steadfastness" that "rejects hegemony and defeat" and seeks
"justice" and "dignity".

In the final analysis, a potential wide-scale attack by the US on Iran
-- which would most likely involve Israel and engulf Lebanon, the
occupied Palestinian territories, and possibly Syria as well -- would
only serve to further unify Sunni-Shia ranks, as exemplified by the
July 2006 war. In such a scenario, Iran would unleash the Shia Iraqi
resistance in full force, thereby eliminating the main source of Sunni
antagonism towards it. For Hizbullah, greater participation in
strategic decision-making would become of negligible significance in
the face of a US-Israeli offensive on the movement and its regional
allies. Unfettered by concerns for national unity and internal
stability -- which would cease to exist in the midst of a regional war
-- Hizbullah would devote itself exclusively to its "resistance
priority", thereby regaining any Sunni support it recently lost. Thus,
the launching of yet another chapter of the "war on terror" would only
serve to radicalise the people of the region beyond the level achieved
by the so-called "Iraq effect", while promoting the popular standing
of a resistance and mumanaa front in the Arab world and beyond.

* The writer is a leading Lebanese expert on Hizbullah and a visiting
scholar at the Carnegie Endowment Middle East Centre. She is the
author of Hizbullah: Politics and Religion, Pluto Press.
--
Yoshie