Iran's Ambassador... to the "Shia duo"!
Whether the Iranian ambassador designated to Lebanon, Mohammad Reza Sheibani, stays or goes is beside the point. What matters is the symbolic weight carried by two distinct stances, that of the Lebanese Foreign Ministry, which declared the ambassador persona non grata, and that of the "Shia duo" in response.
Beyond the national considerations that compel Lebanon to take a courageous stance toward a state that incessantly interferes in its internal affairs and treats it as a mere vassal colony, the official Lebanese position speaks to the depth of the change that has taken place in the country itself, in the region, and far beyond. A depth that still escapes Iranian thinking, and that of the Lebanese sectarian militia in its service known as Hezbollah. It should never be forgotten that Hezbollah remains nothing more than a brigade of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, whose members are for the most part Lebanese nationals.
A disarmingly simple question imposes itself on the "Islamic Republic" as much as on Hezbollah, which ought to try to answer it. Here it is: had the upheaval brought about by the "Gaza support war" not occurred, would Iran have accepted, through Hezbollah, that Joseph Aoun become president of the Lebanese Republic?
The facts supply the answer. The change wrought by the outcomes of that war, including the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah and his designated successor Hashem Safieddine, allowed Joseph Aoun to reach the Baabda Palace. Without it, Hezbollah would have clung to its own candidate, as it had done following the end of President Michel Sleiman's term in 2014. The country was then forced to wait long months before everyone bowed to the will of Nasrallah and Iran, electing Michel Aoun president at the end of October 2016, with his son-in-law Gebran Bassil in tow.
Nothing better measures the scale of the change Lebanon has undergone than the repositioning of the Foreign Ministry. Now led by Youssef Rajji, the ministry has ceased to function as an annex of its Iranian counterpart, as was the case when Gebran Bassil and other figures from the "Shia duo" held the portfolio. They were, in effect, representatives of the "Islamic Republic" within the Arab League. Bassil, Michel Aoun's son-in-law, made no secret of his refusal to show solidarity with Arab positions when he served as foreign minister. Arab ministers did not hesitate to describe him as the foreign minister of the "Islamic Republic", which was not itself a member of the Arab League.
What remains most puzzling is the position taken by the Amal movement, chaired by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri. Does this not reveal that Berri finds himself unable to break free from Iran's orbit and all that it represents, despite everything Iran has inflicted on Lebanon and the Lebanese, including the Shia, the people of the South and the Beqaa?
In the end, what the Lebanese state's decision to demand the departure of the new Iranian ambassador, who had previously served in Lebanon, has most clearly revealed is that the "Islamic Republic" succeeded in radically transforming the very nature of the Shia community. It achieved this through relentless efforts dating back to 1982, when the first contingents of Revolutionary Guards entered Lebanese territory under the pretext of defending the country against the Israeli invasion.
One must return to that period when the Guards worked to entrench themselves in the Sheikh Abdallah barracks, a Lebanese army installation in Baalbek. Iran's first act in Lebanon was thus to undermine the army, the backbone of the state. It should also be recalled that the founding of Hezbollah was accompanied by the establishment of educational institutions designed to impose the Iranian curriculum in the party's schools (the Al-Mahdi and Al-Moustafa schools). Beyond that, an entire formation was imposed on Shia youth grounded in values foreign to Lebanon. The "Mahdi Scouts" bear eloquent witness to this, preparing Shia teenagers to serve in the ranks of a sectarian militia with no connection to the Lebanese state or Lebanese society.
From this vantage point, the position of the "Shia duo" toward the expulsion of the Iranian ambassador becomes intelligible. This ambassador was accredited to the "duo" before being accredited to the Lebanese state, which means the "duo" possesses a state of its own, separate from the Lebanese state, one over which Iran and its interests exercise full control.
Be that as it may, the position of the Lebanese Foreign Ministry, inseparable from that of Nawaf Salam's government, remains one more step along a long road that should lead to the day when the Lebanese state recovers its sovereign decision-making... provided Lebanon emerges unscathed from the "Iran support war" currently underway.
The journey toward recovering a sovereign decision, free from Iranian tutelage, began with the election of Joseph Aoun to the presidency and the formation of Nawaf Salam's government. The expulsion of the Iranian ambassador represents yet another step along that road.
The Iranian behaviors voiced through the "Shia duo" betray a refusal to acknowledge that before and after the "Gaza support war" stand as two entirely different realities, and that Iran's influence has receded considerably. Beirut has ceased to be that Iranian city on the Mediterranean, that Arab capital under Tehran's thumb. It has shed Iranian hegemony, all the more so now that Iran has left Syria with no prospect of return, and Syria is once again an Arab state no longer governed by the Revolutionary Guards.
On Lebanese soil, the "Shia duo" wages a war lost before it began. Its fortunes there will be no better than in the "Gaza support war." Sooner or later, the "Islamic Republic" will have no choice but to capitulate. Control over Lebanon's decisions of war and peace will not spare it that fate. Nor will headlong aggression against the Arab Gulf states, nor keeping its ambassador in Lebanon as an envoy accredited to the "Shia duo" rather than to the Lebanese Republic...