Iran's Mahdi Failure in Iraq Leads to Lebanon Proxy War

Lebanon is now roiled in proxy warfare, a new round of conflict rooted in the wider realm of Middle East and international politics.

This video shows the dramatic civilian impact of the fighting in Beirut:

Nibras Kazimi, a Visiting Scholar at the Hudson Institute, argues that the outbreak of fighting in Lebanon is an extention of Iran's loss of influence in Iraq, following the defeat of the Mahdi army in March:

Ostensibly, Hezbollah is responding to the Lebanese government’s decision to sack the security chief of Beirut’s international airport, and to dismantle Hezbollah’s secure landline-based communications network that had been expanded recently.

What could have spurred-on this over-reaction on Hezbollah’s part, which has been manifested so far with flexing its muscles in the Sunni area of Beirut, seemingly showing-up the government as weak and vulnerable?

I believe Iran needed to show the United States and its Arab allies that it can humiliate them by overrunning the government they back in Beirut and that they’d be unable to do anything about it, and I believe that Iran needed to make this point now because the Mahdi Army in Iraq has collapsed.

Iran has been backing certain factions of the Mahdi Army with training and arms as an investment in a force for chaos, which can be held in reserve and unleashed against the Americans in Iraq in the event that George Bush may order a bombing run against Iran’s illicit nuclear program this summer—something he’s be egged-on to do by U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan....

But ever since Prime Minister Maliki launched Operation Cavalry Charge on March 25 in Basra, the Iraqi government, with some U.S. air cover and logistical support, has been engaged in a war of attrition with the Mahdi Army; witling away the once-sharp and threatening capability of Iran’s investment in terror. Whereas these ‘Special Groups’ could launch 30 to 40 projectiles into the Green Zone a few weeks ago, today they can only manage one or two rockets. The Iraqi Army and the US military have pushed on into all the redoubts of the Sadrists, notably Sadr City where some 1200 fatalities (a significant number of them non-combatants) have occurred.

Maliki has also ordered the Iraqi Red Crescent to prepare an initial contingency plan to absorb 100,000 refugees from Sadr City, indicating that he is not backing down....

The Sadrists and the Iranians have been reduced to bravado and PSY-OPS: one account has it that the Sadrists have a plan to take over the Green Zone within seven hours, and that they can take over Basra within 24 hours. Another is that General Suleimani of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard actually controls events in Iraq.

But in effect, Iran has lost the deterrence value of its investment in the Sadrists.

That’s why Iran needed to flex its might in downtown Beirut, to embarrass the Saudis and others who can do very little to bail-out Siniora’s government. The ruse seems to have worked: Saad al-Hariri basically rescinded the government’s orders against the airport security chief and the communications network today.

But see also the Charleston Post and Courier, which argues Iran's now launching its latest Middle East power play in Beirut:

For the past year [Iran] has encouraged Hamas in its violent takeover of Gaza to attack Israel with rockets supplied by Iran. The fate of ordinary Palestinians in Gaza — where the United Nations mission announced this week it is suspending humanitarian services for security reasons — is clearly a concern. For the past month Iran has also encouraged a breakaway militia in Iraq, the Mahdi Army, in its attacks on government offices and foreign embassies in Baghdad that have turned the crowded slums of Sadr City into a battlefield.

This week it was Lebanon's turn, as a power struggle between the popularly elected government and Iran's proxy militia Hezbollah turned violent, with street barricades throughout Beirut and gun battles between Sunni groups allied with the government and Shias allied with Hezbollah. Reports from Beirut say Lebanon is on the brink of civil war.

The proximate cause of the trouble in Lebanon was the courageous decision of the government on Tuesday to declare Hezbollah's separate telecommunications network in the country illegal and a threat to national security. Hezbollah used the network to conduct its war with Israel on Lebanese soil in 2006. Hezbollah's leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah on Thursday, calling the network "the most important part" of the movement's military organizational structure, said the government's decision was "tantamount to a declaration of war," The Associated Press reported.

The government position is supported by the United Nations envoy to the Middle East, Terje Roed Larsen. Agence France Presse reported that Mr. Larsen told the U.N. Security Council Thursday the Hezbollah organization "constitutes a threat to regional peace and security." In 2004 the Security Council called for Hezbollah to disband its militia.

In recent months Hezbollah and its allies in Lebanon's parliament have refused to allow a quorum for a vote on the country's next president unless a deal is made to legitimize the organization's military structure. As Ambassador Larsen told the Security Council, Hezbollah is building "parallel institutional structures" to compete with and weaken the national government's army and other functions. U.S. officials in Iraq have charged the Mahdi Army, its leader Muqtada al-Sadr and Iran with trying to duplicate the Hezbollah "state-within-a-state" structure in Iraq.

The Iranian power grab is now on vivid display in Gaza, Baghdad and Beirut. It strains credulity to believe that these outbreaks are unrelated events.

It is a good thing the United States has troops in Iraq, and ships in the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean, that can set limits to Iran's ambitions.

I'll have more updates later, but see also Walid Phares, "Hezbollah's Beirut Blitz."