non last week that drew more attention than any state visit he has ever made to date.
Many saw the visit in stark terms as Iran staking claim to Lebanon or taking its confrontation with Israel to the border or challenging the United States head-on.
Ahmadi-nejad used the visit to air his usual anti-Israeli rhetoric—but he kept a discrete distance from Israel. Arab news reports a few weeks ago asserted that Ahmadi-nejad would go right up to the border and lob a symbolic stone at Israel. But the president actually got no closer than two miles from the border, and thus was not subject to gunfire from angry Israelis, some of whom taunted him for staying a safe distance away.
The visit was something like a victory lap by the president to underscore the funds Iran has pumped into Lebanon to help it rebuild after the 2006 war with Israel. The village of Bint Jbail that Ahmadi-nejad visited near the border was one of the Iran-funded reconstruction projects.
Some Iranian news reports spoke of Israel flying helicopters over the village while Ahmadi-nejad was there. Actually, the helicopters clearly stayed on the Israeli side of the border, but at an altitude high enough that villagers could see them.
Everywhere Ahmadi-nejad went, he got a rock start welcome. He was feted by immense crowds, loud cheers and huge billboards lauding him and Iran, with rice and flower petals raining down upon him. But the president’s visit was largely confined to Shiite areas of Lebanon.
While the two-day visit clearly was loved by many Shiites, it also had the effect of alerting many Sunnis, Druze and Christians to the extent of Iranian influence on their Shii fellow citizens.
Egyptian state radio carried a commentary on the visit that said, “The Shiis welcome him; the Sunnis were reserved; the Christians were worried.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu surveyed the visit and said, “Lebanon is rapidly becoming a new satellite of Iran.” But that was an overstatement as Hezbollah and its allies did not win a majority in the last parliamentary elections and the non-Shii majority may have been made even more suspicious of Iran by Ahmadi-nejad’s visit.
What was often forgotten was that President Ahmadi-nejad was invited to Lebanon by President Michel Suleiman, who is a Maronite Christian and who has an interest in showing he can work with Iran, but not under Iran.
The key political issue in Lebanon right now is the fate of an international tribunal set up to pursue the assassination in 2005 of then-Prime Minister Saad Hariri. It is widely believed that the tribunal is on the verge of indicting several officials of Hezbollah, the Lebanese party supported by Iran. For the last few months, Hezbollah has been loudly demanding that the Lebanese government end its support for the tribunal.
What Ahmadi-nejad said about the tribunal in his meetings with President Suleiman and Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, son of the slain leader, remains unknown. But he only mentioned the tribunal once in his many public speeches, saying the court was framing Hezbollah. The bulk of his speeches concentrated on attacks on Israel and predictions that the Zionist state would soon cease to exist.
In his meetings with Sunni, Druze and Christian figures, Ahmadi-nejad was careful to say that Iran supports a “unified” Lebanon and that his visit was “for all the Lebanese.” He also agreed to give the government of Lebanon a $450 million loan for water and power projects.
The United States was publicly displeased by the visit, although officials emphasized that Lebanon had a right to invite any visitor it wished. American officials complained that Ahmadi-nejad treated Lebanon “like an Iranian base on the Mediterranean.” Some analysts thought Washington might not really be so displeased since the visit helped Washington make a point with Arabs about Iranian involvement in the Arab world.
There was also open opposition among many Lebanese. A group of some 250 civic leaders signed an open letter before Ahmadi-nejad arrived decrying Iran’s involvement in Lebanon. “One group in Lebanon draws its power from you,” the letter said, referring to Hezbollah, “and has wielded it over another group and the state.… You are repeating what others have done before you by interfering in our internal affairs.”
The letter said, “Your support of the state is negated by your parallel financial and military support to one party in Lebanon.… Your talk of ‘changing the face of the region starting with Lebanon’ … and ‘wiping Israel off the map through the force of the Islamic resistance in Lebanon’ … gives the impression that your visit is that of a high commander to his front line.”
But Mohammad Abd-al-Hamid Baydun, a former Lebanese cabinet minister, scoffed at all the talk about Iran entrenching itself in Lebanon. In a television interview, he said, “Everyone knows that the final word when it comes to Lebanon is Syria’s word, not Iran’s.” He said Ahmadi-nejad may chatter about “his global ideology to manage the world,” starting from Lebanon, but Syria wants to regain the Golan Heights from Israel and sees the Americans as the only power that can get Syria what it wants.
The bulk of Lebanon’s Shiites clearly look on Iran as their protector and saw Ahmadi-nejad’s visit as a sign of that protection. That concept, however, is nothing new in Lebanon. Going back a century and a half, the Maronite Christians tuned to France and happily welcomed it as the protector of Christians in the Ottoman Empire. The Shiite approach is virtually a carbon copy of the Maronite system.