AFTER THE RETREAT: WILL HEZBOLLAH MODERATE IRAN’S INFLUENCE IN THE ARAB NATION?

Rough draft

THE HARMFUL IDIOTS HAVE ELIMINATED ALL BALANCE OF POWER IN THE REGION

As the reluctant ones clean up after the harmful idiots and manage the ongoing and inevitable retreat, Israel’s realm - -to use the harmful idiots’ terminology about their Beloved- - no longer has any country left to balance Iranian power.

No, the reluctant ones can’t do it. They can preside over a conventional balance from the Arabian Peninsula. But the balance of power required to offset Iranian power is one that would mobilize/de-mobilize the Arab Street. That kind of balance is beyond them. The Arab Street hates them.

And no, their Israel can’t either. It sits somewhere between useless and extremely harmful - - to U.S. interests, and to Arabs and others. Ask the Palestinians. Not to mention that the Arab Street perceives Israel's people as having been the most important pillar behind the invasion and dismemberment of Arab Iraq.

And no, Turkey cannot do it, either. Turkey’s Kurdish Achilles’ heel is painful enough - - not to mention the Alevi heel. (I caught on to this in Paul Theroux’s The Pillars of Hercules). At any rate, NATO for now has accepted that Turkey play the role of the good cop with Iran - - in part because Turkey has wanted to. Turkey knows that the alternative would set it back a couple of decades.

The government of Egypt? The predecessors of the reluctant ones and the harmful idiots had turned this one into an Israeli outfit - - useless though by no means harmful. They began that process when they had entrapped Gamal Abdel-Nasser. They moved for the kill when they adopted the Israeli-favored one-peace-at-a-time formula—to divide the Arab nation. They succeeded. Congratulations.

Arab Iraq can’t do it. It no longer exists. What’s left of it is a broken-up plantation.


CAN SAUDI ARABIA BALANCE IRANIAN POWER?

Hence the flirtation by Saudi Arabia with Syria. (The Syrian President had been recently to Saudi Arabia.) Saudi Arabia was (and is) the champion of the policy for Iran’s containment and for its defeat. It and Kuwait had sacrificed Arab Iraq on the altar of that policy and for the benefit of the harmful idiots’ Israeli realm-interest.

Saddam Hussein, the Arab idiot, had Arab Iraq fight a devastating war – - for Arab Iraq and for Iran - - in good part on behalf of the Saudi and the Kuwaiti ruling elites. These, the same elites Arab Iraq had protected, turned around so soon after Iraq’s “victory” against Iran, began setting up traps for it (with the help of the harmful idiots), and then unleashed the armies of the harmful idiots for the kill. No Sunni Arab who’s not on the payroll will ever trust these two. Saudi Arabia therefore can’t balance Iranian power.

This realization by the Saudis of their limitations likely stands behind the severe reduction of Saudi intelligence disbursements in Lebanon. I suspect the termination by Lebanese media outfits (e.g., al-Nahar, MTV) of droves of employees is related to Saudi intelligence conceding Lebanon, so to speak, to Syria, as part of its flirtation with Syria and its conclusion that Saudi Arabia has been defeated by Iran’s rise. Not that the Saudis had a choice: Syria and Hezbollah had taught the Saudi proxies in Lebanon many-a-lesson. These had gotten so over-excited (tickled to death, really) by the delusions of the harmful idiots. (The fact that Waleed Jumblatt did a volte face could have the same reasons: Saudi intelligence diminishing the supply of money it had once been giving him.)

(Unless the Saudis live fully on Plane-Israel-and-the-Idiots, it should be clear to them that Syria would be a fool to sever its alliance with Iran. The flirtation with Syria therefore is more of an admission of defeat in Lebanon and in Iraq - - and adaptation to that defeat - - than anything else. And no, the rapprochement with Syria isn’t in the main to pressure the Israelis to withdraw to the June 4, 1967 borders. That ship’s sailed.)

Unless! Why couldn’t Saudi intelligence, for instance, keep the money flowing but instruct the dependent Lebanese media outfits not to criticize Syria? If one subscribes to the theory that Saudi Arabia has more money than God, then what’s a few million dollars to MTV, an-Nahar and others? Unless, that is, Saudi Arabia is helping fund the Iraq and Afghanistan “war” effort. Which means it’s draining its coffers at tens of billions of dollars per year. Otherwise, it simply doesn’t make sense that Saudi intelligence would cut off - - or substantially reduce - - funding to pro-Saudi outfits. The draining of Saudi Arabia’s coffers must be so bad that even a few millions of dollars have now gained significance to the Saudis.

HEZBOLLAH AND SYRIA: THE SMART INTERPLAY. WILL IT WITHSTAND ISRAELI/IDIOTS' RUSES?

But is Syria key? And if it is, it’s key for what?

Syria’s deputy foreign minister has been to Washington, D.C. for talks. His visit probably is part of the campaign by the reluctant ones to synchronize an orderly retreat. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the reluctant ones (the Israel-centered they are) still harbor the illusion that they can split Syria from Iran.

(I don’t want to spend time here on why Syria would be a fool to split from Iran, although it’d need to cover some bases in case the Iranian regime folds to the opposition, which is unlikely.)

There’s no regional power to balance Iran. Syria can’t, even if it had wanted. For one, it’s a poor country. Because of the absence of a regional country to balance Iranian power, Iran might commit a mistake similar to that which the harmful idiots had committed: to fall into a systemic power-vacuum trap, this one regional. Just as the idiots had fallen into the trap of a highway to Central Asia’s energy fields, having seen no worthy military power to stop their expansion, Iran might fall into the trap of over-reaching into the Arab nation now that the idiots had eliminated for them the main stumbling block: secular Arab nationalism, funded with Iraqi oil proceeds. And now that the idiots are in a retreat mode.

The harmful idiots had seen no worthy opposition all the way to China. (Nationalism, to the idiots, is never a factor to be considered. Nor is cost. These are two of the symptoms of their derangement.) It became alluring for them to invade that space, pacify Afghanistan, and make available to India (via a pacified Afghanistan) the energy fields of Central Asia. The idea would’ve been to build up India as a great power to stand up to China on the latter’s Western front.

(The harmful idiots’ very country - - ours - - is responsible for China’s rise, but the harmful idiots are functionally specific idiots. Since they specialize only in foreign policy (in poli. Sci., they proudly referred to similar phenomena as “functional specialization” and deemed it a sign of “development”), they weren’t about to stand up to China by tackling the forfeiting of anything that is job-creating to that country - - but for health care.) (We will all need to get sick a lot to keep ourselves employed! Or we can snoop at one another and get paid off by the various outfits of the intelligence-industrial complex, which parses out a majority of its $50 billion-a-year intelligence business to fat contractors, including those around this author who are out to supplement their income.)

Had the idiots proceeded to Afghanistan in full force after September 11, they may have succeeded. India would’ve perhaps become the Great Power to help out against China. But the Israel realm crowd diverted the idiots sideways into Iraq. Then there were the unforeseen Iraqi resistance which left the idiots with too-little-too-late for Afghanistan.

(And yes: I’m driven crazy when I read on the front page of the Washington Post an article about the idiots investigating the sources of funding for the Taliban. Beside the arrogance of taking on the subject as if a criminal investigation, it bewilders me to no end that so much resources are needed to monitor that funding. All the idiots need do is consult with any professor of international relations to point to them the parties to which advantage it is to scuttle the idiots’ plan for India-as-great-power-to-stand-up-to-China. Hello idiots!)

Iran might fall into the systemic power vacuum trap, and likely will. Unless, that is, Hezbollah, its chief Arab ally and protégé, modulates Iran’s intervention in the Arab nation. Hezbollah might have to take on the task of moderating Iran’s intervention to avoid offending Arabs and creating a backlash against both Iran and Hezbollah - - a backlash that would be unbearable for Iran’s ally, Syria. Currently, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas own the Arab Street. There’s hardly any Arab on that Street who is not proud of Hezbollah, is not rooting for Iran, and is not protective of Syria.

Israel (very purposely) feeds that pride (in Hezbollah) by leaking on a near-daily basis report-after-report about the prowess of Hezbollah. Israel wants that guerrilla army to become so self-satisfied, so content (a la Bar Lev Line or the Maginot Line) until it comes at it again, this time for THE kill. Or maybe, just maybe, the Israelis are praying that their “leaks” of near-daily reports lauding Hezbollah would help blind the Lebanese political party about its task as an Arab political party - - albeit Islamic - - to monitor Iran’s rush to fall into the systemic Arab power vacuum trap. If Hezbollah does become blind to its mission, and is drunk with victory - - then perhaps it would allow Iran and itself to fall into the trap that is the systemic power vacuum the idiots are leaving behind. Bluntly put: Israel wants Iran and Hezbollah to fall into the power vacuum trap.

So in essence Arab Hezbollah might take on the task of modulating-and-moderating Iran so as not to overreach into the Arab nation. Put differently, Arab Hezbollah might take on the task of preventing Iran from falling into the systemic trap that the void that the harmful idiots, their Israel, and their Arab Gulf minions had created when they had eliminated Arab Iraq. This double-role would fit Hezbollah well in that it pleases both its constituencies - - Iran and the Arab nation. With that in mind, Hezbollah will let Arab Syria swim the public relations sea and enjoy the role of the good cop as THE bridge between the Arab governments and Iran’s - -all of that while Hezbollah is doing the heavy lifting for all of them - - Syria, Iran, and the Arab Street.

Such is my reading of a part of the picture of the Arab nation after the retreat. But there’s an important caveat about corruption which impugns Hezbollah’s ability to take on the task. Hezbollah’s recent entanglement in a Ponzi-like-scheme in which many Lebanese Shiites lost their nest egg says that the “best guerrilla army” is now flirting with corruption. (Or has corruption reached deeper into it?) It already may have become full-of-itself, having believed the Israeli studied propaganda-in-the-form-of-“professional”-reports about what a great guerrilla army it is. Its victory in 2006 may have led it astray and into the world of Grand Corruption that so characterize politics in the Arab nation.

Still, all things considered, the eyes of all Arabs ARE on Hezbollah.