Michael Rubin, director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, spoke to a June 9 Middle East Forum Podcast (video). The following summarizes his comments:
Capitalizing on the series of Israeli operations that neutered the Iranian-backed Hezbollah’s military leadership, fighters, and terrorists in Lebanon will require a “concerted policy in order to ensure that Hezbollah doesn’t rise from the ashes.” Hezbollah’s military was financed by “a substantial economic component” via Shia networks in South America and West Africa, many of them involving drug cartels. These financial networks could survive, becoming a cudgel used by Russia’s Africa Corps in the region “as a lever both in Lebanon and Syria” to exert control. The responsibility for countering this risk lies with the holders of three important positions in the Lebanese government.
A new Lebanon includes “unraveling all the mafia groups” and the forces that wreak havoc on Lebanon economically.
The first is the president, the second is the prime minister, and the third is the governor of Lebanon’s Central Bank, Karim Souhaid. Of the three, Souhaid, a Lebanese Christian committed to countering Hezbollah, “can conduct the forensic accounting and close the loopholes” which Hezbollah exploited for the last decade under his corrupt predecessor.
The Lebanese government may want to “do the right thing” by fighting Hezbollah, but they also realize “that their survival is at stake.” They will need to live with the consequences of such a decision and will only take on Hezbollah if they see that “the Americans, the Europeans, and modern Arab states will have their backs.” A new Lebanon includes “unraveling all the mafia groups” and the forces that wreak havoc on Lebanon economically. These disparate groups are also “tied up in the personalities of various political elites.”
A creative idea of rebuilding support for Southern Lebanon that does not involve American money was highlighted in the Middle East Forum Online. The six billion dollars of Iranian assets the Biden administration unfroze “to relieve pressure” on the mullahs are now being held by Qatar in an Iranian escrow account. Given that Iran’s support of Hezbollah has devastated Lebanon, Iranian funds could be rerouted to Lebanon as “reparations” if the Trump administration would take advantage of the opportunity to confiscate said funds. Joseph Aoun, the Lebanese president and former head of the Lebanese Armed Forces, and Souhaid, the Central Bank governor, both agree that these funds should be coordinated by a Western outlet to secure them beyond Hezbollah’s reach.
The advantage of the proposal “to build some normalcy in Southern Lebanon” is that it relieves pressure on Congress to ask the American taxpayer to risk throwing “good money after bad.” Instead, exert maximum pressure on undermining the ayatollah’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. In addition, it will “force Qatar to put up or shut up when it comes to determining which side of the issues they’re on.”
“U.S. policy is at its strongest when we calibrate our policy towards reality, rather than wishful thinking.”
In an “unholy triad,” the Qatari Emir, Sheikh al-Thani, is ideologically committed to Muslim Brotherhood-oriented groups, Turkey, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. There are factions in Qatar that have no power now, but al-Thani will not rule forever, and the U.S. should start “thinking about off-ramps” for those who are less sympathetic to funding “global Islamist terrorist movement[s]” in the region and beyond. It can be argued that the administration should hold Qatar to account by “designating it a state sponsor of terror.”
Among the Lebanese people, “many of them were sick to death of Hezbollah and what Iran has done to them by colonizing Southern Lebanon through Hezbollah.” America can play a role in assisting the new Lebanese government to build on its fresh start by ensuring that the casting of ballots in elections will be free of Hezbollah’s control of the villages. In the past, Hezbollah would place roadblocks to prevent anti-Hezbollah families from reaching the polls. Gerrymandering imposed by Iranian proxies in Lebanon was so extreme that “voting districts weren’t even contiguous with each other.” In the next elections, what is the U.S. willing to do “to un-gerrymander some of these districts” so that Hezbollah does not always win?
These proposed reforms would “ensure that Hezbollah is not just down but permanently out.” It is worth reminding that the Russians and the Iranians are not going to give up so easily on their positions in Lebanon. The concern is that if the U.S. is “not creating consistent pressure on the Lebanese government to continue to unravel the grip of Hezbollah, we could actually be snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.”
Diplomats serving the region too often have a surfeit of optimism. “U.S. policy is at its strongest when we calibrate our policy towards reality, rather than wishful thinking.”
