Let us set aside all this protocol, the official invitation and reception, the parade of the Republican Guard, the lunches and the dinners, the speeches and the signing of agreements. Indeed, the visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Lebanon is not just a traditional visit, in which a head of state visits another state, even if the two are on friendly terms. Rather, it is a visit to the “Hezbollah State”, which is part of the broader coalition of “defiance” led by Iran from Afghanistan to Gaza, a coalition currently waging the battle of gradually taking control of decision-making capabilities in this country. Ahmadinejad has come to say to the Arabs that he has taken from them “the focal point”, as he described Lebanon before his arrival. He has also come to announce that Arab sponsorship of the Land of the Cedars can no longer preserve the internal balances of power which were established by the Taif Agreement and which must be changed, and can no longer maintain Lebanon's external role, based on avoiding to enter coalitions and alliances, as it has in effect become a fundamental party to the strategy of the Islamic Republic, which considers itself to have invested in this country for over three decades and considers that it must reap the fruits of its investment. Indeed, bringing Lebanon into the “Resistance Coalition” has for Iran and its allies become a done deal, waiting only to settle a few details and to save a few appearances, a process which could start next week at the latest. In this Iran especially agrees with Syria, which has asserted that its good relations are limited to “the Resistance” and that developing its relationship with Lebanon at the official level is contingent on “consensus” there, i.e. on the process of complying with Hezbollah's demands of withdrawing from the Special Tribunal and tying Lebanon's domestic and foreign policies to that very coalition. As for the greater purpose of the visit, it exceeds the country's ten thousand square kilometers to announce that Arab approaches to the problems of the Arab World, and especially the Palestinian issue, are no longer useful, that Iran holds the alternatives and the ready-made recipes, and that its opinion must be considered in all the region's affairs, however small. This is why Ahmadinejad said in his press conference in Baabda Palace yesterday, breaching every diplomatic norm, that he “want[s] full liberation of occupied territory in Lebanon, Syria and Palestine”. It is no accident for Ahmadinejad's visit to coincide with the Iranian Navy lowering the flag of the United Arab Emirates from the Southern part of the island of Abu Musa and raising the Iranian flag instead, or for it to come shortly after Bahrain's dismantlement of a secret network that aimed at breaching national security and at undermining stability and national unity, inspired by the Lebanese “model” and perhaps organically connected to it. Hezbollah favored the Iranian President with a “Shiite” reception at the airport and on the way to the Presidential Palace – in an extensive version of the “rehearsal” that was the reception of Brigadier-General Jamil Sayyed a few weeks ago, an event which consecrated Beirut International Airport as part of Hezbollah's zones of direct influence. Yet the waves of the “Shiite sea” that carried welcome signs and shouted slogans in Farsi are likely to head towards the Lebanese interior and to drown it. Indeed, the man, whose history is not reassuring, speaks of “rebuilding” Lebanon while laying open his treasury and his arsenal before his allies, showering them with rockets and with all the instruments of “defiance”, and planning with them to thrust the small country into the flames of a battle that has neither limits nor an end.
