By Barry Rubin

The story of the U.S. engagement with Syria and the sanctions issue regarding Iran’s nuclear program are fascinating. Each day there’s some new development showing how the Obama Administration is acting like a deer standing in the middle of a busy highway admiring the pretty automobile headlights.

Or to put it a different way, it is like watching the monster sneak up behind someone. Even though you know he’s not going to turn around, you can’t help but watch in fascinated horror and yelling out: “Look out!” But he pays no attention.

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By Jonathan Spyer

The war of words is continuing. The latest salvos were fired last week by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, and his Lebanese ally and client Hassan Nasrallah. Ahmedinejad reportedly told Nasrallah that if Israel attacks Hizballah, the response should be sufficient to lead to the closure, once and for all, of the Israeli ‘case.’ In the same week, Nasrallah promised attendees at a ‘Resistance Martyrs Day’ celebration that his movement would target Israel’s infrastructure in the event of further hostilities. The Hizballah leader mentioned airports, factories and refineries as possible targets.

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by Raymond Ibrahim*

“Al-Qaeda’s Zawahiri Accuses Obama of Trying to ‘Enslave’ Arab World.” So reads the headline of a recent Fox News report, which goes on to quote Zawahiri saying things such as “Obama’s policy is nothing but another cycle in the Crusader and Zionist campaign to enslave and humiliate us, and to occupy our land and steal our wealth.”

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By Jonathan Spyer

Lebanese Prime Minister Sa’ad Hariri’s December 19 visit to Damascus is the latest marker in the return of the coercive Syrian presence in Lebanon. It is also an indication of Syria’s successful defiance of the west.

Hariri’s ritual gesture of supplication to Bashar al-Assad in Damascus was the inevitable adjustment of the leader of a small state to a changing regional balance of power. Hariri and his supporters have little reason to take pride in the gesture. But the real responsibility for it lies not in Beirut, but further afield.

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By Jonathan Spyer

The latest events in Lebanon offer an image in miniature of larger regional developments. The Iranian-backed Shi’ite Islamist movement Hezbollah is pursuing a long-term strategy intended to eventually deliver Lebanon into its hands. In the short term, the greater commitment of the movement’s cadres and its public is delivering impressive results. But at the core of the strategic thinking of Hezbollah and its patrons lie a series of delusions, which are likely to bring about the defeat of the movement over time. Between that point and the present, however, further strife and conflict are likely.

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by Michael Rubin*

While the Obama administration and congressional leaders may justify renewed engagement with Syria with their desire to jumpstart the Middle East peace process, they ignore the very issue that lies at the heart of the Syrian threat to U.S. national security: Syrian support for radical Islamist terror. This may seem both illogical and counterfactual given past antagonism between the ‘Alawite-led regime and the Muslim Brotherhood, but there is overwhelming evidence that President Bashir al-Asad has changed Syrian strategic calculations and that underpinning terror is crucial to the foreign policy of the country.

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By Jonathan Spyer

The explosion in the south Lebanese village of Tayr Felseir offers the latest evidence of the way in which Hizbullah is rebuilding its infrastructure following the Second Lebanon War in 2006. In the pre-2006 period, Hizbullah maintained its military infrastructure in open countryside areas often declared off-limits to all but the movement’s personnel. The rebuilt infrastructure, by contrast, has been constructed within the fabric of civilian life in south Lebanon. This process has taken place largely undisturbed by the Lebanese and UN military personnel conspicuously deployed throughout the south.

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By Jonathan Spyer

A famous Hizbullah marching song, “Hizbullah ya ayuni” (Hizbullah - my eyes), contains the following verse: “And today through the blood of the brave, the merciful creator has given us victory, and the whole world and all people have begun to speak of our glory.” Unfortunately for the Lebanese Shi’ite Islamist movement, the main world news story in which it currently features concerns matters of a distinctly inglorious type, with which it would undoubtedly prefer not to be associated.

The revelations concerning the activities of the so-called Lebanese Bernie Madoff - Salah Ezz el-Din of the south Lebanese village of Ma’aroub - are serving to tarnish the image of selflessness and idealism in which Hizbullah likes to present itself. The movement has long sought to differentiate itself from the notoriously corrupt, distinctly nonidealistic political and financial practices with which Lebanon is often associated. Ezz el-Din’s activities suggest that on close observation, Hizbullah may be less different from its surroundings than its admirers (especially in the west) like to think.

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By Barry Rubin

The more things change, the more they remain the same, sayeth the French. The Bible states that there’s nothing new under the sun. Doing a television interview today made me reflect on the relationship of those concepts to the contemporary Middle East.

It is untrue of course that nothing changes in the region. Quite the contrary: consider the recent upheaval in Iran and a whole list of other events. In fact, there might be truth in the idea that big explosions in the region are more common than small, fundamental changes.

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By Jonathan Spyer

The London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi has published what it claims are key details of the new Middle East peace plan to be presented by President Obama in his speech in Cairo on June 4. Details of the plan made the front page of two leading Israeli newspapers.

If the revelations prove accurate, they reveal a US administration as yet unacquainted with several basic facts of life concerning politics and strategy in the Middle East.

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By Barry Rubin

Suddenly, the United States has awoken to the fact that in one month Lebanon is likely to be taken over by a radical government and hijacked into the Iran-Syria alliance. Unfortunately, this apparently doesn’t mean it — or European states — are going to do anything about it.

In early June, the odds are — though one can still hope otherwise — that the parliamentary majority will be held by a coalition backed by Tehran and Damascus. Hizballah is not going to “take over” the country politically and that is a point no doubt which will be used by governments and media to prove that there’s no problem.

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By Barry Rubin (*See note)

Mahdi Akef, supreme guide of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, has defied his own country’s government to ally himself with Hizballah. What makes this such a remarkable and high-risk step?

• The Muslim Brotherhood is Sunni Muslim; the Lebanese Hizballah group is Shia. Brotherhood leaders do not view Shia Islamists as brothers and in the past have been alarmed at the rising power of Shia forces in Lebanon and Iraq.
• Hizballah is a client of Iran’s regime. As a Shia and non-Arab power, Iran is not on the Brotherhood’s Ramadan greeting card list.

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by Eyal Zisser*

On the night of February 12, 2008, a car bomb in Damascus killed Imad Mughniyeh, the head of Hezbollah’s military wing. The assassination shattered the legend of Hezbollah’s invincibility. Intelligence services of at least forty countries had pursued Mughniyeh for decades, and he had succeeded in evading them all. His elusiveness substantiated Hezbollah’s claim that its enemies had no hope of finding cracks in the group’s network or in the ranks of its faithful. Mughniyeh’s death destroyed that myth. Since that fateful Tuesday, every child in Lebanon knows that whoever got Mughniyeh will be able to get to Hasan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary-general, as well.

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By Aaron Mannes*

In my day job at the University of Maryland’s Laboratory for Computational Cultural Dynamics I work with a team of computer scientists and social scientists to build models of terrorist group behavior. As the in-house TerrorWonk my role is to “interpret” the results and see if they yield any useful insights. I’ve co-authored papers on both Hezbollah and Hamas ( only the abstract is posted online).

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By Barry Rubin

For years, India has been subjected to periodic terrorist attacks throughout the country. But what happened in Mumbai is something new and different: a full-scale terrorist war.

This is the kind of threat and problem Israel has been facing for decades. What are the lessons for India from Israel’s experience, points also reflected by India’s own recent history?

First, India needs and has the right to expect international sympathy and help. It will get sympathy but will it get help? Once it is clear that other countries must actually do something, incur some costs, possibly take some risks, everything changes.

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