Nasrallah Secretly Meets Iran's FM in Syria

Daily Star:

The loyalty of Hizbullah and the Lebanese Shiite community is again under scrutiny following unconfirmed reports of the party's secretary general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, meeting secretly with Iran's Foreign Minister in Damascus.

Al-Hayat newspaper's correspondent in Damascus, Ibrahim Hammidi, told LBCI's Naharkhom Saed talk show: "The meeting came in the midst of rising tensions between Damascus and the United Nations on the one hand, and the Lebanese government and Premier Fouad Siniora on the other."

Hammidi, though, believed it was not the first time Nasrallah had met with visiting Iranian officials.

"On almost every occasion when an Iranian top official has visited Syria, Nasrallah has met with them," he told LBCI on Tuesday.

However, observers are paying particular attention to the rumors of such a visit amid mounting tensions between Lebanon and Syria.

And once more local critics are demanding that the Shiites decide whether they are "with Lebanon or Syria" in the ongoing row between the neighboring countries.

On condition of anonymity, one Hizbullah official told The Daily Star "under the circumstances it would be a natural event in case [the meeting] had actually happened," but refused to consider the meeting as being directed "in any way" against the Lebanese government.

"Regionally, the issues are not categorized within the local disagreement between Hizbullah and the government," the official added, pointing out "the meeting [between Nasrallah and the Iranian minister] would have been necessitated by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to discuss the future of the whole region, including the future of Hizbullah, Syria and Iran."

The official reiterated that, apart from "the odd voice popping up from time to time," Lebanon's main political groups are in agreement with Hizbullah's policies against Israeli plots and occupation.

The official said: "Sharon considers Tehran and Damascus as the head of Israeli's own axis of evil, and believes they must be overthrown."

During his first official visit to Damascus, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki voiced strong support for Syria in its standoff with the West over Security Council Resolution 1636, which demands Damascus' full cooperation with the UN inquiry into former Premier Rafik Hariri's assassination.

"Nasrallah has also echoed similar stances on almost every occasion," the Hizbullah official said. "Any meeting with Mottaki would be placed within this framework. This is not a secret."

Despite Hizbullah's repeated complaints of the government's performance, Siniora has repeatedly reassured his critics of his commitment to Arab causes but refuses to continue to confirm his sincerity every time it is questioned by an official.

All of this is nothing but sweet talk from both sides, often referred to as the "wait-and-see" game, and is usually taken until the balance of forces tilts in favor of one party.

However, Hizbullah's leadership will continue to launch pre-emptive strikes whenever its leaders sniff out any sign of exclusion in the country's decision-making process.

In all previous "disagreements," Hizbullah has taken the initiative to pick a fight with Premier Fouad Siniora and his parliamentary majority.

Hizbullah's critics claim that the Shiite leadership is turning its community into a fifth column in the Syrian strategy against Lebanon. Hizbullah has not been swayed by such attacks and continues to announce its support of Syria, even more openly than before the Syrian troop withdrawal from Lebanon. READ MORE

The resistance, as well as their local critics, are confident a conflict over the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1559 is imminent.

While it is only a matter of time until tensions come to a boil, the party that controls how to time the conflict will prevail.