Syria uprising puts Hezbollah on defensive

Daily Star ^ | July 19, 2012 | unattributed

[SunkenCiv]

On a main road connecting the Lebanese capital with the south, Sheik Ahmad Assir kneels under a blazing sun to pray and then sits down with supporters at his anti-Hezbollah protest camp and launches into a new tirade against Lebanon's most powerful and well-armed force...

Few in Lebanon have dared take on the Shiite militant group in such a public way, but Assir, a hardline Sunni cleric, senses weakness. He sees a chance to push back against Hezbollah's domination of the country's politics.

The growing popularity among some Sunnis of the previously little known local cleric is a sign of how vulnerable Hezbollah has become as it faces the possibility of the downfall of its crucial ally, President Bashar Assad in Syria. Its reputation as a popular resistance movement has already taken a severe beating for siding with Syria against the anti-Assad uprising even after it supported Arab revolts in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Bahrain...

"May you triumph over the Party of the Devil!" came a shout of support to Assir from one bearded protester, who traveled from the northern, Sunni-dominated city of Tripoli to join in. He used a play on Hezbollah's name, Arabic for Party of God.

Assad's fall would be a nightmare scenario for Hezbollah. Any Sunni-led new regime would likely be far less friendly to the group, or even outright hostile. Regime change could cut off a major supply route for Hezbollah's weapons, heavily damage its political clout in Lebanon and knock out a third of the "Iran-Syria-Hezbollah" axis of "resistance" to Israel.

Nasrallah admitted how crucial the alliance with Damascus is in a speech Wednesday night after Assad's regime suffered its hardest blow yet in the conflict -- a bomb blast that killed three major regime figures, including the defense minister and Assad's brother-in-law.

[SunkenCiv]

Assir checks the beard of a youth from Tripoli (The Daily Star/ Mohammed Zaatari)

[SunkenCiv]

Assir, supporters march, denounce Nasrallah, Berri
July 20, 2012 04:34 PM (Last updated: July 20, 2012 06:04 PM)
By Mohammad Zaatari
The Daily Star
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Politics/2012/Jul-20/181352-assir-and-supporters-march-denounce-nasrallah-berri.ashx

[SunkenCiv]

Batroun MP Butros Harb speaks during an interview with The Daily Star in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, June 7, 2012. (The Daily Star/Mahmoud Kheir)

Harb urges Hezbollah to quit shielding would-be assassin -- MP Butros Harb urged Hezbollah Friday to cease providing political cover for the suspect involved in the attempt on his life, and affirmed that the March 14 coalition is adamant on boycotting the National Dialogue. "We are asking Hezbollah to lift its cover from this person who is a high-ranking party member," Harb told The Daily Star, claiming that the man refused to be interrogated merely because he belonged to the resistance party. Harb, who survived an assassination attempt earlier this month, also said that he obtained the information about the suspect from the investigation into the attempt on his life... Two detonators were found on top of the elevator inside the building housing Harb's Beirut office on July 5... Batroun lawmaker Harb, a leading figure in the March 14 coalition, was the second politician to be the target of an assassination attempt this year. In April, Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea said snipers had fired at him but missed while he was outside his Maarab home. Harb has accused the majority March 8 faction of Prime Minister Najib Mikati's government of providing the plotters with political cover.

[SunkenCiv]

A poster showing Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah is seen attached on a building in Beirut's southern suburbs, Wednesday, July 18, 2012. (The Daily Star/Hasan Shaaban)

Nasrallah renews support for Assad -- Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah renewed his support Wednesday for the regime of embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad and praised the three generals killed in a bombing in Damascus, describing them as comrades-in-arms to the resistance party. He also reiterated his call for dialogue between the Syrian regime and opposition to end the 16-month unrest. Nasrallah also called for genuine national consensus among Lebanon's rival political parties on the need to bolster the country's Army after the role of the military establishment had come under fire by some March 14 politicians in the wake of the May killing of two sheikhs in the northern district of Akkar. In a televised speech addressing a mass rally organized by Hezbollah at Al-Raya Stadium in Beirut's southern suburbs marking the sixth anniversary of the 2006 war with Israel, Nasrallah said Syria under Assad was the main backer of the resistance against Israel, not only at the popular and political level, but also at the military level. "The most important weapons in which we fought Israel during the [2006] July war came from Syria," he said, speaking through a giant screen via a video link. Declaring that Syria had sent rockets to Hamas in the Gaza Strip to fight Israel, Nasrallah said: "Syria risked its presence and regime for the sake of the resistance." He offered condolences over the killing of three Syrian generals in an attack in Damascus, saying that such acts served only Israel's interests.

[rmlew]

Let Nasrallah send the Hizbullah into Syria to fight the Muslim Brotherhood. Jihadi vs Jihadi, let the blood flow.

[SunkenCiv]

It may happen, but in Lebanon; that will take a while. After Assad and his Marie Antoinette-like trophy wife are destroyed sometime in the next few weeks, and maybe even before that happens, what’s left of the Syrian armed forces will break into factions (probably along religious lines), some more successful than others at dealing with the locals in their area of control.

The jihadist factions will emerge in large numbers and over the next couple of years will be unable to prevail either in battle or in unity talks. Syria will become (as had been feared by the Turks and others) a larger, even more vicious version of 1970s-1980s Lebanon. Eventually it will settle down into a feudal-style patchwork with a figurehead central gov’t.

It would be nice if Russia tries to do in Syria what it tried to do in Afghanistan, because the US would have a free hand everywhere else in the world while that went on. The assassinations of Assad’s hierarchy could have been the work of anyone in or out of the Syrian regime, and immediately reminds one of the Soviet coup in Afghanistan back in 1979:

http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_in_Afghanistan#Assassination_of_Amin

It’s puzzling to me that Assad didn’t take the hint and step down — the Russians said in public, “he’s willing to step down”, and he had his mouthpiece deny it. If Assad isn’t dead in a few weeks, I’ll be surprised.

If anyone except Obama were POTUS, Kissinger would have been in conference with the US SoS months ago, explaining exactly how to flip the script and turn Assad against the Russians and eject them from the country, while simultaneously getting everything simmered down and Iranian influence in Syria and Lebanon obliterated.

Syria’s Kurds will declare autonomy or independence and link arms with the Iraqi Kurds. Neither the Turks nor the Iraqis will like that. Iran has a small Kurdish minority, and depending on how their Iraqi puppets are behaving, will probably collaborate with Iraq and Turkey in the attempted annihilation of the Kurdish ethnic minority. The US response? Arranging for new homes in exile for the Kurds, in Europe, the US, and maybe India.

Thanks rmlew.

[bert]

Herein we have understanding that does not get bogged down in superficial restating the media template of the day.
Unmentioned is Hamas, but the same situation applies. Hamas will also wither.

The war is Syria is a war against Iran. The war in Syria is being supported and funded and supplied by those who want and end to Iranian domination in the region. Those engaged do not follow the MSM rules. They don’t run to the press to claim credit and pat themselves on the back. They quietly but decisively act and get the job done. Better than rattling sabers is killing with the sabers. The instruments of death are used to produce death.

With Syria removed from play, Iranian hegemony withers.

It is Bush’s fault. By working with our Arab friends in the Gulf, conquering Iraq, he changed world history and precipitated the events of the day

[Tailgunner Joe]

Another theory is that it was an inside job: Assad ordered Shawkat, Rajha and Turkmani killed because Vladimir Putin had named these men as viable heads of a transitional government in Syria, and so Assad wanted to prove a point to his Russian ally. - "What the assault on the Assad regime means"

[dervish]

There should be a Nasrallah rule. The guy is the walking dead.

http://www.hebrewsongs.com/?song=yallayanasralla

[dervish]

or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8pVvJIzllA

[SunkenCiv]

Or, he was supposed to be at the meeting with them, and the Russians planned to rub all of them out, and pin it on the rebellion. The FINOs right here on FR love Russia, and really love Putin, and only love Assad while Putin does. And they love to blame everything on the rebel factions (who are valiant, but overmatched and outgunned) and/or Saudi Arabia and/or the CIA — there’s a “news” story on the search right now quoting the ever-reliable Iranian agitprop sources as saying the CIA made the hit.

[Tailgunner Joe]

‘Houla massacre an intelligence plot by Western politicians’ - June 01, 2012 - Leader of Russia’s Communist Party says the recent massacre in the Syrian village, Houla, which killed over 100 people, is an intelligence plot concocted by the Western politicians. Gennady Zyuganov noted that some Western politicians and media outlets have created a hysteria on the massacre which took place in the western village of Houla on May 25.