The Hand That Feeds the Fire

Bush's decision to invade Iraq as part of the "global war on terror" made America a party to the conflicts on the ground as never before. Saddam Hussein's regime, loathsome as it was, provided a strategic balance to the power of a radicalized Iran. Now the invasion has put Washington head-to-head with Tehran. The confrontation is military, economic, political, ideological, direct and indirect, overt and covert--and on several fronts the Iranians appear to have outmaneuvered the administration. Prominent Iranian journalist Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, who is also an expert on Lebanese affairs, suggests that Tehran's next step, far from making war, will be to present itself as a peacemaker. "This will present an-other opportunity to show its regional power," he said.

At the foreign ministers' meeting in Paris last week, there was general consternation at the Iranian-backed violence on the ground in the Middle East. "But what can we do?" one senior European diplomat asked. "It's all part of the same problem [with Iran], but we cannot tackle it all 'cosmologically.' We have to take it on piece by piece." Each set of players linked to Iran has its own interests, and the Tehran regime itself seems seriously divided. The Iranian challenge is not a Gordian knot that can be sliced through in one bold stroke. It's a bag full of knots, each of which has to be untied and, if possible, untangled from the rest.

Hizbullah: Iran created the Shiite Lebanese militia Hizbullah--the "Party of God"--after Israeli troops stormed into Beirut in 1982. Initially trained by Iran's Revolutionary Guards, the group continues to receive extensive funding and weapons from Tehran, including the arsenal of more than 13,000 short- and medium-range rockets and missiles now being used to attack Israel. According to terrorism analyst Magnus Ranstorp, an expert on Hizbullah who is now at the Swedish National Defence College, Hizbullah's decision-making council normally includes two Iranians. "Hizbullah is not a Lebanese organization, it's a proxy for Iran," says Ephraim Sneh, a former Israeli general and Labor Party member of the Knesset. "Nasrallah has never carried out an operation on this scale without his masters."

On Friday Nasrallah gleefully announced that his group had hit an Israeli warship off the coast of Lebanon. The vessel was badly damaged by the radar-guided weapon, identified by the Israelis as a C-802 antiship missile assembled in Iran. "There are very clear fingerprints of Iranian involvement," Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan told NEWSWEEK. Even so, the officer admitted, "whether it was operated by Iran, I can't confirm." Other senior Israelis were less cautious in their claims. Former Mossad director Danny Yatom says Iranians have been launching Hizbullah's longer-range rockets, like the ones that hit the Israeli port city of Haifa last week. "The finger that pulled the trigger was an Iranian finger," he declares--although U.S. and British intelligence sources say they doubt it.

In a broader sense, nothing Nasrallah does could be accomplished without Iranian backing, but he has also become a power in his own right. Last year, after Syrian troops were forced to withdraw from Lebanon by international pressure and massive street protests, Nasrallah's strength actually increased. The same U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559 that required the Syrian pullout also called for the disarming of militias. Hizbullah refused, and there was no force in the country strong enough to take it on. "Today, Nasrallah is the dictator of Lebanon," says Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres. "He has his own army. He doesn't ask anybody what to do, least of all the Lebanese government."

Nevertheless, Israel says the massive destruction of vital Lebanese infrastructure is intended to show Lebanon's people the price they will pay for Nasrallah's decision to instigate a war. "You know that we are doing the right thing, and that if we succeed, Lebanon would be the beneficiary," Israel's U.N. Ambassador Dan Gillerman told Lebanon's envoy as they appeared before the Security Council last week.