America and Hezbollah during decades of war

Written by Nasser Kandil,

When Washington presented its project for an Israeli war that would reform Lebanon and the position of Syria in 1982, Hezbollah was not born yet, but Washington had launched the war of Iraq against Iran two years ago and the war of the Muslim Brotherhood against Syria three years ago. Moreover it had launched with the cooperation of Saudi Arabia Al-Qaeda Organization against the Soviet army in Afghanistan. All of which were projects that are integrated with two main goals; to employ Camp David path, the importance of the exit of Egypt from the conflict with Israel, the consolidation of the Saudi leadership in the region, and to confine the expansion which started to emerge with the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and what it led to revolutionary popular background in the region that adopted the Palestinian Cause with the slogan of Al Imam Al- Khomeini “Today Iran, Tomorrow Palestine”. The Arab street repeated “O, Khomeini, we will be your soldiers towards liberation” This slogan started from Beirut and it spread in all the Arab capitals. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon sponsored by the US Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, and then its consequences were under the control of the US envoy Philip Habib. It was not a war against on Hezbollah, since it was not yet present, it was a preemptive war for its birth and the birth of any resisting axis that will cancel the historical consequences witnessed by Washington with Camp David, and it worried about them with the victory of the Iranian revolution.

During  a decade of confrontation the American project has been defeated in the region in its main front despite the attempts of the compensation through the Gulf War and the positioning under the pretext of the occupation of Kuwait which was the outcome of the American embroilment of Iraq, as the embroilment in the war on Iran, it is the same path of embroilment which was culminated by the invasion of Iraq and occupying it, but the main path of confrontation has led to the failure of Camp David path and the US positioning on the coast of the Mediterranean  from the gate of Beirut, so the Marines fled and the seventieth of May Agreement  which is the Lebanese version of Camp David has fallen along with the war of the Muslim Brotherhood on Syria.

After the disintegration of the Soviet Union the Americans expanded the confrontation, they drew their plans for the whole world, Europe witnessed their victories after the war of Yugoslavia, they were unique in drawing the international politics and they tried to contain Syria to the Madrid Peace process and Al Taif Agreement and to charge it with the administration of  Lebanon, but the second decade witnessed more of the American failure in the main confrontation; it is the future of the conflict with Israel after the resistance led by Hezbollah has emerged as an outcome of the consequences of the Iranian revolution on hand, and an outcome of the spirit of the revolutionary people and their eagerness to the resistance on the other hand. The culmination was by the withdrawal of Israel from Lebanon without negotiation, or cost, or conditions, so this was a clear pure victory for the resistance. The Americans have been defeated despite their side successes in Europe which prepared for them the success of their ruling the world and their ability to draw politics with more power where there is no need to use it as their new Secretary Defense Donald Rumsfeld said.

In the third decade, Asia formed the arena of the US War, there was the war of Afghanistan and then the invasion of Iraq, the goal was to besiege Iran, to  subdue it, and to threaten Syria and to tame it. Due to the failure, America decided to repeat what it did in the year 1982; it beheld Israel the responsibility of waging the war in 2006 to crush the resistance as an entry to formulate new Middle East. The result for the second time was the failure, but this time by Hezbollah, so it waged the war of chaos and brought Al-Qaeda organization which it founded for a similar war decades ago, to fight the ideologues with the ideologues. But after the failure of its two reserve armies Israel and Al-Qaeda in two consecutive wars, it witnessed the birth of new international equations. Russia returned stronger than what it was on the days of the Soviet Union from the gate of the war on Syria. And Iran returned stronger than it was before the war of Iraq against it, in addition to Hezbollah the regional equations maker which cannot be denied.

America still has many plans and projects, but the wars which are like the chess are different from it, because in chess the second half does not start as the first half started, but from where it ended. Today’s America is different than America from three decades and a half, as Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Al-Qaeda organization. On the other hand, Russia, Iran, Syria, Iraq, and Hezbollah are not as before too. The imbalance has become double falling here and emerging there, and it is not mere a deceit that the Americans put the slogan “resisting the hegemony of Hezbollah on the region” in order to meet the chiefs of staff of their armies and the armies of Israel, Saudi Arabia and their allies after decades from the emergence of Hezbollah under the slogan of “resisting the US-Israeli hegemony on the region”.

Translated by Lina Shehadeh,