Iran Poised To Be "Mother of All World Threats"
By Walid Phares
I gave an interview to NewsMax.com that reflects my current analysis and predictions for the Middle East. An excerpt follows, and you can see the entire interview here:
For anyone who still thinks the Israeli-Lebanon war is just a border scuffle, one Middle East expert shouts a dire warning: "As soon as a cease fire occurs, the ‘Hezbollah Blitzkrieg' will crumble the ‘Lebanese Republic of Weimar' and install its own ‘Khumeinist Republic' on the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean. The consequences of such a development are far beyond imagination for the region and the world. Hezbollah would have paved the way for Iran to create the mother of all world threats since Hitler."
So cautions Professor Walid Phares, author of "Future Jihad," a visiting fellow with the European Foundation for Democracy in Brussels, and a senior fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C.
In an exclusive interview with NewsMax, the Lebanese-born Phares likens the current Hezbollah offensive in Lebanon to a "putsch" -- with the convoluted aims of reestablishing a pro-Syrian-Iranian regime in Lebanon, reconstructing a third wing to the Tehran-Damascus axis, reanimating the Arab-Israeli conflict, rejuvenating Syrian dominance, isolating Jordan, reaching out to Hamas, crumbling Iraq, and unleashing Iran's nuclear programs.
The author also sees half-measures and premature truces as catalysts to even bloodier future conflicts:
"If Israel takes 40 kilometers [into the southern belly of Lebanon] and sits, Hezbollah and its allies will take the rest of the country and eliminate the Cedars Revolution [the Lebanese Democracy movement]. That is a certainty. Then the two camps will clash in a wider war in few more months."
As a corollary, however, the expert advises that if Israel gets even more aggressive and moves instead through the Bekaa (a fertile valley in Lebanon and Syria, located about 19 miles east of Beirut), it would shut down the Syrian-Lebanese borders (a major supply line for war materials flowing to Hezbollah)....
The long story short, says the expert: Syria, Iran and Hezbollah outmaneuvered the Lebanese politicians, as well as the West, by among other things keeping pro-Syrian Emile Jamil Lahoud, president of the Republic of Lebanon at the helm.
"It was terrible how the Lebanese politicians lost all the opportunities provided by the Cedars Revolution," laments Phares, "but it is worse that the bureaucrats in the U.S. and Europe didn't understand what Hezbollah was doing."