LESS than three days after President Obama tried to woo Islamist forces with a major speech in Cairo, secular democratic forces in the Middle East won a dramatic victory in a crucial election in Lebanon.
Two rival blocs faced off — one pro-Iranian, one pro-Western.
The March 8 Coalition is led by Hezbollah (The Party of God), a semi-clandestine Shiite outfit with a private army financed and controlled by Iran. Also in the bloc: the Amal (Hope) Movement, a pro-Syrian Shiite group; a Maronite Christian group led by ex-Gen. Michel Aoun (a populist megalomaniac who was Tehran’s handpicked but unsuccessful candidate for the Lebanese presidency last year), and the Armenian Dashnak Party, a Fascist group with historic ties to German Nazis and Italian fascists of the 1930s and 1940s.
The secularist democratic bloc, known as the March 18 Coalition, includes the Future Movement led by Sa’ad Hariri (son of assassinated Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri), as well as the Progressive Socialist Party of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and two Maronite Christian parties (led by ex-President Amin Gemayel and former guerrilla leader Samir Geagea).
In the five years it has held the government (led by Prime Minister Fouad Siniora), the March 18 Coalition has forced Syria to end its 29-year military presence in Lebanon — and resisted mounting Iranian pressure to transform Lebanon into a frontline bunker for a war on Israel.
Sunday’s general election offered Lebanon a clear choice between becoming an Iranian satellite or a Western ally. The results show a decisive rejection of the Iranian option.
In a historically high turnout, voters rejected the Islamist-led coalition in favor of parties that see Lebanon as part of the modern world. By the latest count, the March 18 Coalition won 71 seats in the 128-seat parliament, giving it the majority needed to lead the next government. (The bloc will also enjoy the support of three anti-Iranian independents.)
The pro-Iranian Islamist bloc captured 57 seats. Hezbollah won 11 seats, Amal 10. Aoun’s group had hoped for 35 seats but got only 23. The coalition’s other 14 seats belong to various splinter Christian and Druze groups tied to Syria and Iran.
Iranian media had promised a “political tsunami” in Lebanon that would be followed by the triumphant re-election this Friday of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who forced Lebanon into a war with Israel in 2006. “A new Lebanon, led by Hezbollah, will be the frontline of the war to wipe Israel off the map,” said Muhammad-Ali Ramin, an Ahmadinejad adviser.
Now some analysts see the news of the Islamists’ defeat in Lebanon as a sign that Ahmadinejad, too, could be booted from office in Friday’s voting. We shall see.
What is certain, however, is that Lebanon is the latest country to produce a major defeat for Islamists and their allies in elections.
Last year, Pakistani voters all but wiped out the Islamist parties, reducing their share of the vote from 11 percent to 3 percent. Then Iraq marginalized its Islamists in a crucial set of municipal elections — with Islamist parties losing control of every province they’d governed since liberation. Last month, Kuwait voters followed the trend by cutting the Islamist presence in their parliament in half — while electing four women for the first time.
If the trend continues, Islamist parties may well see defeat in coming elections across the greater Middle East, from Afghanistan to the Palestinian territories, in the next year or so.
Everywhere, the most effective weapon against the Islamist Dracula is the fresh air of freedom and choice.
The democratic powers shouldn’t try to flatter the Islamists, as Obama did in Cairo, in the name of multicultural respect for “differences.” One shouldn’t respect what isn’t respectable.
The only realistic policy for the United States is to support the Middle East’s democratic forces in their double fight against despotism and Islamism.
Washington could help Lebanon’s democratic coalition by supporting a rescheduling of the country’s foreign debt (via the Paris Club negotiations), by lifting the ban on the supply of defensive weapons for the Lebanese armed forces and by speeding up the UN investigation into Hariri’s 2005 murder.
President Obama should welcome the victory of the democratic bloc and invite the next Lebanese prime minister to the White House at the earliest opportunity. Obama’s popularity in Lebanon would make it much easier for the victors there to pursue a pro-US strategy.
President George W. Bush’s Freedom Agenda is alive and well in the Middle East. Obama should adopt it as his own — and aim his policies at the democratic future, rather than the Islamist past.
Amir Taheri’s latest book is “The Persian Night: Iran Under the Khomeinist Revolution.”