Which Yemen? Which Lebanon? Which Palestinians?
Which Yemen? Which Lebanon? Which Palestinians?
Lebanon has a government. Nobody in the West disputes this. The Lebanese government, therefore, is the only one with a legitimate claim to negotiate over its own affairs of state. And yet somehow, Iran’s insistence that it also speaks for Lebanon because its illegal occupation forces remain on Lebanese territory hasn’t been laughed out of the room.
Iran plays this game of de-sovereignization all around the region, enabled at times by the West. But how to put Humpty Dumpty back together again now that the Islamic Republic has cracked up the Middle East? And does the West even have the desire to do so?
Lebanon is a pretty straightforward case compared to Iran’s other expansionist projects, and yet the West can’t even get this one right. For the past two and a half years, the region has been engulfed in the flames lit by Iran’s Palestinian client, Hamas. European leaders who recognized a “state of Palestine” did so precisely at the moment when Hamas emerged as the only Palestinian governing entity with control over its territory. The IDF has to undertake regular security sweeps in Ramallah, for example, just to ensure that Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas can enter one of the PA’s major West Bank towns.
“Recognition” was done to punish Israel rather than help Palestinians, which is why the only beneficiary was Hamas. Which means that even the countries that officially consider Abbas to be the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian polity have nonetheless boosted Hamas at the expense of the PA. Since Hamas is an extension of Iran, it is the criminal regime in Tehran that is being elevated as a voice of sovereignty on behalf of Palestinians. Iran is cannibalizing the dreamed-of “state of Palestine,” just as it has been doing to the actual, existing (for now) state of Lebanon.
One lesson of this, incidentally, is that any “state of Palestine” created at this moment would be created under Iranian occupation and would be divided from the start. Iran’s expulsion from future Palestinian territory, therefore, is a clear prerequisite for Palestinian self-determination.
Meanwhile: If Palestinian-governed enclaves are two not-yet-states, and Lebanon is in perpetual civil war between its government and Iran’s occupation forces, Yemen is a third kind of Iran-caused disaster. It is practically two states at the moment—though both are hanging by a thread.
For years, the Houthis constituted an insurgency in Yemen, but they took advantage when the Arab Spring swept the country’s president out of power in 2012. The civil war continued and the Houthis took the capital in 2015. By that time, Iran was fully invested on the Houthis’ behalf, and the Saudis had intervened on the other side.
But Iranian material support for the Houthis’ coup was revealed years before Sanaa fell; Yemen’s breakdown was enabled by the mullahs in Tehran, with some of it happening in plain sight. The Houthis weren’t signed as a client once they took power. Just the opposite: Iran was already involved in the methodical dismantling of the state.
So who is Yemen, exactly? It isn’t quite two states but it’s getting there. Iran’s clients control the capital and many of the key institutions. But they are not the recognized, legitimate state power. So as long as Yemen is, even if barely, a single state, it is a foreign-occupied state.
It is impossible to look at this situation honestly and believe that Israel is the destabilizing factor in the Mideast. Israel is working to restore full Lebanese sovereignty to Lebanese territory. The same is true around the region: Working against Iran is the only path to stability. Iran isn’t even pretending otherwise anymore.
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