Mick Hartley

Michael J Totten interviews Michael Young, the opinion page editor at Lebanon's Daily Star and author of a new book about Lebanon's troubles, The Ghosts of Martyrs Square. Young sees a bleak future for "the most liberal and open of the Arabic-speaking countries" as long as the Iranian-backed "anti-state" of Hezbollah – "a party whose very existence as an armed organization is conditioned on the absence of a Lebanese state able to impose a monopoly over the use of violence" – continues to enjoy the support of the Shiite community:

Hezbollah has the weapons required to engage in a substantial fight with Israel. In a future war, Hezbollah will have more firepower than it had in 2006, more advanced systems, and it will create a messier war that what we had four years ago….

The next war will be much more devastating. The Israelis will bomb Lebanese infrastructure. They may well bomb parts of Beirut. The Israelis will want to show Lebanon, Hezbollah, and the Shia community in particular that any future war will bring complete ruination. They will want to show that the next war would be the war that ends all wars between Lebanon and Israel. […]

If Iran develops a nuclear weapon, I think the Israelis will come to the conclusion that they cannot allow Hezbollah to be strong on their northern border. They can manage Hamas to a certain extent, but Hezbollah is a different matter. So I think if Iran develops nuclear weapons, Israel will feel the need to attack Lebanon and try to neutralize Hezbollah. I'm not a military specialist, but I think that would have to involve a ground war and that the Israelis would have to move as far north as they can to destroy Hezbollah's infrastructure. It would be, as I said earlier, a very messy affair.

It's worth reading the whole piece.