(Weekly Standard) Peter Berkowitz - Since the 1980s, Lebanon has served as a battleground in Iran's quest for hegemony in a region critical to vital American national security interests. The country is about 28% Sunni, 28% Shia, and 39% Christian. Several of the liberal Shia to whom we spoke persuasively argued that for Hizbullah, "resistance" does not refer merely to armed struggle against Israel's occupation of this or that piece of land, or even the battle against Israel's very existence, but a fight to the death against the claims of liberty and democracy in Lebanon and throughout the region in the name of Islamic law as dictated by the Iranian mullahs. Regional stability depends most of all on crafting strategies to thwart Tehran's export of Islamic revolution. The writer is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
2009-11-26 08:19:37Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive