THE DAY THE STL GOES BAD!!!!
Yesterday I talked about why the STL, Special Tribunal on Lebanon, event is a real flash point for the Middle East and for the US. Tonight I will give my opinion, I know... everyone has one, how the STL may trigger a conflict and why Iran may or may not want it to happen just now.
How might this event happen?
Just take a look at the map of Lebanon I posted above and it is easy to see why the division lines are so tenuous. Lebanon is not your usual "melting pot". Like Europe and England, the Lebanese version of multiculturalism is nothing more than dividing lines across the country. make one wrong turn and you can end up in bad guy territory depending on what side your belong to.
Ok; Hezbollah, has it's marching orders as well as their own goals. Iran wants Hezbollah to be positioned to strike or counter strike at Israel across from their other main force, Hamas in Gaza. Stack this on top of Syria and now maybe Egypt and the Iranians have more than just a strategic advantage, they could have a checkmate move!! Hezbollah had to take their time gaining power in Lebanon based on the demographics referred to earlier. Their actions of last month, bringing down the Lebanese coalition government, was not only part of the master plan from Iran, but it was executed at the perfect time to begin the process of circumventing the STL report / trial or at least that is what Iran hopes for.
Here are the next moves, again in my opinion.
1. The STL announces the list of Hezbollah members the UN finds to be responsible for the murder of the Lebanese Prime Minister in 2005.
2. Hezbollah lets the interim Government announce they do not support the STL.
3. Hezbollah leadership gives a canned press conference, a fiery one, that again claims the whole STL process is a US/ Israeli generated event to discredit Hezbollah. Oh ya; did I mention the UN officially doesn't recognize Hezbollah as a Terrorist organization? True story. The UN official description of Hezbollah is a Political movement that is illegally armed!!!! WHAT??? Political Correctness gone wild. Again, we will hear that Israel actually killed the Lebanese Prime Minister.
4. Iran will weigh in stating the people of Lebanon have given their support to Hezbollah and the "West" is interfering with Lebanese internal politics. Hint. This is a theme that will carry a great deal of weight in the Middle East right now.
5. The US, let's hope, will announce the UN / STL must be allowed to go forward in the name of justice or some other corny DoS statement like that.
6. The Lebanese military will do all it can to keep the Sunni factions from kicking up more than just small demonstrations.
7. The UN / STL will announce the proceeding will go on in " Abstention" if need be, thereby circumventing the Lebanese Government supporting or not supporting the STL findings.
8. Hezbollah and its backers, Syria, who just may keep a low profile in this event and I will talk about why that might be tomorrow night, and Iran will declare the trail and all its proceedings null and void.
9. UN / STL will issue warrants for the Hezbollah suspects and Hezbollah will ignore the whole process.
10. UN and others will threaten Embargos on Lebanon for non compliance.
11. The other Arab nations will weigh in according to their religious heritage at the sametime trying to stand as the peace keepers.
Thus; the battle lines are set!!!!
Conflict!!! Ah.. I will get into that on Wednesday night.
