ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center
SOURCE: DEBKAfile
25January2011 8:09amEST
GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: The two days Iran's new foreign minister Ali Salehi spent in Damascus from Saturday night, Jan. 22, were enough to keep Syrian president Bashar Assad in place for Tehran's final steps in its grab for Lebanon: the installation of a puppet government in Beirut, DEBKAfile's intelligence sources report.
Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah's performance Sunday, Jan. 23, was a crucial piece of misdirection: He stepped out of character to call in dulcet tones for a unity government in Beirut. This sounded as though he was following Assad's orders last week to go for a broad coalition which left the prime minister he toppled Saad Hariri out in the cold and strengthened Syrian influence in Beirut. But meanwhile, a parliamentary majority had been put together to install as prime minister Najib Mikati, a 55-year old Lebanese tycoon, who was willing to pledge in advance to cut Beirut's ties with the UN tribunal – STL – investigating the 2005 assassination of Rafiq Hariri and declare its summonses and rulings null and void.
Mikati has built a business empire in Europe, Africa and the Middle East through his personal connections with the Syrian president and Hizballah leader and the use of their intelligence facilities to promote his interests. He was awarded the premiership in return for a commitment to disqualify the STL as his first order of business, thereby saving Iran, Damascus and Hizballah the embarrassment of a head-on clash with the international court over its summonses – not only for the extradition of Hizballah's top security officials, but also against Iranian and Syrian regime officials suspected of complicity in the Hariri assassination.
By having the duly appointed Lebanese prime minister delegitimize the tribunal, all three can insist they are obliged to disobey court decrees against the will of the Lebanese government and its people and barred from following the orders of a body declared illegitimate and operating at the behest of Washington and Tel Aviv.
By a single stroke, therefore, Tehran has checked one of President Barack Obama's most critical Middle East policy moves, one which hinged on support for the Hariri tribunal and the strengthening of a pro-West administration in Beirut. Instead, Washington wakes up to find an Iranian puppet ruling Lebanon. Tehran accomplished this two days after fatally stalling the world powers' attempt to bring Iran around to a diplomatic resolution of its drive toward a nuclear bomb. In two days of talks with six powers in Istanbul, ending Friday, Jan. 21, the Iranian delegation refused to budge an inch.
A day later, Iran's foreign minister was already ensconsed in Damascus tying up the ends of its grab for Lebanon. (read full report)
The move came despite demonstrations by thousands of supporters of outgoing Prime Minister Saad Hariri in the city of Tripoli as part of a "day of rage".
