Iran leads way on Sunni-Shite rapprochement

I must have read a dozen times in as many different mainstream places this week that the perpetual turmoil in the Middle East has nothing to do with the last 100 years of Western meddling in the region, but everything to do with the last thousand plus years of Sunni-Shite animosities.

That is, if nothing else, a convenient way of getting us off the hook. Insofar as that is true, one would think that the same know-nothing Western experts who put forward that argument would rejoice at the initiatives taken by Shia Iran to reach out to their Sunni cousins.



In fact, both Hamas boss Ismail Haniya and Uber-Ayatolla Ali Khamenei should be deemed Nobel Peace Prize worthy for their efforts to bring together the long-warring branches of the family of the Prophet, bless His name.

You will notice, however, that those same Western experts are not at all keen on any hint of Sunni-Shite reconciliation. Why do you suppose that is? Could it be that at every turn over the past twenty years, the Nations of Virtue, ie the West, have done whatever they could to fan the flames of the Sunni-Shia rivalry?

Could that be because virtually every Sunni-led country is in America's pocket?

Could that Sunni-Shia rivalry, now that it has reached mutually genocidal proportions, be itself the product of our meddling?

Could that explain our fixation on Iran's imaginary nukes, while the all-too-real Judeo-Christian nukes in Israel and the Sunni nukes in Pakistan give us no cause for concern whatsoever?

Could a successful rapprochement be the undoing of our divide-and-conquer strategy, a strategy that has served the West so well and condemned the people of the Middle East to perpetual horror?

No wonder our mainstream presstitutes never tire of demonizing Iran and Hamas!

Saudi Arabia and the $3B gift to Lebanon's Army; what could go wrong?

For one thing, the fact that the biggest banker and supplier of the jihadist factions in Syria is becoming the de facto banker of the Lebanese army implies a certain common interest between the State of Lebanon and the jihadists. Will that translate into direct military support of anti-Assad fighters? And when it does, will Assad's army feel free to take the battle to the Lebanese Army?

Secondly, any encroachment by the Lebanese army on Hezbollah's area of influence in southern Lebanon will be fiercely resisted. While Hezbollah is widely portrayed as an Iranian proxy in Western media, the reality is that the Shite population of Lebanon sees them as a legitimate defense force, and only those Lebanese completely blinded by wishful thinking believe that more hardware would allow the Lebanese army to rout Hezbollah military forces.

Thirdly, what impact will internecine violence in southern Lebanon have on the relative stability that has obtained on the Lebanon-Israel border since Hezbollah forced the end of the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon? Even Lebanese who are not Hezbollah supporters understand that the Israeli withdrawal was a Hezbollah victory for all Lebanese, not just the Shia. 

Finally, while three billions may buy a lot of deadly hardware, the generosity of the Saudis can only have the effect of stimulating reciprocal generosity on the part of Iran and Russia, who have thus far shown no inclination to back away from their support of Assad. This Saudi gesture will inevitably lead to a massive escalation in the regional arms race. 

Given that the Syrian conflict is already leaking across Syria's borders on all sides, such an influx of weaponry will all but guarantee a regional conflagration that is bound to engulf not only Lebanon, but Turkey, Jordan, and Israel as well.