Even as Saudi Arabia has discontinued its massive military aid to Lebanon due to Hizballah’s success in infiltrating and coopting the Lebanese armed forces, America just sent Beirut $50 million worth of armored vehicles, artillery, and grenade launchers. “Something,” notes Max Boot, “doesn’t add up”:
Does Washington believe that the Lebanese armed forces can be [sufficiently] bolstered as an independent military to stand up to various terrorist groups, including Hizballah—and if so, how does it imagine that will happen? Or does the U.S. government simply not care about the Hizballah-Lebanese armed forces connection?
I hesitate to leap to the conclusion that Washington simply doesn’t care, but if so that would be of a piece with the Obama administration’s de-facto tilt toward Iran since the completion of the nuclear deal. . . . President Obama seems to imagine that the Iranian-backed forces can be an American ally against Sunni terrorist groups such as Islamic State and al-Qaeda.
If so, he is making a tragic miscalculation, one that I and others have repeatedly warned against. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, because he is able to marshal the resources of a large, oil-rich state with a nuclear program, is a greater long-term danger to the West than Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who heads a relatively small, ramshackle state that is losing ground. . . .
The U.S. should be helping anti-Hizballah organizers in Lebanon to reduce that organization’s power instead of funneling arms to the politically compromised Lebanese military.
Read more on Commentary: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/the-terror-war-front-in-lebanon/