Is Iran the New United States?

Sounds like a nasty comparison that just couldn’t be. No, this isn’t a blog about inculcating religious mandates into the legal and political system, that theocracy thang that defines modern Iran. It is simply about who gets to be the most hated country, the new premiere enemy, to vast pools of people who seek bullies to vent their seething anger. Between drone strikes, our wars that, of late, have only been in Muslim countries, our undying support for Israel as it continues to build communities in the West Bank (the non-Gaza Palestine), visions of Gitmo and Abu Graib, we have been the go-to “most hated nation” (okay, along with Israel) for so many in the Islamic world. Maybe there is a new “most hated” to a growing segment of Islamic practitioners, and this time it’s seemingly one of their own.

Historical reminder: Sunnis (85% of the faith) believe that the Qur’an is the literal word of God to be read, hopefully in the original classical Arabic, by each and every Muslim as his or her code to live by. Shiites (15%) believe it is a mystical book that can only be read and interpreted by the highest clerics in the land. Iran and its close allies, including the minority Assad regime in Syria, are Shiites. Sunnis are very uncomfortable with that Shiite doctrine, and over time (well into the modern era) Sunnis have slaughtered Shiites over this rift. It happens every day in Iraq and Pakistan.

But Iran and her “foreign legion” – Hezbollah (which claims greater independence from Iran than exists in fact) – have garnered major points of late in their support of Sunni Hamas in Gaza, their willingness to supply arms to be used against Israel, and their generally anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli stand. By defying Western pressure to curb her nuclear program and massive contributions of aid and military hardware to Sunni causes, Iran was steadily rising in the eyes of all but the most hardened Sunni eyes (not the extremist Sunni Taliban and al Qaeda, for example).

Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has brazenly taken to the airways to pledge his organization’s military support for Assad and his murderous cronies. Thousands of Iranian-armed Hezbollah “volunteers” have crossed from Lebanon into Syria to fight on behalf of the crumbling Assad regime, and it is these forces that secured the incumbent Syrian regime’s victory over rebel forces in the Syrian city of Qusayr. These “foreign” troops have joined with the massive flow of Russian missiles (particularly a new crop of antiaircraft weapons) to support Assad who most likely could not stay in power without such intervention. And the rebels, as well as their Sunni sympathizers all over the Middle East, are acutely aware that it is Shiite firepower – funded and supplied by Iran and implemented by Hezbollah and a number of direct Iranian “volunteers” – that is killing and displacing Sunnis by the thousands.

“‘We will not forget what Hassan Nasrallah did,’ said Abu Zaid, 40, a fighter from Qusayr. ‘We will take revenge from him and his organization even after 100 years.’ … While taking Qusayr could infuse Mr. Assad’s forces with momentum and embolden him to push for more military advances — just as Russia and the United States are pressing the antagonists in the Syrian conflict to negotiate — the intervention by Hezbollah could be problematic for that organization, which historically has been revered in Syria for its opposition to Israel. Now, in the eyes of the Syrian insurgency and its sympathizers, Hezbollah has turned its guns on fellow Muslims and taken on the form of an occupying force.

“In the fight’s final days, as a [NY Times] reporter traveled through villages around Qusayr, rebel fighters and their civilian supporters vented rage not only at Mr. Assad but at his allies — particularly Iran and the well-trained Shiite Muslim fighters of Hezbollah, whom they largely blamed for the casualties they had suffered…  The mostly Sunni activists and rebels expressed bitterness toward Shiites generally, but they reserved particular anger for Mr. Nasrallah. The Hezbollah leader had exhorted his followers to come to fight in Syria against what he portrayed as a jihadist-Israeli conspiracy to topple Mr. Assad and subvert Hezbollah’s ability to attack, or defend against, Israel.” New York Times, June 5^th. And everyone knows that without Iranian cash and military supplies, Hezbollah would be a small and toothless force of little or no consequence.

Now while this sounds like good news for the United States, and in part perhaps it is, this anti-Shiite/Iranian fervor sweeping large sections of the Sunni world also place increasing pressure on Iran to continue to develop its nuclear potential. They not only want to hold possible Western aggression in check, but now have some real concerns about their regional Sunni neighbors who have rekindled their hatred for Iran and her paramilitary extensions in the Middle East. This regional tinder box has a continuing proclivity to ignite with far greater frequency than most of us can imagine.

I’m Peter Dekom, and United States, step back; Iran, step forward.