Honduras Has Won
http://www.ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=334537207260360

In a quiet victory for a tiny democracy, U.S. buttinskies have stopped trying to restore a dictator to power in South America. Tiny Honduras is winning its fight for freedom.

In a welcome about-face, the State Department told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Richard Lugar, R-Ind., in a letter Tuesday that the U.S. would no longer threaten sanctions on Honduras for ousting its president, Mel Zelaya, last June 28.

Nor will it insist on Zelaya's return to power. As it turns out, the U.S. Senate can't find any legal reason why the Honduran Supreme Court's refusal to let Zelaya stay in office beyond the time allowed by Honduran law constitutes a "military coup."

This marks a shift. The U.S. at first supported Zelaya, a man who had been elected democratically but didn't govern that way. Now they're reaching out to average Hondurans, the real democrats.

Sure, the U.S. continues to condemn Zelaya's ouster and still seeks mediation of the dispute through Costa Rican President Oscar Arias. But no U.S. sanctions means Hondurans have won.

Things could have worked out differently. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez first called for invading Honduras. That threat passed as it became clear Chavez couldn't project his power there.

Next, civil unrest was threatened by Zelaya. But Hondurans astounded the world by standing by their Congress, Supreme Court, attorney general, businesses and the church, all of which declared that Zelaya had violated the constitution and had to go.

Zelaya might have regained power, but only by becoming a dictator and ending Honduras' democracy. The people ended that.

The scariest outcome for Honduras was U.S. sanctions. They would have crushed the tiny country dependent on the U.S. for 80% of its trade. No sanctions, no Zelaya.

This isn't to say U.S. policymakers are happy or that the dispute is over. Honduras is still suspended from the Organization of American States, its trade has been disrupted, Venezuela's oil is still cut off, and its officials still can't get U.S. visas. But the worst is over. Whatever changes that come will be by Honduran consent alone.

The U.S. still supports Arias' mediation, and if that helps, good.

By ending the threats, talks can begin. Constructive solutions, like early elections or persuading Honduras' congress to add an impeachment law to its constitution, can now be put on the table.

The reality is, the Hondurans shouldn't be on the spot at all. What happened wasn't a coup; it was a good-faith effort by decent people to fix a difficult situation that threatened their democracy.

This, by the way, also opens the door to a return of democracy in troubled nations like Ecuador, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Cuba and Venezuela. People in those nations can take courage from Honduras.

The U.S. was smart to take the side of freedom. The Hondurans, however, were right all along. After all, it's their democracy. And now they've won it back.


Where the Middle East Fights Its Wars
Michael J. Totten
http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2009/08/where-the-middl.php

The Middle East is riven with fault lines. Conflicts between Israelis and Arabs, Persians and Israelis, Arabs and Persians, Sunnis and Shias, Islamists and liberals, and democrats and Khomeinists are all stuck in a holding pattern that isn't sustainable. The region is in a deadlock and will likely remain so until something big and probably violent unjams it.

Because of its extraordinary diversity, almost every major political current in the Middle East echoes in Lebanon. In the past, Arab Nationalism and Palestinian "resistance" blew through the place and left swaths of wreckage before passions cooled. Thanks to Hezbollah, the country is still a front line in the Arab-Israeli conflict – and that's because the Iranian-backed militia is the tip of the spear in the Persian-Israeli conflict. Lebanon is also where mutually antagonistic Sunnis and Shias are more or less numerically matched and where the Syrian-Iranian axis directly confronts its resilient political opposites. Beirut, like Tehran, is where some of the Middle East's most liberal modernizers face off against committed radicals in thrall to Ayatollah Khomeini's totalitarian vision of Velayat-e Faqih.

A divided country with a weak central government can't indefinitely withstand this kind of pressure any more than geological faults can forever keep still while continental plates slowly but relentlessly collide with each other. And so Lebanon is a place where the Middle East fights itself. It is also where the East meets the West and, at times, where the East fights the West. Everyone with a dog in a Middle East fight has a dog in Lebanon's fights.

Beirut may be the best place of all to observe that part of the world. It has its own local problems, of course, but its most serious local problems are regional problems. The Syrians are there, the Iranians are there, and the Saudis are there. France and the United States sent soldiers there more than once. United Nations peacekeepers have been there since the 1970s. The Israelis barge in and out. Yasser Arafat and the PLO used the country as a terrorist base and set up their own parallel state after their violent eviction from Jordan. When Ariel Sharon drove Arafat and his gang to Tunisia, Hezbollah set up an Iranian-sponsored parallel state in the PLO's place.

I visited Lebanon after wrapping up my last trip to Iraq, and was pleasantly surprised all over again by how much nicer Beirut is than Baghdad despite all its troubles. It's still a mess, of course, but that's because the region it reflects is a mess.

Salim al-Sayegh, the Kataeb (Phalangist) Party's vice president, agreed to sit down with me and discuss Lebanon's – and therefore the region's – endlessly dysfunctional and occasionally explosive political problems. Like most parties in Lebanon, the Kataeb has a dark past, had a militia that behaved terribly during the long civil war, and has since mellowed and turned mainstream. It's a part of the anti-Syrian "March 14" coalition, and one of its members of parliament – Pierre Gemayel, son of former Lebanese President Amin Gemayel – was assassinated by gunmen in 2006. Tens of thousands of Christians, Sunnis, and Druze attended his funeral in downtown Beirut.

The party's vice president and I spoke before the election this summer when "March 14" beat Hezbollah. He started off by telling me just how important he thought that election was, not just for Lebanon, but for the whole Middle East.

MJT: Tell me about the upcoming election.

Salim al-Sayegh: We are fighting to preserve human rights in this country and the state of freedom despite all the terror that has been organized against us. The project of "March 14" is very simple. It is the building up of a modern democratic humanistic society in this country. An attack against "March 14" is not an attack from a loyal opposition. The state has to be sovereign, has to be independent. On the other side we have the negation of the state.

Of course we did not achieve all our objectives even though we still have a majority in parliament. Despite this majority, with the use of weapons of terror, and of the ideological opposition to the West and to Israel, Hezbollah is impeding the majority from exerting its strength. But still we are here. We are not letting Hezbollah impose its will on the country. We have succeeded in putting the international tribunal [to indict the assassins of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri] where it is. Sooner or later, it will come to a conclusion and justice will be made.

If we do not win the elections, it is not a collapse of a party. It is the collapse of a sovereign, free, independent Lebanon. This is the problem. And this is why I consider these elections essential. The international community, the United Nations, have so far tried everything possible to preserve Lebanon. If the majority fails, it means Hezbollah will be in power in Lebanon. It would mean another Gaza.

We have pluralism in Lebanon. The Christians will still be here, but the Christians have no weapons, no funding, no backing. The only party with foreign backing, Syria’s backing, is Hezbollah. Hezbollah has Iranian and Syrian backing. It's the strongest force within the country. The build-up in this country for the last 20 years has enabled Hezbollah to take over the state. To take over the state.

This is an ideological party. For Hezbollah, anti-Americanism is ideological. Anti-Westernism is ideological. But our identity in Lebanon is a complex identity. We all speak foreign languages. We are all inheritors not only of the Persian Empire and the Arab world. We are also children of the Roman Empire, of the Western tradition. All of this mixes in Lebanon. And therefore we will never accept an identity change. We do not accept any community that is saying it’s anti-Western, that it's against Western values, that it's against the Western way of life. For them, democracy is relative. Human rights are something that is a Western concept, an imported concept.

So all of this will be threatened in Lebanon regardless of the constitution. These guys do not respect the constitution. They do not respect the institutions.

For all your readers who think democracy is only letting the population vote, that it means majority rule: Democracy is voting, but it’s something else, as well. It’s a respect of human rights. Let’s not forget that Hitler came to power after elections. Fascism rose at the same time in Italy. Hamas took over Palestine after elections, okay, but what about respect for human rights? Those people do not have any track record of respecting human rights. They bluntly and publicly reject human rights values. They think there are other values they want to promote, and this is something I’m not going to accept here.

If we rule, if we reach power, we’ll be preserving these values, not imposing them. Preserving them. Because these are constitutional. If the others reach power, there will be nobody guaranteeing the respect of these values.

Lebanon provides a real chance for dialogue between civilizations and cultures. If there is a collapse of "March 14" in the next elections, this collapse will inevitably lead to a clash of cultures in Lebanon. This will not be between Islam and Christians. It will be between communities.

It means – and this is a threat – not only the collapse of our formula for co-existence, which should be preserved for the sake of humanity. It will mean a threat to stability and security in the whole Middle East. Again. And this will be the last time we will ever dare speak about democracy and human rights in the Middle East. It will be finished. It will mean the American model, the Western model – which has become a universal model now which people aspire to all over the world – all of this will be pushed aside for another model, which was exported by the Ayatollahs in Iran.

Hezbollah rejects all of this. They say “no, we know our limitations in Lebanon, that there is diversity in Lebanon, and we cannot go beyond that diversity.” This is what they say. The practice is something different. When they faced powerful political forces, they used their weapons. They are programmed for resistance, to impose their will over others.

This means civil war. Do we want to go back to that? The solution is the disarmament of Hezbollah. For Hezbollah, no defense strategy can be discussed if, as an end result, Hezbollah is asked to hand in its weapons.

MJT: Do you think it will ever be possible to convince Hezbollah to give up its weapons? I don’t see any way of talking them into it.

Salim al-Sayegh: The problem of Hezbollah is the same as the problem of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. It is the same impossible question. You’re asking Lebanese: "How are you going to handle the Palestinian refugees?" Palestinians are about ten percent of the population of Lebanon. Ten percent of the population lives at a very low standard, very low. The international community has a major responsibility in solving the issue of the Palestinian refugees.

Hezbollah's weapons are not Lebanese weapons. These are Iranian weapons in Lebanon. Hezbollah, an Iranian base in Lebanon, controls large parts of the country. Containing or engaging Iran can't only be done from the Persian Gulf, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. Containing Iran must happen in Lebanon, as well. This is a shared responsibility with the international community.

MJT: How do you think the international community should deal with Iran?

Salim al-Sayegh: There is a roadmap for this. The first thing is to delegitimize Hezbollah. The first issue is the issue of the Shebaa Farms villages. The United Nations and the United States under the Obama Administration should courageously pressure Israel to withdraw from the Shebaa Farms. And engage Syria, to get from Syria the necessary documents so that Shebaa Farms can be put under the authority of the United Nations or handed over to Lebanon.

MJT: If I remember correctly, when the Israelis left South Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah agreed that Israel had completely withdrawn to its side of the Blue Line. Only after the United Nations certified the Israeli withdrawal did Hezbollah claim Shebaa Farms was Lebanese territory under Israeli occupation. If this were true, why wouldn't Hezbollah say so in 2000 when they were negotiating with Israel over the troop withdrawal?

Salim al-Sayegh: The Israelis took Shebaa Farms from the Syrians, not from the Lebanese. The Israelis are saying they can give it to Syria. And the Syrians are saying Shebaa Farms is Lebanese. The United Nations says, according to our cards, Shebaa Farms is Syrian, not Lebanese.

MJT: It looks to me like Syria is being difficult on Shebaa Farms because Assad wants the issue to remain unresolved.

Salim al-Sayegh: Yes. Because if Syria cooperates, the next day Israel will put the Shebaa Farms under United Nations control. The next day. This would mean the end of the Islamic resistance in Lebanon because they would have no more territory to liberate.

MJT: Would it really be the end, though? They would still have their weapons.

Salim al-Sayegh: They would have no more justification. They would lose their legitimacy. They’re using this as a pretext. They’re afraid Israel will do this and withdraw. The Syrians are promising Hezbollah they won't let them down.

If the Shebaa Farms is handed over from Syria through Israel to Lebanon, or through the United Nations to Lebanon, Lebanon will have no problem with Israel.

MJT: So why doesn't Lebanon just negotiate this directly with the Israelis?

Salim al-Sayegh: If I said publicly that we should negotiate with Israel…

MJT: You’d get in trouble.

Salim al-Sayegh: I would not make it home tonight. I would be considered an agent of Zionism.

MJT: I understand that. But why doesn’t the whole government just say "this is stupid, we’re not going to do this anymore."

Salim al-Sayegh: We have called for indirect negotiations with Israel.

MJT: I don’t mean your party, I mean the government.

Salim al-Sayegh: The party has called, President Amin Gemayel, has called for indirect negotiations many times.

MJT: Your party has a history of working with the Israelis.

Salim al-Sayegh: Yes. And we even said publicly a month ago, weeks ago, that we should have indirect negotiations with Israel to get back the Shebaa Farms.

MJT: What would happen if [Prime Minister Fouad] Seniora said this? Would he lose his support from the Sunnis?

Salim al-Sayegh: No, it’s not a question of support.

MJT: Or is it dangerous because Hezbollah and the Syrians would come after him?

Salim al-Sayegh: The idea of negotiations with Israel right now is taboo in Lebanon.

MJT: I know. I’m just trying to figure out why it's a taboo. Is it because the overwhelming majority of people in Lebanon don’t want to have negotiations with Israel? Or is it because the Syrians, Hezbollah, and the Iranians have a gun to your head?

Salim al-Sayegh: It is both. There is not an overwhelming majority against this, but there is…Israel did a very stupid thing in 2006. It succeeded in pitting all Lebanese people against her. But now the hatred against Hezbollah is so high that half of Lebanon will be with and the other half would be against. So we don’t have an overwhelming majority. But we don't even need to negotiate this. If Syria gives the Shebaa Farms document to the United Nations, the United Nations will take the case to Israel and Israel will make it happen. We don't have anything to negotiate.

Negotiation means transaction. There is no transaction here. I have the land, you give it back to me, and that’s it. Israel, if it’s going to negotiate, might need something in return. What am I going to give Israel in return? Peace? I’m not ready to make peace with Israel. Because if I decide to make peace with Israel, there will be civil war in Lebanon tomorrow. Hezbollah will say I’m selling out the resistance or whatever.

Our country is so porous. We have all these infiltrations from the area who influence us. We should be immune. We should be thickly protected from any intervention from Syria and the other extremists. This is why it is in our interest to see Syria negotiate with Israel first.

MJT: You do want Syria to do that?

Salim al-Sayegh: The sooner, the better.

MJT: There’s a lot of skepticism in the U.S. about negotiations between Syria and Israel. Lots of people in the U.S. think the only reason Assad is even discussing this is because Syria has been isolated in the international community after what happened here in Lebanon. Peace talks with Israel make Syria look more legitimate in the eyes of the international community, but Assad has no intention of forging any kind of agreement with Israel whatsoever. It just makes him look like less of a bad guy.

Salim al-Sayegh: Yes. We cannot continue like this. We have to decide what to do. If I am in Washington and thinking about the future of the Near East, I have to make a decision. Do I want to give Syria incentives to change? It cannot remain like this. In Jordan, they have a rather open system. In Iraq, as well. Despite all the problems in Iraq, Iraq is moving toward normalization. Israel is a democracy. Turkey is rather open. Lebanon is a democracy.

We cannot tolerate a Soviet-style regime like this in Syria. The United States should push for a transformation of regime behavior in Syria. Israel does not want a regime-change.

MJT: They don’t. Israelis are afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Salim al-Sayegh: Yes, they are afraid of the Muslim Brothers. I think they’re wrong.

MJT: Why?

Salim al-Sayegh: In Saudi Arabia they have a regime that is even stricter than the Muslim Brothers. Yet we are coordinating ourselves very well with Saudi Arabia and with the oligarchy of the Emirates.

We should let the regime in Syria evolve. I’m not talking about ousting the regime with a coup. This would cause instability, and nobody knows where it would lead. But you should give that regime incentives to change. What the Syrian regime is doing is the worst case scenario for Israel. Israel, the most important power in the Middle East, is on its knees because of the missiles of Hezbollah.

I've met many scholars in Europe. We are in symposia here and there. We see Israel’s discourse. We see how they are afraid of Hezbollah, and how they say Syria doesn't make war with Israel.

But Syria exported all this to Lebanon. This is the scenario. And Hezbollah trains Hamas, colludes with Hamas, coordinates with Hamas, and even with the Palestinian camps in Lebanon.

I mean, what is the use of this regime? Will Washington agree one day that the Syrians should come to Lebanon to tame Hezbollah? This is a real concern of ours.

MJT: There are some people who want that. Most don't.

Salim al-Sayegh: But it means, again, we are repeating the errors of the past. Syria might take care of Hezbollah for one year, but we don’t know what would happen a year later. They take cash and they pay back in credit. Nobody in the Middle East knows what will happen in the long term. There is nothing that has to be delivered immediately. I’m not sure Hezbollah would let Syria come into Lebanon to control Lebanon.

MJT: What would they do about it if Syria came in? If they fight Syria, they can’t win. Eventually they'd be too weak because all their weapons come from Iran through Syria.

Salim al-Sayegh: Hezbollah hates the Syrians.

MJT: But on March 8, 2005, Hezbollah had a big demonstration in downtown Beirut asking the Syrians to stay in Lebanon.

Salim al-Sayegh: Of course, but they hate Syria. This is not analysis, we know they don’t want Syria to come back. They want Syria to be out. We still have discussions with their people. They act in solidarity with Syria, provided that Syria remains over there.

MJT: Because Syria would be the boss?

Salim al-Sayegh: Syria would be controlling Lebanon for the profit of Syria. Syria is not so stupid to come here and say "I’m going to control Hezbollah." What Syria would do is say "I’m coming to control terror in Lebanon." Fatah al Islam, al Qaeda, all of this. "Listen guys, you have Sunni extremists over there and we are gonna uproot them."

The least expensive way to do it, really, is to solve the Shebaa Farms issue and continue exerting pressure on Syria. We have to continue exerting pressure on Syria. This is very important. Continue containing Syria very strongly to consolidate Israel’s negotiation position.

Because Israelis turn around on themselves. They have no strategic views. They’ve got the worst of the western democracy's problems. They're working for the next elections, with no long term view, so they are only achieving immediate goals.

Iran is the main show. Would Israel accept Iranian nuclear capacity? How do you engage Iran? If you cut the hand of Iran through an Israeli operation, you won’t cut the head of Iran. You need to cut the head. So the containment of Iran should continue, but at the same time there should be no idea like what the French are stupidly thinking right now, that can Iran get the bomb, that we know how to use deterrence.

We're not talking about deterrence here. We talk about deterrence when people think in terms of a balance of power. Those people do not evaluate power the same way you do. They're willing to lose a million people in a war against Iraq. They attacked Iraqi tanks with Kalashnikovs. Okay? Nobody ever imagined that they could resist an Iraqi attack. They reversed the tide. They countered it.

If Iran has a nuclear bomb in a year or two, Iran will say to the Islamic world "I have five bombs, guys. I have five missiles. Now I have the capacity to destroy Israel. Now I have the capacity to say justice should be made. So far the corrupt West has used us, abused us, and defended the existence of Israel with hundreds of nuclear bombs."

I don't care about repercussions for Israel. It isn't my problem. My problem is that the center of gravity in the Islamic world will shift from Saudi Arabia and Cairo to Tehran. Imagine after two years what paradigm we might have in front of us.

Tell the French we are not talking about realpolitik here. We’re not talking about a balance of power. Look at what is behind the bomb. Iran is not the Soviet Union. It is not China. We are talking about the Koran, Velayat-e Faqih, and the umma.

These guys will really be using their muscles everywhere. And I don't mean the military. They don’t need the military. They will just say "Listen, guys. We have the initiative. And everybody will bow before the Iranians." You see our problem.

The most urgent thing is that Hezbollah is a threat now. It should be treated now. We should not wait. The Iranian nuclear bomb should be dealt with this year.

MJT: How? The United States is not going to go to war with Iran over nuclear weapons.

Salim al-Sayegh: No? [Sigh.]

MJT: That’s the reality. After Iraq, after years of fighting in Iraq, nobody wants more of that. So unless Israel does something…

Salim al-Sayegh: No. If the Israelis do something, it will be catastrophic.

MJT: If Israel attacks Iran and Hezbollah attacks Israel, Israel is going to attack Lebanon.

Salim al-Sayegh: This is why Israel should not be left alone. It is a global issue. We are talking here about a global issue. We have religion in this part of the world. It’s not like Korea. Here, every square meter has meaning. We have the Koran, the Bible, and the Torah. Miami and New York will be shaken if Israel is threatened. If Iran is threatened, people from Morocco to Pakistan will be in the streets threatening.

This is why we need a sophisticated approach to Iran and its capacity to damage Israel. I don't care about the security of Israel. What I care about is the stability of the region and creating a just peace in the region.

I would not like to be Obama. His options are very limited. And de-linking Syria from Iran is not one of them. It’s just a temporary solution. Syria is not going to be against Iran. And Hezbollah will always side with Iran.

How can we get rid of Hezbollah politically? They will not unilaterally disarm. If we absorb them into the state, the state will become Hezbollah. I’ll be taking from my right pocket and putting in my left pocket. It’s the same. The state that would disarm Hezbollah is the same state that Hezbollah partly controls. It’s absurd. It’s not a Lebanese problem. It's an international community problem.

Hezbollah is a kind of a safety net for Tehran. "If you touch me, I will destroy Israel with missiles." Syria might cooperate today, but in a year or two Assad will side with Hezbollah if the politics change. And I’m not sure Syria wants to come in to fight Hezbollah, to really control Hezbollah. So the threat will remain. The options really are limited.

The French believe that the Iranian problem is not serious because Iran can be tamed with deterrence. But I believe, and I would love Americans to believe, that Iran with the bomb is very dangerous. And any de-linking without taking into consideration the bomb is illusionary.

I know what the international community should not do. They should not be soft with Syria. They should push Syria to combine negotiations with Israel with a change of conduct of the regime.

We are in a deadlock. If you have any idea how we can break the deadlock, that would be great. But so far we are trying to do it gradually, politically. We are not able to protect ourselves in the long term. If Washington is not, how can we?

We need to win these elections. Because then we can say to Iran and Syria "you are in a deadlock, as well."

Hezbollah is discussing these issues very seriously. We know it. Inside there is a real clash over this because they cannot stay like this.

MJT: What are the two sides inside Hezbollah?

Salim al-Sayegh: Hezbollah is very anxious about negotiations between Israel and Syria. One side is saying they have assurances from Syria, but at the same time they have forbidden their leaders from going to Iran through Syria. When they go to Iran, they don’t go through Syria anymore. They don’t take the flights through Syria. There is mistrust of Syria.

We think, unfortunately, that Hezbollah is not engaging in dialogue with us. We would like to tell them that we have many things in common.

MJT: What? What do you have in common?

Salim al-Sayegh: Many interests in common as Lebanese. For example, if we support the re-integration of their soldiers within the Lebanese state in one way or another, they'll need us. What if Syria turns against them one day or another? They will need us. They will need us for their safety one day. We want to work on the larger concept of security other than just false security. They will need us to bridge gaps with different communities here. They will need employment. They will need to have real access to the economy. I don’t know whether Iran will continue endlessly to pay half a billion dollars a year for the sweet eyes of Hassan Nasrallah.

MJT: They’re losing money in Iran right now. The price of oil is down.

Salim al-Sayegh: They will need us in the future when we discuss the modernization of the regime. They will need us for the Palestinian refugee camps. Now, in their mind, it's a zero-sum game. We advance and they retreat, and inversely.

We are not afraid of their weapons as Lebanese. We are not afraid of the Katyusha rockets they have or the missiles. They are not going to bomb Beirut or villages. The missiles are a threat against Israel.

What we don’t like is that they forbid state and army access to the areas they control. We are going to live in this country. We are not going to annihilate each other. So we have to reach a compromise one day, one way or another.

I’m not sure time works in their favor. They can only have so many more babies. They can work against us with demography, but the system protects us from being overtaken with demography. We have the 50 percent Christian and 50 percent Muslim rule in the parliament. One day they might tell us they are more numerous, that we have to re-negotiate that formula, but we can just tell them "no."

We are not monolithic. We are diverse. This is why we have to engage them, talk to them, and at the same time be firm with our principles. This is all we can do.

If Syria makes peace with Israel, Lebanon will be put on the same track. The international community would force Lebanon to join with Syria in negotiating with Israel. And by so doing, Hezbollah will be de-facto disarmed. But Syria, in order to do this, has to have strong guarantees from the international community that there will be no push toward an immediate regime change. There should be a gradual regime change.

What worries me is that investment is going into Syria. Syria is benefiting from stabilization but without any political return. Syria has the mentality of a hostage taker. They took Palestinians hostages, they took Hezbollah hostages, they took Lebanon hostage. The international community tells Syria "Leave Lebanese alone, please. Let them live." And they say "Okay, I’ll leave Lebanon alone for a while. Pay me some money."

So this is a negative achievement, actually. There’s no positive achievement with Syria. It should be transformed.

We’ll try to engage Hezbollah here internally. But we are talking about a timetable of twelve months to a year and a half. All the intelligence coming from Iran says that by 2010 they might have the bomb.