The World Watches as Lebanon Goes to the Polls

WASHINGTON, Jun 5 (IPS) -- After emerging from a political crisis last year, the Lebanese people will head to the polls Jun. 7 to determine the composition of the new parliament. A variety of foreign powers, including the U.S., will be watching closely, waiting for the electoral results before they determine their policies towards the new government.

The outcome is especially important because many analysts view the elections through the lens of the struggle between U.S. and Iranian regional hegemonic aspirations.

No one is sure whether the Saad al-Hariri’s Western-backed March 14 alliance will retain its parliamentary majority, or whether the balance of power will shift to the Iranian-backed March 8 movement, led by the Shi’a militant group Hezbollah and the Free Patriotic Movement of Maronite Christian Michael Aoun.

An agreement after Hezbollah took the Sunni Arab neighbourhoods of Beirut by force a year ago strengthened Hezbollah’s opposition, granting their coalition veto power over actions of the government. Now the group is looking to expand its power and perhaps take the helm of government.

The U.S. has designated Hezbollah, an armed Shia group that also serves as a social organization and political party for much of Lebanon's Shia population, a terrorist group

Asked by National Public Radio on Monday whether the U.S. would recognize electoral gains by Hezbollah, U.S. President Barack Obama stumbled through an answer which indicated that he was waiting to see what happened in the election.

"Well, look, if at some point -- Lebanon is a member of the United Nations -- if at some point they are elected as a head of state, or a head of state is elected in Lebanon that is a member of that organization, then that would raise these issues. That hasn’t happened yet," he said.

While the U.S. currently supports Lebanon under a government in which Hezbollah is in opposition, a government there led by the group and its allies might draw concern in Washington, where support for Hezbollah’s adversary Israel and antipathy towards the group’s patron, Iran, run deep.

The elections, however unpredictable, do retain the typical character of Lebanese politics: several regional and international players have a stake in the process.

The list of countries deeply interested in the elections goes beyond the usual Mideast regional players – Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt – and into the realm of international powers such as the U.S., France and Russia.

The Obama administration deemed the Lebanese election important enough to dispatch Vice President Joe Biden to Beirut last week -- the first time in 25 years that a sitting U.S. president or vice president has visited Lebanon.

Biden said that he hadn’t come to back any specific Lebanese party, but he later remarked that the U.S. "will evaluate the shape of our assistance programs based on the composition of the new government."

"When there is an American embrace, it almost always backfires, particularly in the Middle East," said the National Democratic Institute’s (NDI) Les Campbell, at a panel hosted by the Washington-based Aspen Institute.

At the same panel, Middle East analyst and al-Hayat correspondent Raghida Dergham referenced the involvement of outside players in Lebanon, calling the country a laboratory where regional power struggles are carried out between countries like Iran, Syria and Israel.

In addition to the struggle between external powers, Dergham said the stakes were even higher for Lebanon itself.

"If Hezbollah wins, the fabric of society may change. The meaning of ‘the state’ may change," she said, though she insisted she wasn’t predicting a Hezbollah victory. She said she feared another violent conflict with Israel, which fought a 34-day war with Hezbollah in the summer of 2006.