Lebanon nowadays seems much bigger than it actually is. In a way this is no surprise for a country that always was a playground for regional and international agendas and a laboratory for testing any new formula in the area. However, this time, Lebanon is much more than that. Since 2006 it has become clear to all serious observers that this country is the focal point of a strategic divide, or more accurately the strategic divide in the Middle East. By virtue of the victory of Hezbollah against Israel in 2006, the Lebanese resistance has become a major factor in tipping the balance in favour of the Syrian/Iranian influence in the region as against that of the American/Israeli-led project. The latter project aims at further fragmenting political and social regional structures based upon sectarian and ethnic divisions, in order to create a new Middle East in which - to put it simply - Israel can play boss over everybody.

The Iranian and the Syrian regimes naturally oppose this scheme as it targets them in the first instance, but Iran at least also opposes this for ideological reasons. For the surge of the neo-conservative ‘creative chaos’ strategy in Iraq and beyond, the war against Lebanon in 2006 was supposed to be the final blow to any resistance, especially as this occurred at a time when Iraqi resistance was starting to be divided, weak and marginal, and the American grip over Iraq was growing stronger. Hezbollah’s defeat of the Israeli onslaught  stopped the American surge in its tracks. The tide has started to turn since that moment: since then, both the Lebanese resistance and its Syrian and Iranian allies have been strengthened. 

At this point, for the Americans and the Israelis a new priority was established: to destroy Hezbollah by any means necessary. This conclusion is confirmed by one of the documents lately published on wikileaks where the heads of the CIA and the Mossad are to be observed contemplating a possible augmentation of the pressure on Syria to make it take its distance from Iran, in order eventually to weaken Hezbollah.  In that conversation between Meir Dagan and Frances Townsend, Dagan conveys to his American counterpart the "advantage of such an approach” – that, “the legal ground is already in place for action by the UNSC."   It is in this context that one must read the actions of the international tribunal investigating the death of Rafik Hariri and the indictment of Hezbollah that it will be releasing shortly.

The death of the corrupt and Saudi-controlled Rafik Hariri will not have been particularly mourned by many ordinary families in Lebanon for whom Hariri's policies meant hardship, decay and more debts, or by many of the middle-class owners of shops in down-town Beirut that found themselves in effect dispossessed of their properties by Hariri's cynically named "Solidair" real estate company – the plan being to build a new centre of Beirut that could be owned and exploited by him; nor particularly mourned by the resistance fighters against whom Hariri conspired day and night, as well as the Syrian ex-rulers of Lebanon who had to share their spoils with Hariri and his army of corrupt entrepreneurs and money-launderers.

But maybe the real beneficiaries of the bomb of 14 February 2005 that killed Hariri could be thought to be the Americans and the Israelis, for whom the murder of Hariri removed an ally who had become troublesome to the extent of protecting Lebanon against their wrath by claiming it as his turf and territory. With him out of the way, they had a much clearer run at orchestrating the so-called ‘Cedar revolution’, a CIA-led copy paste version of the Ukrainian orange revolution (only more cheesy, racist and posh as is everything in Lebanon), which they could use to push Syria out of Lebanon, and Hezbollah into a tight corner.

The next step was to try and physically destroy Hezbollah in 2006. That war was not a reaction to the operation of Hezbollah against an Israeli patrol on July 12, 2006 as was afterwards claimed. That event served as a mere pretext for a war that was planned and ordered well in advance.

Today, Hariri’s murder continues to stand the Israelis and their friends in good stead, as the efforts of the international tribunal for Lebanon that is housed in the Hague are now focusing on framing Hezbollah for the deed. This is done through engineered telecommunication evidence that implies that a Hezbollah network of operatives conducted the operation. Yesterday, the Lebanese minister of telecommunication, Charbel Nahas, outlined in a press conference the level of Israeli infiltration in the Lebanese telecommunication network, and proved beyond any doubt that Israel not only could but did manipulate cellular phone networks and lines in Lebanon, including those used by some Hezbollah operatives. This came after the Canadian CBC network aired a documentary outlining some of the evidence against Hezbollah and oddly enough against a certain colonel, Wissam al Hassan, a close aid of Rafik Hariri and the head of the current Lebanese police intelligence department, and a very close aid to Saad Hariri, son and political heir of Rafik Hariri.

Al Hassan is an arch enemy of Hezbollah and is suspected among others of being the brain behind the biggest fraud operation in this case, including the fabrication of false testimonies in order to indict Syria for the Hariri murder. Nowadays, it is widely stated that these testimonies were fabricated and that Syria had nothing to do with the hit. Nevertheless, no one is willing to indict the false witnesses. Why so? Many believe the reason is that Al Hassan and his ilk fear being exposed as the source of these false testimonies, and becoming themselves major suspects of the murder.

The United Nations special court on Lebanon has from its inception been a political tool in the hands of the powerful. It is now being used to create a pretext to destroy the Lebanese resistance. The pretext is that Hezbollah killed Hariri, and the context is a sectarian war between Sunni's and Shia's in Lebanon as a result of the allegation that will undermine Hezbollah’s standing, further isolating it and paving the way for an Israeli military attack to finish it off.

When the indictment will be issued in the coming weeks (maybe days) things will take a dangerous turn in Lebanon. Hezbollah will be obliged to defend itself. But the web of lies is being drawn again, and soon the media will be telling us that it is a Sunni/Shia war that is the background to the problem, and that Hezbollah and behind it Syria and Iran want to seize control of Lebanon.

The reality is that the only bid for control that we are witnessing is that cooked up by Israelis and Americans neo-cons. All resistance against such a plan must be destroyed. This is and always has been the background to every single event in our region since 1991.