Iranian Islamic Revolution's Triumph in Lebanon

Iranian Islamic Revolution's Triumph in Lebanon

President Ahmadinejad's visit to Lebanon was really the show off of Iranian power in the region. The importance of the visit is much more when we take into account that the Iranian president repeated his anti- zionist literature close to Israeli borders- most of them mentioned less than five kilometers away from enemy's border in Bint Jbeil.
Through the realists' framework of analysis Iran-Lebanon relations can be justified as an alliance against a common enemy. In other words Iran sees Lebanon at the frontline of a probable Israeli-Iranian conflict and that's why Iran is backing Lebanon and Hezbollah. The realists believe that Iran's policy toward Hezbollah is absolutely rational and it does not related to their common ideology. In this kind of analysis Hezbollah and Lebanon is just a scapegoat for Iran's foreign and strategic policies. I am not going to explain the shortcomings of realists view on this matter but we cannot ignore their mere materialistic point of view. What really happened in Lebanon during Ahmadinejad's visit was the demonstration of Lebanese people's ties to the Iran's revolutionary ideas and discourse which translated and reflected fully in Lebanese society ironically to some extent more than Iranian society. Lebanese people do believe to the Imam Khomeini and ayatollah Khamenie's attitudes and goals. The attendance of tens of thousands of all Lebanese groups in meetings was not the victory of Ahmadinejad himself. He was the representative of Iranian ideology- although we cannot neglect the importance of his anti-Zionist rhetoric. The bottom line is that the Iran's relation to Lebanon cannot be understood through state-centric, materialistic viewpoints. The Iranian-Lebanese relation is rooted in strong common belief in Islamic Republic revolutionary ideas. Of course it can be justified through realistic approaches but that’s not the whole story.


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