Is it time to talk with Hizballah?

From this week's magazine:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1902769,00.html

By Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut

Issa Kamal, a 25 year-old political science student from Beirut, discusses Barak Obama's speech. 

The White House may have been hoping for a cultural breakthrough between America and the Muslim world. But in Lebanon, most people seem jaded by American politicians promising change but delivering little. No one was even watching the speech in the cafes that line the streets near the American University of Beirut, normally a center of political discussion. Those members of the chattering classes reached by telephone were just as cyncical. "People are not paying attention to the Obama speech because they are desperate from American policies," said Issa Slaibiy, a 30 year-old journalist. "The essence of the problem for the Islamic world is America's ultimate support to Israel."

Lebanon, which is still officially at war with Israel, has particular reason to want the U.S. to push for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian question. There are more than 400,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, who have been a source of instability and war ever since the creation of Israel in 1948. Israel also occupied Lebanon itself for 18 years, until the Jewish state was driven out in 2000 by Hizballah, a militant Shia Muslim group which still keeps its weapons today.

It took a trip to the suburbs of south Beirut, the stronghold of Hizballah, to actually find people watching the American president live. There Obama had a warmer reception than one might expect from a group that sometimes yells "Death to America" at its demonstrations. "He is a respectful man, and everyone should respect him as a leader," said Issa Kamal, a 25 year-old political science student from Beirut. "He's much more flexible about Iran, about Pakistan, about than whole Middle East than crazy Mr. Bush was."

Kamal and his friends -- all of whom are Hizballah supporters -- were watching Obama on television and smoking nargileh water pipes at a restaurant across the street from Hizballah's main convention center. They had little doubt that the American President wanted to change the relationship between the U.S. and Muslims. But they doubted whether that was actually possible. "He's a romantic," said Kamal. "He says he wants Israeli mothers and Palestinian mothers to live together, but that's not going to happen. It's not enough to say that the Palestinians should have their own country. Is he going to do something about it?"

To really change the relationship between Arabs and America, Obama should stand up to the Israelis, according to Mohammed Sakir, a 21 year-old computer science student. But he doubts that Obama himself actually has the power to overcome what Arabs see as the all-powerful Jewish lobby. "It's well known that Obama has Muslim roots, and if it was up to him all alone he might be able to change things," said Sakir. But the American government prevents him."

Lebanese will pay particular attention to Obama's promise to respect the results of elections in the Middle East, because Lebanon's parliamentary elections are on Sunday. Polls show that a coalition led by Hizballah is poised to take over the American-backed government. Several top American officials, including Vice President Joe Biden, have visited Lebanon in recent weeks, ostensibly to support Lebanese democracy. But they have had closed-door meetings with political leaders allied to the U.S., and announced that they will review American aid to Lebanon in the event of a Hizballah victory. "They are contradicting themselves," said Ali Sabra, 25, a waiter from Beirut watching Obama's speech. "They are interfering in Lebanon's election."

By Andrew Lee Butters with reporting by Rami Aysha/Beirut

  President Obama's speech in Cairo today is the most important address ever given by an American leader about the Middle East. As he told 1,000 people at Cairo University and millions more around the world, everything won't be solved by a speech. Yet it was an unprecedented reach-out to Muslims and particularly to the Arab world. Far more than any other U.S. president in the past, he both acknowledged harmful Western policies during the Colonial and Cold War eras and promised an intense personal effort to resolve the region's problems and build a new era based on mutual cooperation and respect. The clear message Obama delivered—in his words, body language and statement of policies-- was that America is determined to be part of the solution in the Middle East. He didn't arrive or depart as a prophet, but for an American president treading into territory inhospitable to U.S. policies, he won some new adherents.

The audience responded to Obama's fine rhetoric and frequent quotations from the Koran with repeated applause. At the end as he stood on the stage and waved, a group of Egyptian students in the balcony rhythmically began chanting, “He's our man! He's our man!” When Obama spoke about democracy during the speech, one man in the audience shouted, “We love you!” But the audience also responded well to Obama's specifics, including a statement opposing Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian West Bank—an unusually strong display of criticism of America's ally, given that it was delivered from the heart of an Arab capital. When I asked him what he liked about the speech, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit, who personally welcomed Obama at Cairo International Airport a few hours earlier, told me: “Everything.” Agreed Mahmoud Essam, 14, a student at Towfeyeh school in Shubra, who also attended the speech: “All of it was fantastic.”

 As he has done on other occasions, Obama shepherded credibility by pointing to his own Islamic roots. Even as he openly declared himself to be a Christian, he spoke proudly about the generations of Muslims in his father's Kenyan family, and of his own experience attending school as a boy in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country. What characterized Obama's speech as something fresh was its straight talk, an apparent attempt to win further political credit by acknowledging past U.S. policies that were detrimental and then to use that credit to demand better attitudes and actions from the Middle East as well.  Obama recounted U.S. mistakes after 9/11, such as the invasion of Iraq, the establishment of the Guantanamo prison and use of torture against Muslim prisoners. But he called on Muslims to abandon the stereotype that everything America represents and does is bad, and physically bristled at the notion, still widespread in the Arab world, that the al-Qaeda attack on the U.S. in 2001 was somehow justifiable.

 The straight talk enabled Obama to glide through a minefield of competing interests. He appealed to governments (and equally to the Arab street) with his strong opposition to Israeli settlements and his demand that the region's leaders accept the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Although he began by reaffirming America's unbreakable bond with Israel and his demand that Hamas cease terrorist attacks, it was a clear elbow in the direction of Israel's right-wing leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who favors settlements and opposes Palestinian independence. But he also won plaudits from many citizens and earned frowns from autocrats with his frank, forceful call for democracy, human rights and women's rights in Arab countries—and a warning to Arab regimes not to use the conflict with Israel to divert attention from needed domestic reforms. Obama continued his reach-out to the Iranian regime; he acknowledged Iran's right to nuclear energy while linking his opposition to it's nuclear program to fears about proliferation and escalating threats that would endanger Iranians as well.

 Obama came to Cairo as part of the “conversation” with the Muslims that he started in his inaugural address, when he envisioned a new relationship based on mutual interest and respect. “This cycle of suspicion and discord must end,” he declared at Cairo University. Without a doubt, he now has the Islamic world listening.

 --By Scott MacLeod/Cairo

 President Obama and host President Hosni Mubarak deserve credit for making Egypt the venue for Obama's address to the Muslim world today. It is a fitting choice, considering Egypt's pivotal geographical and cultural position and the close relationship the two countries have enjoyed since the Camp David peace accords in 1978.

 Sentiment against U.S. policies runs high in Egypt, however, so Obama could have found a friendlier setting. Mubarak is taking a risk, too. Egyptians are taken with Obama's charm and by his example of a politician who fought hard electoral battles to win office. Thus, Obama will stand in sharp contrast with Egypt's aging president, who has been routinely re-elected every five years since taking office in 1981 and whose son appears to be getting groomed to take over.

 Speaking as a long-time American resident of Egypt, here are my Top Ten tips so Obama gets the most out of his visit:

 1. Thank goodness you are not giving your speech in Sharm el-Sheikh, Mubarak's "Camp David" where he hosts many of Egypt's official visitors. It's a beautiful resort 300 miles from Cairo on the Red Sea, renowned for its coral reefs. Catering largely to foreign tourists, though, it's hardly representative of Egypt much less the wider Islamic world. Egyptian writer Mohammed Hassanein Heikel famously criticized Mubarak for living "in a world of fantasy" in Sharm.

 2. The place to be is Cairo, one of Islam's greatest cities and the undisputed mother of the Arab world. The apparent choice of Cairo University for the venue is a good one: it is the most prestigious, secular Arab center of higher learning, whose alumni include two Nobel Prize laureates, nuclear watchdog Mohammed Elbaradei and the late novelist Naguib Mahfouz.

 3. Alternatively, you could have followed your recent example in Turkey and spoken to Egypt's parliament, the Majlis al-Sha'ab (People's Assembly). Here you could formally meet members of Mubarak's main political opposition, the outlawed but tolerated Muslim Brotherhood, which captured 20% of the seats running candidates as independents.

 4. For a deeper appreciation of the sweep of Islamic history, you must visit one of the mosques in old Cairo. If you go during the call to prayer, you'll hear the phrase "Allahu Akbar" ("God is great") chanted not as a militant slogan to bring angry people to their feet, but as a melodic call by the muezzin to bring the faithful to their knees in prayer. One of the world's finest masterpieces of Islamic architecture is the Sultan Hassan mosque and madrassa, constructed in the heart of Islamic Cairo in the 14th century. Or down the road is al-Hussein, so called after your own namesake, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, and built in 1154. Meet some locals (and some foreign tourists-though there aren't many American visitors) by having a class of mint tea at el-Fishawy, a landmark café at the entrance to the old bazaar, the Khan el-Khalili.

 5. While you're in the neighborhood, take a stroll through al-Azhar Park, a beautiful green space with magnificent views of Cairo that was created from a reclaimed 500-year-old garbage dump in 2005 by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture.

 6. If you visit the Great Pyramids of Giza, try to avoid a goofy, attention-diverting photo op. Whatever you do, don't get on a camel if the photographers are around! By all means, come back for a wonderful family vacation that takes in all the spectacular monuments and artifacts of Egypt's ancient civilization. But on this visit, keep the focus on today's Egyptians, not yesterday's.

 7. Ditto the Egyptian Museum; save it for your next trip, the treasures of Tutankhamen aren't going anywhere. Instead, visit the Umm Kalthoum Museum, a small palace on the Nile devoted to the memory of the diva who captivated Egypt and the entire Arab world for decades.

 8. Since your recent excursion to Ray's Hell-Burger and Five Guys Burgers and Fries shows your penchant for fast-food hangouts, go have lunch at Abou Tarek's in downtown Cairo. Here, the Egyptian fare is kushari, a mix of macaroni, rice, lentils and chick peas topped by spicy tomato sauce and grilled onions.

 9. Pick up a nice souvenir of your trip for the First Lady at a jewelry boutique owned by the Egyptian designer, Azza Fahmy. Her work, recently celebrated at the Kennedy Center exhibition, Arabesque, takes its inspiration from a variety of Islamic, Arab and Egyptian themes; her latest Symbols collection includes talismans, like wolf fangs and chili peppers, from Middle East folklore.

 10. Wind up the day with a stroll through downtown Cairo and a sunset Nile River ride on a felucca, an Egyptian sailboat. Here you will see some of the real Cairo, the multitude of Egyptians going about their daily life, and the flow of an ancient river that gave life to thousands of years of Egyptian civilization.

 --By Scott MacLeod/Cairo

 Next month, it'll be 26 years since I first visited Egypt, to spend much of my working life here, and to fall in love with Cairo. I thought I'd share some snapshots, as the city becomes the focus of attention with the arrival of President Obama on Thursday. It seems like he'll meet with President Hosni Mubarak, visit the Sultan Hassan mosque, speak at Cairo University and tour the Pyramids. It's not a bad itinerary for an eight-hour stay. But if Obama is like me, even a quarter century would not be enough to fully appreciate Cairo's riches, starting with the most kind-hearted people in the world.

 Mubarak's portrait hangs in many places in Cairo; here, along with framed Arabic calligraphy spelling ”Allah,” it adorns the wall of a car-repair shop near Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo. Although Mubarak has not promoted a cult of personality like some other Arab leaders, democracy has a very long way to go; with no other clear alternative on the political horizon, Egyptians are waiting anxiously to see if Mubarak, 81, will arrange for his son, Gamal, to succeed him.

 Cairo is home to thousands of mosques, with Islam permeating daily life as it has for hundreds of years. One of my favorites, for the elegant geometric patterns and beautiful shades of stone, is the Mosque of Ibn Tulun, built in the 9^th Century and possibly the oldest of Cairo's mosques. I took the photo from the minaret last November.

 Here's a simple antique shop in the Khan el-Khalili bazaar. Note the faded official photo of Mubarak's predecessor, the late Anwar Sadat, and the beer poster for local Stella beer featuring the famed ‘40s crooner/actor Farid El-Atrash and his equally famous sister, the singer known as Asmahan. Despite the Islamic political tide of recent decades, Stella and many new brands of Egyptian-made beer are popular and widely available—although, of course, at a price out of reach for the multitudes of impoverished Egyptians.

 It's becoming rarer and rarer to see Muslim Egyptian women on the street without the hijab, or traditional headscarf. But the flashy styles and colors suggest that it's a cultural trend reflecting Egypt's relaxed spirit, not a sign of religious or social fanaticism.

Tourism, a major source of Egypt's revenues, has been hit more by the global economic slump than lingering fears about Middle East terrorist attacks. But the visitors are still coming by the millions every year to view the Great Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx, on the outer edge of Cairo; with its pharaonic monuments, Islamic treasures, Red Sea beaches and generous hosts, the country is one of the incredible tourist destinations on earth. When I saw a college friend off at the airport last month, she threw her arms around me and blurted, “Egypt is the best vacation I've ever had!”

 Cairo, as with any metropolis of comparable size, is mired in problems like poor education. Nonetheless, the Egyptian economy has made important strides, notably in the tourism industry. Not only is English now widely taught—this picture was a class project in a school on the Corniche el Nil—but young Egyptians are in China studying Chinese to be prepared for the expected future wave of Chinese tourists.

 People grouse about Cairo's traffic, but I think it's just as bad or worse in every other big city I've visited. Still, the easiest way to get around is in a rickety, black-and-white Cairo taxi—usually an Italian Fiat, Russian Lada or French Peugeot. Inevitably the owner has souped it up with interior furnishings, like worry beads, stuffed animals, mini Korans, flags for the beloved Ahly football team and flashing lights. More often than not, the driver will have the radio tuned to an old concert of Egypt's diva, Um Kalthoum, even though she's been dead 35 years.

 The Nile gives Cairo its beauty, its food and its patience. Cairo's teeming streets can be stressful, but the river never fails to bring some calm. Nor is there a better way to take in Cairo's majesty than to cruise along in a simple Nile sailboat, known as a Felucca. When we moved back to Cairo 10 years ago, one of the first things I did was hop on a felucca for a night-time sail with my then seven-year-old.

 If you think this fellow is a good balancing act, you should see the guys who transport those huge trays of freshly baked bread on bicycles through the crowded, potholed streets. (Sorry, I don't have a photo that right now.) Balady bread is a delicious daily staple and a cause of riots if the price gets too high.

 Here's a tray of mint tea at El-Fishawy, a landmark café in Cairo's medieval quarter. Like Paris, Cairo is a city full of them, lining major boulevards and back alleys alike. They serve tea, coffee, water and soft drinks, and are packed until the wee hours mainly with Egyptian men discussing the news of the day and exchanging the jokes that make Egyptians renowned for their sense of humor.

 Sheesha pipes--sold everywhere in Cairo-- have been a craze for the last decade or so. They've probably been around since the invention of tobacco, but the hubbly bubbly became a real phenomenon-- and serious public health hazard-- starting in the '90s. Puffing the water pipe's exotic tobacco flavor is  a favorite social pastime of ordinary and well-to-do Egyptians, and a foreign tourist is as likely to go home with a sheesha pipe as a statue of Tutankhamen.

 --By Scott MacLeod/Cairo

 Why is the nomination of Egyptian culture minister Farouk Hosny to become UNESCO secretary general so important to the Egyptian regime? And why is hard-line Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu indirectly helping Hosny get the post, despite Hosny's knack for anti-Israel statements? Let's call it a case of politics trumping principles in the Middle East--despite all the lofty ideological rhetoric you hear from this part of the world, it happens more than you think.

 Claude Lanzmann,
 Bernard-Henri Lévy 
and Elie Wiesel, three widely esteemed Jewish intellectuals, have written a powerful denunciation of Hosny's candidacy in Le Monde. “Mr. Farouk Hosny is not worthy of this role,” they wrote. “Mr. Farouk Hosny is the opposite of a man of peace, dialogue, and culture. Mr. Farouk Hosny is a dangerous man, an inciter of hearts and minds.”

For their evidence, the writers cite such comments against Israel and Jews widely attributed to Hosny:

--“Israel has never contributed to Civilization in any era, for it has only ever appropriated the contributions of others. The Israeli culture is an inhumane culture; it is an aggressive, racist, pretentious culture based on one simple principle: steal what does not belong to in order to then claim its appropriation.”

--Hosny's boast that he is the “archenemy” of all attempts to normalize Egypt's relations with Israel.

--Hosny's response to a parliamentary question about Israeli books in Egyptian libraries: “Burn these books. If there are any there, I will myself burn them in front of you.”

 Yes, it is hard to imagine how an official who advocates book burning would be a suitable candidate for “one of the most important posts of cultural responsibility on the planet,” as the three protesters put it.  Hosny himself realizes the absurdity of that, too. He apologized in a self-defense Op-Ed penned for Le Monde this week, saying he was terribly misunderstood. “I want to solemnly say that I regret the words that I used. I am a man of peace. I know that peace passes by understanding and respect. In the name of these values I want to go back on the words that I used in May 2008, which were taken as an appeal to burn Hebrew books. These words shocked some and I understand that.” The truth Hosny said, is that he abhors “racism, negating others or any move to harm Jewish culture or any culture.”

 Hosny, an accomplished painter and a government minister for two decades, is an engaging man who has made a habit of getting himself into trouble with provocative statements. He has long been one of the more open, if loose-lipped, officials in a regime infamous for its lack of transparency. He regularly causes uproars for espousing views deemed too liberal for Egypt, like when he criticized women wearing the Islamic headscarf for being “backward.” Blamed for a fire that killed 48 spectators at an Egyptian playhouse, he tendered his resignation with much media fanfare, only to have it rejected with more fanfare.  His comment about burning books was made in response to complaints by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition force to the secular Egyptian regime. Most recently, Hosny was under attack for his part in a rare Egyptian reach-out to Israel—for inviting Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim to perform with the Cairo Symphony Orchestra.

 Yet, being a colorful personality is no excuse for Hosny's reckless “hyperbole,” as he calls it. In fact, he has been a leading figure in an Egyptian cultural establishment that has been consistently hostile not only to Israel—anyway, that can be politics—but offensively and unforgivably to Jews as people. One would have thought that such a bitter condemnation from the likes of Lanzmann, Lévy
 and Wiesel would have been enough to sink Hosny's nomination. But curiously, Israel's government, which had been campaigning against Hosny's selection long before the Le Monde attack appeared, has apparently dropped its fierce opposition to his candidacy.

 According to Ha'aretz, during a May 11 meeting with PM Benjamin Netanyahu, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak asked Netanyahu to lift Israel's opposition to Hosny getting the job. And as part of a secret agreement, the newspaper added, citing a “senior source in the prime minister's office,” Netanyahu promised he would do so. The paper quoted the source saying that Mubarak gave Israel something “substantive and worthwhile” in return. He apparently wouldn't say what.

 But as proof of the deal, Ha'aretz quoted a classified cable sent by the Israeli foreign ministry to several Israel delegations that had been waging the campaign against Hosny:

 “Following Prime Minister Netanyahu's visit to Egypt, and at the request of President Mubarak and in line with understandings with Egypt, Israel has decided to lift its objections to the appointment of Farouk Hosny to the post of UNESCO secretary-general, changing our position to not-opposed.”

 The deadline for UNESCO nominations is Sunday, but the election won't be held until October. Obviously, the last lines in the drama are still to be written.

 --By Scott MacLeod/Cairo

  Is Obama's Iran policy doomed to failure? Despite the president's promise to pursue “honest” negotiations with the Islamic Republic, is he actually following the advice of a senior advisor who instead believes that showing a willingness to negotiate is simply a tactic to build support for a war against Iran? 

 Serious concerns about Obama's approach are already being voiced by prominent pro-engagement Iran experts who are generally sympathetic to Obama's foreign policy ideas. In a NY Times Op-Ed, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett put forth a disturbing thesis: “President Obama's Iran policy, in all likelihood, has already failed.” Meanwhile, Gary Sick writes on his new blog site, “The Leverett article is a timely cautionary note, which reminds us that we need to watch the new administration with a careful and critical eye.” While Sick pleads for greater patience in assessing Obama's Iran performance, the Leveretts and Sick share deep concern over the appointment of  veteran diplomat Dennis Ross as a figure shaping Obama's Iran approach.

Flynt Leverett and his wife Hillary, who say they voted for Obama, are former National Security Council staffers who dealt with Iranian affairs and have maintained direct communications with Iranian officials since leaving government service. While applauding Obama's symbolic outreach to Iran since taking office, they argue that he is now “backing away from the bold steps required to achieve strategic Nixon-to-China-type rapprochement with Tehran.”

The Leveretts say Obama “has done nothing to cancel or repudiate” Bush's covert program to destabilize Iran. Moreover, they add, Obama is refusing to pursue a “grand bargain,” i.e.,  “a comprehensive framework for resolving major bilateral differences and fundamentally realigning relations.” Instead, they say, Obama's “approach to Iran degenerates into an only slightly prettified version of George W. Bush's approach — that is, an effort to contain a perceived Iranian threat without actually trying to resolve underlying political conflicts.” They cite their belief that Obama's team is buying into the “delusion” of creating a grand anti-Iran alliance of Arab states and Israel, and worry that Obama is already putting a “deadline” for successful talks. The problem, they argue, is that getting Iran policy right “would require a president to take positions that some allies and domestic constituencies won't like”—an apparent reference to Israel and its supporters in the U.S. What is needed, they conclude, is “strategic vision, political ruthlessness and personal determination.”

 The Leveretts single out their deep concern over the “disturbing” role that Dennis Ross may be playing in developing Obama's Iran policy. Ross, it will be recalled, served as a Middle East envoy in various Republican and Democratic administrations, and was presiding over years of Israeli-Palestinian mediation when the negotiations collapsed with the outbreak of a Palestinian uprising in 2000.

 They complain that Ross has long been an advocate of “engagement with pressure”—a strategy for showing a willingness to negotiate with Tehran mainly in order to win over broader regional and international support for intensifying economic pressure on Iran. The Leveretts damningly quote Ross from a conversation they held with him before Obama's election. Why negotiate with Iran if you believe that such talks will probably fail? “Because, he told us, if Iran continued to expand its nuclear fuel program, at some point in the next couple of years President Bush's successor would need to order military strikes against Iranian nuclear targets,” the Leveretts wrote. “Citing past ‘diplomacy' would be necessary for that president to claim any military action was legitimate. Iranian officials are fully aware of Mr. Ross's views — and are increasingly suspicious that he is determined that the Obama administration make, as one senior Iranian diplomat said to us, ‘an offer we can't accept,' simply to gain international support for coercive action.”

 Gary Sick, also a former NSC staffer serving several presidents up to Reagan, questions some of the Leveretts' assumptions. He says Obama was correct not to rush into talks with Iran during the Iranian presidential election season. He also says you shouldn't confuse the desirable outcome of talks with the negotiating strategy to get there; that if a “grand bargain” is the ultimate goal, it doesn't necessarily mean that you commence negotiations by putting the whole package on the table at the start. Sick also questions whether Obama has really set the deadline that the Leveretts fretted about. Referring to Obama's recent comments after meeting Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu last week, Sick writes: “Although he appreciated the danger of indefinite talk with no action, he rejected the idea of an ‘artificial deadline.' Obama is very careful with his use of words, and it is important to pay attention to what he actually says, rather than the words that advocates on various sides may try to put in his mouth. That was no deadline.”

 Sick, though, shares the Leveretts' concern about Dennis Ross's approach, citing his alleged shortcomings at some length:

 Dennis Ross started about three years ago to refashion himself from a Palestinian-Israeli maven into an Iran expert. Over that period he wrote a number of papers and op-eds, and he participated as a signatory in other studies and web sites – all of which fit the pattern identified by the Leveretts as favoring lip service to negotiations while insuring failure.

 Until just before he was nominated for his present position, Dennis Ross was, among other things, the chair of the Israeli-based Jewish People Policy Planning Institute which is supported by the Jewish Agency and which produces “professional strategic thinking and planning on short and long-term issues of primary concern to the Jewish People, with special attention to critical choices that have a significant impact on the future.” He was for seven years, quite simply, an informal (but well paid) policy planner for the Israeli government, writing policy papers for the president of Israel, among others. That his policy positions parallel those of the Israeli government should surely come as a surprise to no one. That he favors a pro forma attempt at negotiations with Iran, followed by far more severe sanctions or even military action if and when they fail, should also not be a surprise to anyone who reads the Israeli newspapers.

 True, that's a pretty worrying background for an Obama advisor if the president is sincere about trying to reach out to Iran's government. But Sick argues that it is not at all clear that Ross has the key role the Leveretts attribute to him.

 Sick explains that “there is an emerging Washington parlor sport of trying to figure out who is actually driving U.S. policy on Iran… There have been a number of leaks and un-sourced press reports claiming that Ross is functioning as the principal manager of the Iran policy review. A lot of those reports read as if they might have originated with Ross himself, who originally proclaimed himself a kind of Iran policy czar and who clearly aspires to that role. However, when the United States met with the other major powers on the subject of Iran in London recently, Washington was represented by Undersecretary of State Bill Burns and Ross was nowhere in sight… The real question is whether Dennis Ross is actually in charge of U.S. Iran policy.”

 Sick is less concerned about the appointment of the more-hawkish-than-Obama Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, arguing that it's part of the psychological “game” that Iran plays, too; “The tough words of Secretary Clinton could be regarded as a positive factor, if only to let Iran know that there is opposition inside the administration to any easy deal and they should not expect a pushover.”

 Yet, the Leveretts do raise a hugely important question about whether the appointments of Clinton and Ross will leave Obama with an “incoherent” Iran policy. If Obama is sincere when he tells Iran's leaders that he is “committed to diplomacy…that is honest and grounded in mutual respect…and to pursuing constructive ties among the United States, Iran and the international community,” that is simply not consistent with the appointment of a top advisor who favors “lip service to negotiations while insuring failure.” The danger is that if Obama can't figure out whether he wants to truly engage or fight, he risks the same policy drift that has pushed the U.S. and Iran closer and closer to armed conflict. Policy drift eventually enabled the hawks to trump the doves in America's march to war in Iraq in 2003. Obama says the “buck stops here” in the Oval Office, but will it already be too late once it does?

 Sick is sensible to conclude, however, that “before we give up on Obama's negotiating approach, I suggest that we wait until there are actually some negotiations. Let us not start at the end of the process but rather at the beginning, where we (and the Iranians) still find ourselves.”

 --By Scott MacLeod/Cairo

Suddenly everyone in Lebanon is asking that question thanks to an article published over the weekend by the German magazine Der Spiegel, which claims that the U.N. tribunal investigating the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister now believes Hizballah to be a prime suspect. Based on unnamed sources "close" to the investigation and backed by undisclosed "internal" documents, Der Spiegel wrote that the evidence that led to Hizballah started with an ill-considered phone call from one of the assassins to his girlfriend, which allowed investigators to identify the caller as a member of Hizballah special operations.

Until now, the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad had been the presumed main suspect under investigation. Almost as soon as Hariri was killed on Valentines Day 2005 in a massive car bombing in central Beirut, the United States and France led world opinion in blaming Syria -- which at the time occupied Lebanon -- for the attack. Hariri had cooperated with Syria during his years as prime minister when he led efforts to rebuilt the country after the end of its civil war in 1990. But before he died, he had fallen out of favor with Assad over Hariri's vision for an ever more independent and prosperous Lebanon. And the massive demonstrations after his death -- which became known as the Cedar Revolution -- helped push the Syrians out of Lebanon later that summer.

However, any evidence that Hizballah either collaborated in or else masterminded the plot against Hariri would also be welcome news to the U.S, which considers the militant group to be a terrorist organization, and to Israel, which has been fighting with Hizballah ever since the group formed in 1982 to resist the Israeli occupation of Lebanon.

But there are reasons to view the Der Spiegel story with suspicion. A rumor that the UN tribunal had begun to focus on Hizballah had been making the rounds in Washington for weeks now. For it to have a public airing in the press just a few days ahead of Lebanon's parliamentary elections on June 7th -- a contest which the Hizballah-led opposition is poised to win -- makes it appear that someone opposed to Hizballah has been shopping this story around in a desperate measure to affect the elections.

The Der Spiegel theory also doesn't fit with the current understanding about the relationship between Hizaballah and Hariri. The former prime minister and billionaire businessman may have been one of the few other people in Lebanon whose outsized character could compete in the spotlight with Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah, but Hariri was not a threat to Hizballah's main concern -- its military infrastructure. True at some point, Hariri's push for greater autonomy could have been a problem for Hizballah, if independence came with pressure on Hizballah to disarm, or if it became difficult to get weapons over the Syrian border. But as my colleague Nick Blanford ponits out in his excellent book about the Hariri assassination, "Killing Mr. Lebanon" in the weeks before his death, Hariri began a series of clandestine meeting with Nasrallah in order to reconcile their two visions of Lebanon. Hariri believed that he was close to reaching an agreement.

For his part, Nasrallah heaped scorn on the Der Spiegel article in a speech last night, and accused the magazine of being party to an Israeli plot. Eventually, time will tell if Der Spiegel is right: sooner or later the UN tribunal -- which is ostensibly keeping its investigation secret -- will have to issue its findings and announce suspects if there are any.

But even such a finding against Hizballah would not necessarily unite public opinion in Lebanon against the group. By now, the tribunal is viewed by Hizballah supporters and their many allies in Lebanon as a partisan institution, and not without reason. From its inception, the tribunal was intended by its supporters on the Security Council (France and the U.S.) as a tool for putting pressure on the Asasd regime, and by extension, its proxies such as Hizballah. None of the dozens of other assassinated politicians in Lebanon before Hariri had their own international investigation, nor for that matter did the thousands of ordinary people who died in the country's 15-year civil war, such as the massacred inhabitants of the Palestinian refugee camps Sabra and Chatila. In fact, the Hariri tribunal was the first U.N. tribunal created to investigate the death of just one man (though later its scope was broadened to investigate the deaths of other assassinated anti-Syrian politicians and journalists.) Since then, the tribunal has damaged its own reputation for impartiality. One of its early reports implicated the highest levels of the Syrian government in the assassination, but later reports backed away from the claim. The UN investigators also ordered the arrest of four of the top pro-Syrian security chiefs in Lebanon, and had them held in jail for four years without charges. The Der Spiegel leak ahead of the election will hurt the tribunal even more.

And even if the U.N. does eventually target Hizballah, the result will probably be more harm then good. Considering the mighty Israeli army hasn't been able to budge Hizballah in 27 years of war, the chances of an international court dragging the guerilla group to the Hague for a trial date are pretty slim. Instead of justice being served, it's more likely that such a finding will result in another civil war in Lebanon, this time between the Shia Muslim followers of Hizballah, and the country's Sunni Muslims, who regarded Hariri as their leader. Sectarian tensions are already hanging on the balance. The supporters of the Hariri tribunal may want "The Truth" as they repeat on many a poster and billboard; but Lebanon may not be able to handle the truth.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut

 Nothing better illustrates the farce of the Bush administration's involvements in the Middle East than the brutal detention and mysterious death of Ali al-Fakhiri, better known in the media by his nom de guerre, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi.

 In making the case to the American people and a skeptical world for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Bush and his officials put enormous stock in a claim made by al-Libi. He had been arrested by Pakistani police in November 2001 and handed over to U.S. military authorities, who regarded him as the highest-ranking al-Qaeda operative to be captured since 9/11.

 Al-Libi told interrogators that al-Qaeda was working with Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq—thus providing the Bush administration with the vital justification to attack Iraq in response to 9/11. In his powerfully persuasive address to the U.N. a month before the invasion, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell referred to al-Libi's evidence to prove the supposedly “sinister nexus between Iraq and the al-Qaeda network.”

 A lie, it turned out. A lie spoken as the result of torture, telling the Bush administration what it wanted to hear, a lie that was then used to peddle a war.

 After being turned over by the Pakistanis, al-Libi was apparently initially held at a U.S. detention facility at Bagram air base in Afghanistan. In his eight-year odyssey as a prisoner, al-Libi then reportedly moved on to the amphibious ship USS Bataan, to a secret location in Egypt, to Guantanamo Bay and eventually to Abu Salim prison in his native Libya—a Libya, by the way, that is ruled by an Arab autocrat who suddenly decided to become a U.S. ally in Bush's “war on terrorism” after the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

While in Egypt in early 2002, according to a declassified cable cited by Human Rights Watch, the Egyptian interrogators demanded information from al-Libi about al-Qaeda's connections with Iraq but that he had difficulty even coming up with a story. HRW cites a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report saying that al-Libi “lied to avoid torture.”

 According to Colin Powell's chief of staff at the State Department, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, al-Libi was subjected to the technique known as water boarding while in Egypt. In a piece written for the Washington Note, Wilkerson recalls that when the Bush administration authorized harsh interrogation methods for al-Qaeda detainees in early 2002, its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack—as former Vice President Cheney continues to insist—but “discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qaeda.” When the interrogation team reported to Cheney's office that al-Libi had been compliant, Wilkerson asserts, “the VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods.” During the water boarding, he says, al-Libi “revealed” the al-Qaeda-Iraq relationship in order to get the torture to stop.

 Wilkerson doesn't say so, but it's even worse than that. In February 2002, a U.S. intelligence report specifically warned the Bush administration against using al-Libi's confession as the foundation for its case of a Saddam connection to 9/11. Among the Defense Intelligence Agency's concerns was that al-Libi lacked specifics about the Iraqis involved with al-Qaeda and where Iraqi-sponsored training for al-Qaeda terrorists had taken place. He recanted his story in January 2004, throwing into question everything al-Libi—at one point the highest ranking al-Qaeda leader in U.S. custody—had ever said.

  The case of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi is at the center of one of the most controversial wars in American history, a war based on claims that Saddam possessed WMD and was working with al-Qaeda that turned out to be lies, a war that diverted resources from fighting the real perpetrators of 9/11. Whether it was the mangling of U.S. priorities in the Middle East, or the reckless baying for Saddam's blood, or the fabrication and misuse of intelligence, or torture and denial of basic rights to prisoners—al-Libi's case has it all.

The chance to ever learn al-Libi's full story ended on May 11 when a Libyan newspaper reported that he had committed “suicide” inside Abu Salim prison. Curiously, al-Libi managed to steel himself through years of incarceration and torture, only to supposedly commit “suicide” as a new U.S. government opens the Bush administration's torture files. Wilkerson says that his death came as U.S. lawyers working with tortured detainees were attempting to get Col. Gadhafi's government to allow al-Libi to be interviewed. As it turns out, Human Rights Watch was in fact allowed brief access to al-Libi last April 27, two weeks or less before his “suicide.” He refused to speak to the HRW representative, except to ask, “Where were you when I was being tortured in American jails?”

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo