Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Iran’s President Ahmadinejad pays a visit to Lebanon. He can expect a hero’s welcome in Hezbollah strongholds but how will it play at home in Iran or in Israel? Lisa Mullins talks with Los Angeles Times Middle East correspondent Borzou Daragahi in Beirut. Download MP3
Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.
LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World. Cheering crowds greeted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he touched down today in Lebanon. It’s the Iranian president’s first state visit to Lebanon, the multi-sectarian country, and it’s bolstering the morale of those Lebanese who back the militant Shiite group Hezbollah. But Hezbollah has many rivals in Lebanon and they view Ahmadinejad’s trip with suspicion. They accuse Tehran of meddling in their country’s internal affairs. Los Angeles Times Middle East correspondent Borzou Daragahi is in Beirut where, as he says, there are a many reasons Ahmadinejad has support.
BORZOU DARAGAHI: There’s a certain segment that admires his defiance of the US, his rhetoric against Israel. The calls for the destruction of Israel have captivated some in the Arab world including in Lebanon. But largely in Lebanon he’s feeding off the charisma and the support of Hezbollah, the Shiite political organization and militia led by Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. He has a real finger on the pulse of the Shiite community in Lebanon, Nasrallah does. And it was his calls to support Ahmadinejad and his calls for people to come out into the streets and meet him at the airport and this massive organization of students who go to Hezbollah schools. Scouts who are basically members of the Hezbollah boy scouts. The security teams that were out there in full force. It was that that created this rapturous welcome.
MULLINS: Did you say that Hezbollah has boy scouts?
DARAGAHI: Yeah, the [INDISCERNIBLE] scouts they’re called. I mean they have a whole massive social organization on multiple levels. They have clinics, they have a security force. They have their own fiber optic network. They control huge swaths of the country on the ground. So when someone as powerful as Nasrallah says okay guys, let’s show this guy a real welcome, you know they’re going to come out.
MULLINS: Well, they have apparently come out and they continue to through his visit here. We should mention also that one of the reasons they’re out, presumably, is that Iran provides a massive amount of financial and military backing for Hezbollah. A group, Hezbollah, that the United States considers a terrorist organization and a group which appears to be priming itself for a fresh war with Israel. In this case, is this considered by the rest of Lebanon, as it is by President Obama, as a provocative visit on the part of Iran’s president?
DARAGAHI: It is absolutely considered a provocative visit by many segments of Lebanese population. The so-called pro-US, Western-baked, Saudi-aligned March 14 coalition, the rank and file, definitely views this as a provocation.
MULLINS: Well, power there in Lebanon is shared among Shiites and Sunnis, Christians and [INDISCERNIBLE] political camps grouped roughly into a pro-Western, Saudi Arabian backed faction. And then there’s the Iranian and Syrian allied camp that is led, as you say, by Hezbollah. Does this visit by Iran’s president tip the balance in any way?
DARAGAHI: Some people might wish it would, but things in the Middle East have a very strange way of not working out they way people intend them to. I think there’s a message that Ahmadinejad is trying to send that Hezbollah is our friend and we support them, so don’t mess with them. And so Ahmadinejad’s visit is an attempt to tell other Lebanese factions you better watch it. But whether that’s going to work, I don’t know. I don’t see how it could work. And Ahmadinejad is pretty good at failed gambits like this.
MULLINS: Thank you very much. Los Angeles Times Middle East correspondent Borzou Daragahi, speaking to us from Beirut. Thanks, Borzou.
DARAGAHI: It’s been a pleasure.
Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.
Discussion
One comment for “Ahmadinejad in Lebanon”