Al-Jazeera – or, what’s up in Lebanon?

In today’s Guardian Media, Yvonne Ridley writes, with notable tolerance, that al-Jazeera has brought a “heroic brand of journalism” to the Arab world. The tolerance is striking because she has just won a four-year battle for compensation after being sacked by al-Jazeera English. Her praise is justified because al-Jazeera’s reporting of the Middle East is reliable, yet quite unlike what we get from local (western) sources.

Take this story about Saudis being warned to leave Lebanon.

There are intimations of war here: the USS Philippine Sea has arrived off the coast of Lebanon. Back in 2003, the day after the start of the Iraq war, a picture of the night-launch of this warship’s first Tomahawk missile filled the front pages of the world’s press. Today, it is in the company of the USS Ross. The two boats carry a total of 212 cruise missiles. Last week Saudi Arabia contacted all its citizens in Lebanon by SMS (texts), and told them to leave as soon as possible. Bahrain and Kuwait were said to have quickly followed suit.

This is significant, but it won’t be on R4 news, and M. Apache’s quick flick through the Guardian and Times doesn’t find it there either.

But suppose we take the move as seriously as it is taken in the Middle East. Israeli news and propaganda sites say that the ships are there to discourage Hizbollah in Lebanon from intervening on the side of the Palestinians in Gaza during the present upsurge of violence. However, intervention by a radical Shia force (Hizbollah) on behalf of a radical Sunni movement (in Gaza) seems unlikely, and would in any case not pose a threat to Saudis.

The other suggestion is that Hizbollah is about to move to take over the Lebanese government from President Fouad Siniora – who is backed by the Saudis. However, remembering the lack of support given to the Siniora government by its Western “friends” as Israel took the country apart two years ago, it is unlikely that the US would make 212 Tomahawk missiles suddenly available to support Siniora’s government. Richard Murphy, former US ambassador to Syria and an old State Department hand, has suggested the deployment is a sign that the US government is short of ideas for action in the area, so has just sent a gunboat (or three).


A report by Prof Paul Rogers to the Oxford Research Group dated February 2006 suggests that one way Iran would hit back if it was attacked over its nuclear enrichment activities would be to mobilize Hizbollah to cause trouble for Israel. It is just possible that the Israeli “over reaction” to the border incursion and kidnapping of its soldiers in 2006 was an opportunistic attempt to damage Hizbollah sufficiently to reduce any threat from them if Iran was attacked by either Israel or the US in the next year or two.


Israel’s move seems to have had the reverse effect, and Hizbollah may be stronger and more confident as a consequence of the invasion – although the recent (12 February) killing of Hizbollah’s deputy leader Imad Al Mughaniya in Syria will have been a timely blow if he was as important to the organisation as has been rumoured.

Another reaction of Hizbollah might be to act as an Iranian proxy and attack allies of the US, especially if they are Sunni allies such as Saudi Arabians.

US ships off Lebanon could oppose any Hizbollah attack on Israel as well as participate in any moves against Iran, since many sites in northern Iran are within the 900 km range of cruise missiles carrying conventional unitary warheads. They could supplement those fired from the Arabian Gulf and Arabian Sea. It is believed that the key Iranian facilities are so well protected below ground that nuclear weapons would be needed by any enemy wishing to destroy them. Nuclear warhead cruise missiles have a range of 1350 miles.

George Bush has only 10 months left. He is showing increasing signs of mental instability, as he sings to the tune of the ‘Green, Green Grass of Home’ the words

For there’s Condi
And Dick, my old compadre,
Talking to me about some oil-rich Saudi –

Does he really not know what to do with his cruise missiles, or shall we shortly taste a cup of horror and desolation? Well, if it happens, it’ll take place in the next three weeks.

Whoever wins gets first chance with those nice horsemen in uniform from Shoa and Pekod. (See Ezekiel 23, verses 22-23.) This has happened before….

All right, M. Apache is speculating. But how different this English al-Jazeera line of thinking is from the kind of thing we get daily from our own media.

Keep it up George (and Dick)!