Austin Bay Blog

Powerline has an excellent discussion of Amir Taheri’s Wall St Journal essay which makes a case (a case) that Israel won the first round of the Israel-Hezbollah war. Powerline doubts Taheri’s case but lauds his essay.

I think Taheri has a very good case– and it’s a case that dovetails with strategic and operational observations StrategyPage began making ten days ago.

Taheri’s thesis:

The way much of the Western media tells the story, Hezbollah won a great victory against Israel and the U.S., healed the Sunni-Shiite rift, and boosted the Iranian mullahs’ claim to leadership of the Muslim world. Portraits of Hassan Nasrallah, the junior mullah who leads the Lebanese branch of this pan-Shiite movement, have adorned magazine covers in the West, hammering in the message that this child of the Khomeinist revolution is the new hero of the mythical “Arab Street.”

Probably because he watches a lot of CNN, Iran’s “Supreme Guide,” Ali Khamenei, also believes in “a divine victory.” Last week he asked 205 members of his Islamic Majlis to send Mr. Nasrallah a message, congratulating him for his “wise and far-sighted leadership of the Ummah that produced the great victory in Lebanon.”

By controlling the flow of information from Lebanon throughout the conflict, and help from all those who disagree with U.S. policies for different reasons, Hezbollah may have won the information war in the West. In Lebanon, the Middle East and the broader Muslim space, however, the picture is rather different.

I’ll add this excerpt:

Politically, however, Hezbollah had to declare victory for a simple reason: It had to pretend that the death and desolation it had provoked had been worth it. A claim of victory was Hezbollah’s shield against criticism of a strategy that had led Lebanon into war without the knowledge of its government and people.  

Taheri concludes with this line:

“Hezbollah won the propaganda war because many in the West wanted it to win as a means of settling score with the United States,” says Egyptian columnist Ali al-Ibrahim. “But the Arabs have become wise enough to know TV victory from real victory.”

Taheri makes an intricate, informed argument — read the entire essay.

Now for StrategyPage — On  August 16 StrategyPage made several points that reinforce Taheri’s argument:

While Hizbollah can declare this a victory, because it fought Israel without being destroyed, this is no more a victory than that of any other Arab force that has faced Israeli troops and failed. Arabs have been trying to destroy Israel for over half a century, and Hizbollah is the latest to fail. But Hizbollah did more than fail, it scared most Moslems in the Middle East, because it demonstrated the power and violence of the Shia Arab minority. Sunni Arabs, and most Arabs are Sunnis, are very much afraid of Shia Moslems, mainly because most Iranians are Shia, not Arab, and intent on dominating the region, like Iran has done so many times in the past. Hizbollah’s recent outburst made it clear that Iran, which subsidizes and arms Hizbollah, has armed power that reaches the Mediterranean. This scares Sunni Arabs because a Shia minority also continues to rule Syria (where most of the people are Sunni). The Shia majority in Iraq, which have not dominated Iraq for over three centuries, is now back in control.

Also see this StrategyPage post from August 18.

My quick take: Hezbollah’s claim to victory is based on Hezbollah’s media claims — ie, it’s media touts. We don’t really know a lot about Hezbollah’s losses. Israel is an open society. Its self-critique of its own military performance is magnified and amplified by instant media exposure and democratic politics. Hezbollah is a terrorist organization in thrall to a religious dictatorship. We can hear and see Israeli accusations and lamentations; we know much more about Israel’s own damage assessments. The Israelis damaged Hezbollah’s military capabilities– but it will take time to learn just how much because Hezbollah and Iran can initially restrict (and occasionally direct) the flow of information. StrategyPage suggests that Lebanon’s chaos and fragmentation now poses a threat to Hezbollah. Taheri argues that Hezbollah may be more isolated now than it was prior to the war. Israel did not “win” in a spectacular 1967-esque fashion but it certainly did not lose. Hezbollah got an “information win,” which is a highly-qualified kind of victory. The US has committed itself to waging a “money war” in Lebanon, designed to blunt Hezbollah’s own “money offensive.” The next four months will be an extremely dangerous time for Hezbollah, and make StrategyPage and Taheri look rather prescient.

UPDATE: A reader notes via email:

Taheri has an excellent track record regarding his Middle East comments, and his credentials are as good as you will find anywhere. I pay close attention to all he writes and recommend others do, too. Israel appeared to make numerous errors in its prosecution of the Lebanon invasion, but I think it regrouped well enough to accomplish many if not most of its goals. Better yet, I believe they will also learn from their mistakes and not repeat them next time. I strongly suspect the next phase will include Syria and Iran, too; they have each had their fair warning and the rest of the world will understand the need for their inclusion.

Taheri does have an excellent track record.