05/22/2008

News / Bush Finds Growing Mideast Agreement on Iran

Tehran has hand in violence from Lebanon to Iraq, say officials

By David McKeeby
Staff Writer

Washington -- Progress toward Israeli-Palestinian peace dominated President Bush’s latest mission to the Middle East, and the president also reported growing agreement among regional leaders regarding Iran’s challenge to peace and security.

“There is big concern about Iran, given the fact that Hezbollah is destabilizing Lebanon, Hamas is trying to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state, and, of course, Iranian action inside of Iraq,” Bush said. He spoke after meetings with leaders at the World Economic Forum on the Middle East at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on the final leg of his May 13-18 trip to the region.

“There is a struggle going on in this region between the forces of change and progress and reform, and those that are supporting terror and the killing of civilians as a tool to achieve political power,” National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley said at a May 18 briefing. “There is now a consensus understanding of what is going on in this region, and that Iran is very much behind that struggle.”

In Lebanon, Bush said, Iranian-backed Hezbollah showed its true nature May 7 when it turned weapons on the Lebanese government in response to a political dispute. Bush dispatched General Martin Dempsey to help Lebanese officials assess security needs. The president also welcomed efforts by the Arab League to broker peace. (See “America Stands with Lebanon, Bush Says.”)

“The Lebanese people deserve a peaceful democracy and our aim is to help them,” Bush said.

Some experts in the region are seeing Hezbollah’s latest attacks on Lebanon as a “strategic failure,” Hadley said, and the attacks may accelerate pressure to dismantle the radical militia, as called for in the wake of the group’s August 2006 attack on neighboring Israel.

“Hezbollah made a show of military power, but in doing so it exposed that it is actually not the great resistance movement,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters returning to the United States with Bush aboard Air Force One. “And they made it very clear that what they are is an arm of Iran.”

Meanwhile, the Gaza Strip remains dominated by Iranian-backed Hamas, which allows continuing rocket attacks targeting civilians in neighboring Israel in an effort to disrupt the peace process pursued by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

As in Lebanon, Bush urged leaders to support the peace process and efforts to build a Palestinian state, Hadley said. “There is an opportunity in the standing up of a Palestinian state and giving a positive alternative to the vision of Hamas to deal a setback to Iran, and bring stability and peace to the region.” (See “U.S. Backs Peaceful Solutions, Democratic Leaders in Middle East.”)

Iran is troubled by the fact that democracy is taking root in Iraq, Bush said. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s government recently has seen new successes by Iraqi security forces deployed to Basra to confront Iranian-backed militants.

“They were armed and trained by Iran, and they got beat in southern Iraq,” said Rice, adding that U.S.-led coalition forces continue finding and detaining members of Iran’s elite al-Quds Force operating in Iraq.

“Iraq is changing,” said Bush, “and it's in the interest of the United States that we help it continue to change to the better.”

Iran’s recent moves in Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories and Iraq reveal “significant vulnerabilities,” said Rice, as a growing number of Tehran’s neighbors share U.S. concerns about Iran’s regional actions, which are in addition to Iran’s internationally controversial nuclear program, the subject of three rounds of U.N. political and economic sanctions.

As European negotiators prepared to offer Iran a new package of incentives to suspend its uranium enrichment program, Bush reiterated the U.S. offer to join Iran at international negotiations in exchange for a verifiable suspension of its nuclear program.

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