A Letter to Rouhani From a Murdered Lebanese Patriot – WSJ.com
December 30 | Posted by mrossol | Middle East, Radical IslamI am not betting that Iran changes. It will continue to take power, externally, to hold Iran in check; or an internal change in power, for there to be fundamental change.
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Mohamad Chatah, a former Lebanese finance minister and potential future prime minister, wrote an open letter last week to Hasan Rouhani, calling on the new Iranian president to end Tehran’s interference in Lebanon. Chatah never got the chance to send it. On Friday morning he was assassinated in central Beirut by a car bomb that killed four others and injured 50 more.
Nobody has taken credit for his murder, but Chatah sent a Twitter TWTR -13.04% message minutes before his death that offers a clue: “Hezbollah is pressing hard to be granted similar powers in security and foreign policy matters that Syria exercised in Lebanon for 15 years.” Chatah was on his way to a meeting of the so-called March 14 group that opposes Iranian and Syrian interference in Lebanon via the Shiite Hezbollah militia.
A moderate Sunni Muslim, Chatah was a key adviser to former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who now lives in exile and whose father and former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated in 2005. Saad Hariri blamed Chatah’s death on the same people who killed his father. It is probably no coincidence that a special United Nations tribunal is soon scheduled to put on trial in absentia four members of Hezbollah for Rafik Hariri’s 2005 murder. All four remain fugitives, protected by Hezbollah since their 2011 indictment.
The murder makes Chatah’s letter all the more poignant for its appeal to Mr. Rouhani’s supposed desire for peace in the region. You can read the entire letter on OpinionJournal.com. We posted it on Saturday evening and it has been getting lots of attention in the Middle East. Chatah’s son Omar says his father wrote it last week but never had a chance to gather signatures in parliament before he was killed.
“Your election as president last summer has signaled to many in the region and the world that the Iranian people want to set their country on a new path; a path of reform and openness and peaceful relations with the rest of the world,” Chatah wrote. He then challenged Mr. Rouhani to reduce Iran’s support for Hezbollah, which has become a malignant power unto itself in Lebanon. Its demand for a veto over any new government has left Lebanon without a cabinet for nearly a year.
The letter amounts to another test of whether Mr. Rouhani is the peacemaker he claims to be. If Iran does want a better relationship with its neighbors, then striking a nuclear weapons deal with the West isn’t enough. Tehran must also put new limits on the Revolutionary Guard Corps that arms and runs both Hezbollah and the Syrian military. The Guard Corps reports to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, if it reports to anyone. And it is hard to believe that Hezbollah or Syrian intelligence would have moved to murder Chatah without the knowledge of the Revolutionary Guards.
Yet if Mr. Rouhani can’t control the Guard Corps, then all of his claims of peaceful intent amount to little more than diplomatic cover for Tehran’s real agenda of regional domination. Until it leashes its imperialist militias, the car bomb that killed Chatah should be understood as the clearest statement of Iran’s intentions.
A Letter to Rouhani From a Murdered Lebanese Patriot – WSJ.com.
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