Investors Business Daily, Editorial, May 21, 2008

Beirut’s death struggle ends amid a sea of Western indifference and U.N. incompetence. A deal struck Wednesday in Qatar gives Hezbollah the control it seeks. Welcome to Hezbollahstan.

Hezbollah members could be seen removing mattresses from their encampments around Beirut after talks in Doha, Qatar, resulted in an agreement that for now promises to end the worst violence to grip Lebanon since its 1975-1990 civil war. This latest round left 67 dead. Hezbollah won.

Under the deal, the Hezbollah-led opposition will have its long-sought veto power in a new Cabinet of national unity. Obtaining this veto power was Hezbollah’s key demand that triggered a year-and-a-half-long crisis as Lebanon struggled to select a new head of state to replace the pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud, who finally left office on Nov. 23.

The standoff began in November 2006, when Hezbollah-led opposition lawmakers — in protest of the Cabinet’s refusal to grant them enough seats to ensure their veto power — resigned from the government to prevent the majority needed to select a new president.

It is a victory for the Iranian-created, -financed and -armed terrorist organization that before 9/11 was responsible for killing more Americans — including 241 troops in their Beirut barracks in 1983 — than any other group. It is the stalking horse of Iran’s quite-mad president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Syria, whose operatives engaged in a long series of assassinations of anti-Syrian political leaders and journalists, is quite happy about the agreement. “Lebanon’s security and stability are important and vital to Syria’s security and stability,” said its foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem.

The deal also green-lights the election of the army chief, Gen. Michel Suleiman, as head of state. He emerged as a compromise choice when those who insisted on a clearly anti-Syrian candidate relaxed their opposition. He’s on good terms with Hezbollah and was believed to have the tacit consent of Syria for the presidency. He was appointed to his post in 1998, when Syria ran the show during its decades-long occupation.

It was the army’s reversal of government orders that sparked the current violence. The orders were to dismantle an illegal Hezbollah telecommunications network and remove Brig. Gen. Wafiq Shuqeir, security commander at Beirut international airport, for reportedly permitting Hezbollah spy cameras to be set up at the facility. He is believed to be in league with Hezbollah.

The army was a nonfactor during the recent violence. Hezbollah showed who called the shots as armed militiamen seized large sections of Beirut at will. A Lebanese army officer escorted Hezbollah gunmen as they walked into the Beirut offices of Future TV and demanded it cease broadcasting what was happening to the world.

Hezbollah has kept its weapons in violation of U.N. Resolutions 1559 and 1701. Its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said the private network was “the most important part of the weapons of the resistance,” adding that Hezbollah had a duty to defend those weapons. Under this deal, the terrorist outfit gets to keep them.

UNIFIL, the U.N.’s peacekeeping force, has silently watched Hezbollah rearm just as it watched Syrian and Iranian weapons pour into Lebanon before Hezbollah used that country as a human shield in its war with Israel. It says Syria is behind the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, but no one has been brought to justice.

The U.S. must take some blame. In 2003, Congress passed the Syria Accountability Act, but Syria hasn’t been held accountable for anything, not even for having a secret nuclear weapons program.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently made a pilgrimage to Damascus to kiss the ring of Syrian thug Bashar Assad. Expect a President Obama to follow, a stop on the road to Tehran. Any Lebanese government decision must now be approved by Hezbollah, presumably after it’s been run past Tehran and Damascus.

In Lebanon, political power has grown out of the barrel of Hezbollah’s guns. Those who would negotiate with Iran keep feeding the Islamofascist tiger, hoping it will eat us last.