When I was in Washington, D.C. last week, I had dinner with the relatives I was staying with at their good friends’ house. These family friends happened to be Iranian. They had a son and two daughters, the boy was the youngest and the girls were about four years apart from each other. I had a conversation with the oldest girl about a variety of things, and by about 15 minutes before her mother had finished making our dinner, it turned political.

She was very intelligent, she has one year to go until she achieves her degree in biology from a large school in California. But she was not quite to my liking in her national and religious sentiments. She asked me how I felt, “as an Arab” about the whole mess over in Lebanon and Palestine. I told her briefly that I believed that Hezb Allah had ruined something that could have been great, the Lebanese democratic project as it were. I told her I was irritated with Hezb Allah and with militant Islamic groups generally.

“The Palestinian ones?” she asked.

“Yes, them, but moreso Hezb Allah, and Syria, and the other groups that use Shias for cannon fodder. You know what I mean?” I didn’t want to say Iran, I was a guest after all. But she knew what I meant.

She was shocked.

“Nouri, you are Shia,” she told me. They are fighting to protect Shias, she said. “Nouri, Hezb Allah is not half as bad as Israel, and they are fighting for you. They are just trying to help Shias.”

I asked her who was trying to help Shias. “Iran and Syria, and you know Hezb Allah is the Shias, they deserve credit.” I said to her, “Fatma, nobody is just trying to help Shias, they are all trying to help themselves. How is what Hezb Allah doing helping Shias?”

She went on about how the Israelis were aggressive, and how the Shias needed to be protected from the Christians Ä!Å, and so on. I told her that before the recent fighting, Lebanon was at peace, the Shias could be at peace too if Hezb Allah put down its weapons and stopped acting on behalf of Syria and Iran. If it fell into the fold.

I said that Hezb Allah just did the bidding of Iran, and it wasn’t out to protect anybody, maybe before when they were occupied by the Isrealis, but what they started this time was not “protection”, it was Iranian political interest.

“So what if it is, Iran has interests, what’s wrong with that?” Before the conversation was more playful, but now it was a bit brash. Her hands were in the air. I was leaning on the side of a wide open door way. I was relaxed. I sat down, because I felt like I would appear condescending if I kept standing up when she was so emotional.

“You Arabs don’t like Israel anyway, if Iran has to fight them why not have people who want to fight them fight them?” I was sort of surprised.

“Because not all of them want to? Why should Lebanon get roughed up for somebody else’s sake?” She spun around in her swivel chair, smiling, and said something in Farsi. I laughed. Not at the Farsi, at the spinning.

“Don’t you think the way Iran is behaving is kind of, I don’t know, bully-ish?” I had always wanted to ask an Iranian about that. Iran called itself an empire for a long time. They had an “Imperial family”, I always thought of the whole Islamic revolution thing as an Islamized version of that mentality. Her family are monarchists, by the way. I had always gotten the feeling that such Iranians were opposed to the way the Islamic Republic tried to influence other countries. Perhaps?

“Bully? What? Israel is the bully!” She began to put her hair up in a pony tail. Appearently not.

“Imperialistic, then? Maybe?” I asked.

“Iran is a republic not an empire Nouri. Who do they want to take over? All they want is to be respected.” She was leaning back. I wiped my hand on my head, it was hot and I had been kind of sweating up there.

“I think it kind of acts like it wants to be an empire though, you know?” I was worried about saying that.

I say rude things to other Arabs about their governments, or countries I should say, all the time. I tell Moroccans and Jordanians I think that their kings are backward. I told a Moroccan lady that made falafels in New York that I thought King Hassan was an imperialist. She didn’t care. “I think he was a dick too. $2.50”. When I was in Saudi Arabia I had a conversation with a guy who told he hated life in KSA. “There’s nothing to do and we can’t even flirt in school”, we pretty much agreed the country kind of sucked. I am comfortable talking to Arabs about Arab governments; I don’t think anybody honestly believes that “our” ÄArabÅ systems are really all that great. I’m not familiar with Iranians, or “Persians” as some here call themselves. I read Iranian newspapers and websites that seem absolute. Monarchists that don’t believe the royal family had anything wrong with it. Nationalistic young people that blame Arabs for anything wrong with the country. They seem touchy. Even arrogant.

I’ve only met and talked to a few Iranians. Never about politics. I date a half Iranian girl. I’ve met her father only a few times. He’s nice, but when you’re dating a girl and you’re in a situation where her father can decide whether or not she can see you, you don’t talk about politics (or other divisive issues).

I was worried about going to these peoples’ house because I didn’t know what kind of food Iranians ate or made and I had heard that they didn’t like Arabs. That sounds stupid, especially since these were family friends, but I had no idea what to expect.

“Iran is an empire, and always has been”, she said to me. “If it doesn’t do what it was made to, it will have another revolution, that could be good though!” She said with a laugh.

“So doesn’t that mean it shouldn’t help Hezb Allah?” I was confused. “If they don’t help Hezb Allah they’ll have a revolution!” I was kidding her.

“No, it needs to get Israel out of the way to grow, not destroy it, just make it weaker,” I still didn’t get how any of this power politiking was not imperial.

“Wait, so it is imperialist, right?” I asked.

“Yes, kind of, sort of…”

“And that’s not so much a bad thing?”

“Not really. Only if it, like, you know, makes America or Israel or somebody want to nuke them. They need Hezb Allah to keep Israel off their back.” She was dead serious. She had the most sincere expression on her face I had ever seen.

“What about Lebanon?!” I was lost. Why does it have to use Lebanon for this? Countries are so much better when they don’t have rockets falling all over the place. It’s just a better way to be.

“They can take it, it will only last a little while, the Israelis will get tired. Nouri, you like Lebanon a lot, huh?” She thought it was stupid to care so much about so little a country.

“I do, it’s the biggest party in the Middle East!” I don’t know if she got my point, that the Lebanese were as free as any Arabs would be, probably for most of my lifetime. If the Israeli offensive keeps going on, that will be gone. That liberty will get swallowed up in violence. My relatives still had yet to come back from Tyre at that point.

“I don’t like the mullahs but I think it is Iran’s interest to be a big player in the Middle East, what’s wrong with that?” she said. “Iran is friendly to Arabs too, like Syria, and Algeria you know, right? And the Palestinians. They are all Muslims. They ÄIranÅ just have to free themselves. Iran used to be a superpower,” again, very sincere. I’ve only heard a few people tell me, “they/we’re all Muslims” and mean it while wearing shortshorts and eyeliner. Actually, maybe it was just her. I don’t even think she meant it. She told me earlier that she had met the son of the former shah and thought he’d be a great leader. She thinks the hijab is “for old people”. I think she was more of a pinko than a waver of the black flag.

Her mother called us for dinner.

Her family was probably the second most secular Muslim family I have ever encountered. They are the only family that I have met that hung a portrait of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in their front room.

I didn’t get to tell her why I thought that Iran becoming a “superpower” today (at least by the means that it is currently using) is a terrible sight on the horizon though. It will lead to conflict. Massive conflict, like what’s happening on the Lebanese-Israeli border, like what’s happening in Iraq, but on a much wider scale. As the Islamic Republic rises, so too will Shia self-assertion, powered by Iran, and therefore sectarian division and violence. States and communities will reposition to accomodate this. The Islamic Republic might buy off weaker states in the region, as other powers have, but now under increasingly repressive conditions, worse than those endured today. Iran will need to dislocate already established regional powers, like Israel, KSA, and possibly Egypt, and will ultimately clash with the United States in a way that it never has before. Henry Kissinger, that famed realist and “war criminal“, put it well in the Washington Post. When Iran focuses itself on altering the geopolitical map of the Middle East in the favor of the Islamic Revolution, and

If Tehran insists on combining the Persian imperial tradition with contemporary Islamic fervor, then a collision with America — and, indeed, with its negotiating partners of the Six — is unavoidable. Iran simply cannot be permitted to fulfill a dream of imperial rule in a region of such importance to the rest of the world.

Kissinger envisions an alternative scenario (which I think is sort of frazlepazle at this point)

At the same time, an Iran concentrating on the development of the talents of its people and the resources of its country should have nothing to fear from the United States. Hard as it is to imagine that Iran, under its present president, will participate in an effort that would require it to abandon its terrorist activities or its support for such instruments as Hezbollah, the recognition of this fact should emerge from the process of negotiation rather than being the basis for a refusal to negotiate. Such an approach would imply the redefinition of the objective of regime change, providing an opportunity for a genuine change in direction by Iran, whoever is in power.

(This position is expressed by an Iranian woman in a recent piece in Time. Rejecting a government encouraged boycott of “Zionist” products, Parvin Heydari says that “Lebanon has nothing to do with us,” she says. “We should mind our own business and concentrate on policies that are good for our economy, and our kids.” I am inclined to agree.)

I think the rise of an imperial Islamic Republic is inevitable. I am a Shia, but I am not stupid. The Maghreb is rather safe for Shias, because there are few and few the farther west you go. But the Middle East should be expecting a diplomatic and sectarian revolution, in which Iran is the central actor, and an actor with impunity. Shia communal leaders are notoriously power hungry and eager to grab power (as are most others in the region); a little bit of power offered by Iran may be irresistable, especially to those with little experience in an Iranian influenced system. Some in Lebanon have consistently resisted Iranian revolutionary overtures, but most have sucumbed to it. This isn’t to say that the Shias are a fifth column, but I will say that the weakest link witin the Shia mass (which is not uniform) is its leadership and the group think that comes along with Middle Eastern communal politics. It’s not the mass that’s the problem, it’s those at the top. Sunnis need to reach out to Shia leaders where they can. The sectarian violence in Iraq does not help the situation at all, and cheering on jihadis that attack Shia shrines or communities only makes it worse. Anti-Shiism is on the rise, and this can only make Iran stronger.

The sentiments among Shia political leaders in an Iranian dominated Middle East might look something like those of a Hezb Allah village leader in the Gaurdian recently.

For Ali and his comrades, the latest conflict is a war of survival not only for Hizbullah but for the whole Shia community. It is not only as a war with Israel, their enemy for decades, but also with the Sunni community. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt have all expressed fears of Iranian domination over the Middle East.

“If Israel comes out victorious from this conflict, this will be a victory for the Sunnis and they will take the Shia community back in history dozens of years to the time when we were only allowed to work as garbage collectors in this country. The Shia will all die before letting this happen again.”

And even when the battle with the Israelis is over, he adds menacingly, Hizbullah will have other battles to fight. “The real battle is after the end of this war. We will have to settle score with the Lebanese politicians. We also have the best security and intelligence apparatus in this country, and we can reach any of those people who are speaking against us now. Let’s finish with the Israelis and then we will settle scores later.”

I have previously expressed concern over the manner in which Sunni Arab leaders, especially Hosni Mubark, have made divisive comments about Shia minorities, about their supposed loyalty to Iran before their own nations. This mentality is as old as the divide between Shia and Sunni, and it is especially harmful to the Arab position within the Middle East and to the advance of democracy there. This sort of rhetoric and posturing only makes Iran more appealing to largely oppressed and alienated Shia masses. When Mr. Mubarak said, back in April, that “Most of the Shiites are loyal to Iran, and not the countries they are living in,” he might as well have invited Iran to become the vangaurd of the Shias. Today the region has three, possibly four, major powers: Israel, Iran and the United States (with the possible fourth being Turkey). Not one of these is an Arab country. The Arab leaders cannot blame George Bush and his radical democratic adventure in Iraq for their impotence; they have made the decision to be the Sunni Arab world. Commentators talk of bringing Syria back into the “Sunni Arab fold”, as if this fold meant anything, or that Syria was ever a part of it (this is explained well here, and here). By wishing to establish order under total Sunni domination at the obvious expense of the Middle Eastern Shia population, these commentators gravely miss the point.

The point is that a new Arab order needs to be created, a free one, a non-sectarian one and one that is capable of managing the rise of Iran. The Arab world must make itself safe for minorities, it must give to Shias and other groups what it gives to its largest majorities. The Shias must gaurd themselves, especially in places like Iraq, but cannot afford to join what amounts to the external mafia of the Syria-Iran Axis. The solution must not be based on dreams of regional or world domination, and it must be universal, non-sectarian and non-aunthoritarian. It must be done, and it must start now.

This conundrum was created by the bigotry and incompitent diplomacy of the Arab states. Only the Arabs can ammend their irrelevance. This can only be done by way of the existing regimes. It will never happen if the Middle East becomes the Persian Palace of Mahmoud Ahamdinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei.

Earlier this year the Syrian poet Ahmad Ali Sa’id said that the Arabs are extinct. In a region in which Iran is the biggest dog, the Arabs will surely wither into fossils. The Lebanon conflict could be as significant for young Arabs, Israelis, and Iranians — not to mention the American role in the Middle East — as the Suez Crisis of 1956 was for their fathers and grandfathers in their time. This time though, it will not be European colonialists rendered useless. Instead it will be the whole Arab world, groveling at the feet of whoever happens to be the Supreme Leader, and fighting wars of proxy at his behest.

The current Arab system is not perfect. Nor is it even desireable. But if one weighs in on the status quo and the alternative, the status quo, in my view wins by far. I would rather live in Egypt, Lebanon or Syria over Iran. I would rather live in a region in which there is the possiblity for real social and market liberalization, supported by the world’s superpower, than in one where such state and popular actions must first be run by the Supreme Leader in Tehran, or where foreign policy must be conducted to please a regional tyranny with few redeeming qualities outside of its historical architecture and food ÄIranÅ instead of a country whose political system is to be envied and may be copied elsewhere ÄIsraelÅ. The current Arab system is like an ugly woman. The Arab system when Iran is the regional superpower will be like an ugly woman on methemphetamines. It is easier to help and ugly woman become beautiful than a drugged out ugly woman.

There are many bad things about the Arab world today; its dependence on the West, its inablity to do what it often feels it should regarding Israel (it is debatable as to whether or not this is really negative), its economic impotence, and so on. As of now though, there is somewhat of a distain among many regimes and populations for the fanatical and the extremely religious. No Arab government truly wants to become an Islamic Republic, not even Iran’s puppies in Syria (though there is talk of a Shiitization of Syria as it becomes closer to Iran, but not so much at the governmental level). But this tune might change if Iran were to become more powerful. And do not forget that the Iranian regime, as it becomes stronger and bolder in the region and the world, will not need or want to liberate its own people in such a Middle Eastern system.

A new Persian Empire does not mean that all will be well for Arab Shias, the death of Israel, equity among nations and the stabilization of the region. It will mean wars, wars, sectarian rivalries, wars, competition between minor and major powers, and finally even bigger wars. Arabs must unify against sectarian divisions, orient themselves towards a position that will allow them to utilize both the United States and Iran for their own development (as Algeria is presently doing to some extent) and, most importantly, make their long over due peace with Israel and stop supporting groups like Hezb Allah as they participate in the destruction of hope for Arab progress. Israel must hold itself back in its Lebanon offensive and identify its true enemies, Hezb Allah, Syria and Iran and deal with them accordingly. The Lebanese are not who they need to be “punishing”. The United States needs to use whatever leverage it has over Israel to stop it from ripping apart a nation that could be so much bigger than itself if given an honest chance. If Lebanon is destroyed, by Israel and Hezb Allah (Iran)’s war, and Iran moves foward on its path to regional domination, there will be no hope, no precident for the rest of the Arab world to liberalize and democratize. Iran needs to be rolled back, starting in Lebanon. But Lebanon needs to be rolled forward as well. Israel cannot stablize the region on its own, and the only way that this can be done is with at least three semi-liberal and semi-pacific nations on its borders. It has Jordan and Egypt currently, and would do much better with Lebanon added to that list. I don’t mean recognition, and I don’t mean settlements. I mean a solid border, absent of Hezb Allah. Think what you will of Hezb Allah and the Israelis, but I do not think it can be denied that a Lebanon without Hezb Allah would be a Lebanon safe for the Lebanese democracy, and safe for Israel. Without Hezb Allah, Lebanon would no longer be a potential battle ground for Syria and Iran’s war on Israel. The Arab world and Israel both need Lebanon. Israel’s folly will strengthen Iran and Hezb Allah (if one pays attention to chatter on Arabic television or gathering places, this is clearly the trend on the Arab street, even in Algeria, there is some interesting insite into this topic here as well), to the Arabs’, Israel’s, the Iranian people’s and the West’s own detriment socially, politically, culturally and democracitcally speaking. Lebanon is the symbol of and home to all that is Arab liberalism. Egypt may have spawned Arab liberalism initially, but it made its home in Lebanon and it has the most hope of surviving there. If the Lebanon this past year goes the way of Qana, so too will the hopes of Arab liberals, and the hope for Arab democracy and regional paucity. No, Lebanon was not and is not perfect, but it is the best thing the Arab world has as far as liberty goes. If Hezb Allah wins, Iran wins and what I described above will begin to take shape. If Hezb Allah is totally wiped out, at the expense of Lebanon, I see a bleak future for stability, let alone peace in the Middle East. If Hezb Allah is disarmed and Lebanon left mainly in tact, with wise rehabilitation assistance from the international community, I see a comparatively bright future, though not sunny. Simply and generally put, save Lebanon, save the Middle East.