Via the Wall Street Journal Online:

Lebanon’s army, which so far has sat on the sidelines of the violence raging in the country, will join the fight against Israel if Israeli forces invade the country, Defense Minister Elias Murr said on Al-Jazeera television. “The Lebanese army — and I stress — the Lebanese army will resist and defend and will prove that it is an army that deserves respect,” he said. In most of the previous Israeli attacks, including in 1978 and the 1982 invasion in which Beirut was occupied, the Lebanese army largely stayed out of the fighting. Twenty Lebanese soldiers have been killed in strikes on their bases during the nine-day-old Israeli bombardment of Lebanon.

It’s probably somewhat important to note that Elias Murr is the son-in-law of Lebanese president, and Syrian lackey, Emile Lahoud. With Hizbollah holding nearly a fourth of the Lebanese parliament and two seats in the cabinet (energy and foreign ministires), and with Damascus-leaning Murr at defense, the Lebanese army entering on behalf of Hizbollah does not look like an impossible scenario. The possibility is only multiplied when the continued destruction of the Lebanese infastructure is taken into account. Israeli targeting of civilain-heavy areas is meant to disable the transportation networks Hizbollah could utilize to either move the two Israeli soldiers out of the country, or receive logistical support from Iran via Syria. While that goal is most likely attained, the unforuntate side effect is massive popular unrest among Lebanese citizens aimed at Israel, not Hizbollah. All the factors are adding up to a possible escalation with the unexpected entry of the Lebanese army on behalf of Hizbollah, and with popular Lebanese support.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei today claimed in a meeting with Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir in Tehran that Iran is ready and willing to share its nuclear technology. Via the NY Times:

“Iran’s nuclear capability is one example of various scientific capabilities in the country. The Islamic Republic of Iran is prepared to transfer the experience, knowledge and technology of its scientists,” said the supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, IRNA news agency reported.

Mr. Khamenei’s comments to the leader of Sudan, one of the most unstable countries in Africa, came a few days ahead of the Friday deadline by the United Nations Security Council for Iran to suspend its sensitive uranium enrichment activities.

If the West wasn’t in all out crisis mode over Iran’s nuclear development before, it should be now. If Iran openly exports its technology, especially to a place like Sudan, it would make it much easier for terrorist elements to attain nuclear material. It’s not so much that Bashir would actively hand nuclear secrets over to al-Qaeda or one of its subsidiaries, but I wouldn’t trust anything nuclear in an extremely volatile country where ultra-Islamist Hasan al-Turabi and his supporters walk around openly. The last thing the world needs is a North African country actively enriching its own uranium as terrorist organizations increasingly shift their central operations from the Mesopotamian hot zone to the relative backwater of Africa.

What I find rather difficult to figure out is why Khamenei is openly announcing this by way of the Islamic Republic’s state-run media. Is it a bluff designed to reiterate Tehran’s independence from the West, or something else? If anything, it’s reckless. Saudi Arabia has to be looking at its supposedly dormant nuclear program currently and moving toward a hard decision. After all, with Iranian influence spreading deep into southern Iraq, how long can the Saudis remain oblivious to Iran’s nuclear posturing? An unstable regime in the very center of the world’s most unstable region locked in a nuclear showdown is the true nightmare scenario.

I have to disagree with Asia Times writer Syed Saleem Shahzad’s conclusion that Iran is a logical ally of al-Qaeda, prepped to serve as a central base for Islamic revolution throughout the Middle East and South Asia. Take the following passage, featuring commentary by a Pakistan-based Muslim scholar, with a rather hefty grain of salt:

[A]lthough the Afghan resistance is linked with the Iraqi resistance and they have started open battles against US-led forces in Afghanistan, the question of a unified command that would control resistance movements whether they be in Iraq, Palestine or Afghanistan is still unanswered.

This is where Iran could now fit in, by evolving from an inspirational anti-US model to taking a lead role in orchestrating resistance movements, in collaboration with al-Qaeda.

For radical Islamists, the situation is a major turnaround for their cause of pan-Islamicism and one that could even resolve 1,400 years of historical, ideological and political differences in the Muslim world.

"The Islamic Revolution of Iran [1979] was in fact a victory of all Islamic movements which were striving to establish one Islamic role model in the world so that it would be an inspirational force and would convince the masses that the Islamic system of life was still workable after 1,400 years," Muslim intellectual Shahnawaz Farooqui explained to Asia Times Online.

…

"The Iranian revolution was in fact a complete revolution under the leadership of imam [Ruhollah] Khomeini. It was above any sectarian bounds. After the revolution, Khomeini announced that the base of Shi’ite-Sunni differences was historical rather than theological.

…

"Unfortunately, imam Khomeini could not convince anybody - neither his internal circles of clerics nor Al-Howza [the supreme Shi’ite religious council in Iraq] as no one among the Shi’ites was ready to give up their historical position on the question of the caliphate.

"However, the situation turned bad after the demise of Khomeini and it was felt that during the period of [ex-president Hashemi] Rafsanjani and [former president Mohammed] Khatami the Iranian revolution was somewhere lost.

"However, the victory of President Ahmadinejad has once again revived the very spirit of the Iranian revolution, and once again all Islamic movements, whether it is the Muslim Brotherhood, Jamaat-i-Islami, Hamas, Islamic Jihad or any other, are joining hands with Tehran," said Shahnawaz.

"To me, President Ahmadinejad has redeemed the Iranian Islamic revolution with all its ideological legacies," Shahnawaz added.

Note the phrase I bolded: historical rather than theological. I am certain Shanawaz is easily more versed than I on Islamic issues, but the divisions between the two sects are historical and theological; the two cannot be logically separated. The history of Islam in and of itself is theological — the disagreement over who would lead the caliphate following the Prophet’s death was obviously a question of religion. Besides, there are also political concerns. Shanawaz (and Shahzad by association) seem to be foregetting that Iran actively attempted to topple the Taliban-led regime in Afghanistan due to its ideology, religious and political, and for the instability it fomented on Iran’s border by simply existing. Certainly Iran was not serving as the happy-rainbows-and-sunshine pan-Islamic regime then.

If anything, the expansion of al-Qaeda-linked control in the mountainous regions of the Pakistan/Afghanistan frontier is not being greeted warmly by those in Tehran, and is, in fact, creating concern for the same reasons Taliban-led Afghanistan did. The US and NATO presence in Afghanistan is, in actuality, acting as a buffer that protects Iran’s interests nearly as much as it protects the West’s.

Iran’s preference for the wilayat-al-fiqh system of government (or, rule by Islamic jurists), clashes with Sunni ideas of rule by the umma, or the Muslim community. That combined with the historical/theological disagreements held between the sects over a millennium maintains an environment where little revolutionary cooperation between Iran and extremist Sunnis can exist. Certainly Iran will work with extremist Sunni elements to push its agenda (as it has in the past), but to suggest it would actively support the rising of Taliban-esque governments in southern Asia and throughout the Middle East borders on ludicrous. The rise of radicalized Sunni regimes in the region would not only undermine Iran’s desire to push its own style of revolution, but incite its ethnic minorities, includig Arab Muslims living primarily in its border regions, toward their own sort of localized revolutions. In short, such cooperation could very well create instability within Iran itself.

Also, the article suggests Iran needs al-Qaeda to seriously undermine Western efforts in the case of a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Unfortunately, Tehran’s own terrorist networks — including Hizbollah, but more importantly the IRGC, Quds Force, and Basij militia (basically an army of potential suicidal "martyrs") — are more than adequate to cause chaos throughout the region and the world. Why would Tehran want to be beholden to outside groups for its security and quick strike capability, regardless of who it is?

The always prodigious Brad Plumer takes on Iran:

Meanwhile, if … Khamenei’s really calling the shots here, this might mean that Iran’s more willing to deal with the United States on the foreign policy front than commonly thought—Khamenei may be a nasty fellow, but many, including Gasiorowski, don’t think he’s wholly irrational: “It seems likely that he will try to avoid a confrontation with the United States.” Then again, not everyone shares this view: Michael Ledeen, for instance, has tried to trace the al-Sadr uprising in Iraq back to Khamenei himself; there’s also the question of whether the Supreme Leader has any control over, say, the elements of the Revolutionary Guard that’s currently harboring al-Qaeda; or if he just prefers to look like he has no control over those elements, in order to maintain plausible deniability. Interesting times…

I don’t doubt Iran backed Sadr’s uprising. Intelligence and other sources of information can be bent, represented, and mis-represented in any numerous ways to prove or disprove it. But, it would not surprise me if Khamenei himself ordered/supported Sadr’s Mahdi Army to take up arms against the US in order to make Iraq’s conversion to an Iran-like Wilayat al-Faqih system the only possibility at the time. Iran’s conservative leadership has had a desire to export its form of governance upon the Middle East since the Revolution itself, which was one of the initial reasons Iran began supporting Hizbollah in Lebanon. Iraq offered Iran a pristine opportunity to create a twin state, but due to Sistani’s differing opinion on how the final government should look he broke with his Iranian benefactors and forced Sadr to stand down and pursue the political process. While Sadr did not directly enter into elections, his political gravitational pull does exist, especially in the south. But the SCIRI, Iran’s traditional Iraq-based lackies and Tehran’s most loyal proxy force in the country, is where the power truly resides. It has an electoral mandate and dibs on southern Iraq when, perhaps not if, the southern provinces become one confederated political unit. It’s difficult to say whether or not Tehran finds Iraqi federalism beneficial, but anything Sistani finds problematic will probably make Khamenei happy to a point. In the worst case scenario for Khamenei — that being a Baghdad controlled by a government not as friendly to Iran — the south would remain loyal and easily pliable, depending on how the developing rift between Badr’s Mahdi Army and the SCIRI is handled.

The move toward southern autonomy is especially important when placed in the broader context of Iran/Iraq cooperation since it suggests that the differences held between Jaafari’s Dawa party and Iran/SCIRI are becoming more pronounced and possibly exploitable. While Dawa does have links to Iran, they primarily came about during the Iran-Iraq war as a result of shared hatred for Hussein and not due to shared, identical ideologies. While Iran and the Dawa-headed Baghdad government are on extremely friendly terms, Khamenei and those around him feel more comfortable working with the SCIRI since it shares a similar view of Shi’ite rule. The SCIRI believes that the ulema, or the group of Islamic scholars, should serve as the basis of institutionalized Shi’ite law, while the Dawa party is more a fan of utilizing the umma, or the overall Islamic community, in the same context. Ulema is obviously more conducive to Iranian-style governance which, combined with the SCIRI’s near hegemony in southern Iraq, serves as the driving force behind Iran’s continued support for the party and its armed militia. That doesn’t mean Iranian support cannot shift back and forth between factions in the future, say from the SCIRI to Sadr’s Mahdi Army, in order to advance Tehran’s overall agenda. Due to that, it’s highly doubtful there is an overall, coordinated Iranian plan to completely destabilize Iraq by targeting Shi’ite leaders, regardless of faction or loyalty. If Tehran wants to play, it has to leave some cards on the table to work with depending on the flop.

As far as Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), it is a huge problem. Its very existence takes almost any logical belief one has about Iranian politics and foreign policy, especially, and throws it into chaos. I do not know the extent of IRGC/Supreme Leader coordination, but I do know that the central Iranian authority has rarely felt the need to clamp down on the IRGC’s controversial activities. Its leaders openly discussed tossing Khatami out during his final term, and now they’re backing Ahmadinejad with full fervor. While Ahmadinejad was a commander in the IRGC Quds Force, it’s doubtful he’s commanding the IRGC from the president’s office; it’s most likely the other way around. That could be good and bad, because with Ahmadinejad in office the Iranian political apparatus has lost that “plausible deniability” Brad mentioned. But it also allots the IRGC greater leverage in cracking down on domestic dissent.

Would the IRGC directly back Sunni insurgents in Iraq, as the administration is claiming currently? Stranger things have happened, and any cooperation could certainly be directed at US forces and not Shi’a; not to destabilize, but to push the US out so Iran can move the chess pieces around even more freely. The possibility of damage spill over to friendly Shi’a and Kurds still makes the USG’s claims extremely suspicious, but when it comes to the IRGC anything is possible.