OPINION - What does Nasrallah want?

By Hussain Abdul Hussain

- The writer is a Washington-based political analyst. He has written for the New York Times, The Washington Post, and Kuwaiti daily Al Rai, among others.

WASHINGTON DC (AA) - In his annual series of speeches, delivered over the span of the ten days of Ashoura, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah laid out what amounts to the "Nasrallah Doctrine," a guidebook to his regional policy.

Nasrallah sounded coherent, but at times contradictory. His regional policy clearly falls in line with Iran’s foreign policy, albeit with some nuanced differences.

Tehran is famous for allowing its proxy groups flexibility on domestic issues, believing that the locals have a better sense on how to run their affairs. The Iranian model is ancient and hails back to the days when its chiefs took the title King of Kings, with lesser kings governing their local polities, but pledging allegiance to the Iranian king.

Nasrallah's tone was confident and his stipulations mandatory. It does not take long to understand that Nasrallah is to Lebanon what Khaminei is to Iran: A supreme leader.

Nasrallah does not go into details. He only expresses general expectations, and leaves details to the politicians. For example, Nasrallah expressed support for the current Lebanese cabinet, said it would serve its full term until parliamentary elections scheduled for June, and insisted that this round of elections would not be rescheduled or postponed.

It does not matter what the Lebanese state thinks. Nasrallah said there will be an election. The state will have to figure out how to cater to his demand.

Where Nasrallah allowed Lebanese politicians some room was in regards to Lebanon's relations with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Since the outbreak of the Syrian Revolution in 2011, Assad's allies in Lebanon have maintained strong and public ties with the Syrian autocrat. His allies' opponents, such as Prime Minister Saad Hariri, have kept a distance from Assad and his regime.

Hariri went as far as announcing, last week, that he would not talk to Assad and his regime, a statement that would have been impossible a few years back, when Assad enjoyed a demigod status in Lebanon, reminiscent from the years when the Assad family used to rule their neighboring country with an iron fist.

But now Hariri can say he will never talk to Assad, without risking his life or the collapse of his cabinet. Hariri can badmouth Assad, and that will not even bother Nasrallah, who will still express support to Hariri and his cabinet.

The new Lebanese situation has a single implication: That things have changed in Lebanon and Syria since 2011. In the past, Assad alone used to be above the fray. Now, Hezbollah is the one that is above the fray, while Assad is just another one of the minor political players in the region.

Nasrallah, however, has a trick up his sleeve to encourage Assad's detractors to make up with the Syrian president. If you want to participate in the reconstruction of Syria and send the Syrian refugees back home, then there is no other way but to talk to Assad, Nasrallah said.

The Hezbollah chief knows that the key to the heart of Lebanon's opponents of Assad is money. He probably reasons that by dangling imaginary Syrian reconstruction contracts, Assad's Lebanese opponents will rush to Damascus to make nice with the Assad regime.

Apart from Lebanon and Syria, a few common threads could be detected in Nasrallah's Ashoura speeches.

Nasrallah hates Saudi Arabia. It matters little what the Saudis say or do, the Hezbollah chief badmouths them at almost every occasion. This time, Nasrallah believes he has detected clues that the Saudis are inching closer toward Israel, which to him is a damning evidence.

In a flare of rage, Hezbollah's leader denounced the Saudis for making nice with "the Jews, the enemies of the prophets".

It seems that Nasrallah, or an assistant, noticed his anti-Semitic slip. In the following speech, Nasrallah corrected his position, without publicly admitting his fault. This time he said that he had nothing against the Jews, but only against the Zionists, as he advised Jews to abandon their government and its chief, Benjamin Netanyahu, and go back to wherever they came from. Such a demand sounded ill-advised.

Since 1993, the Palestinians and the Israelis have renounced their old rhetoric. Palestinians recognized the Jewish state and stopped asking for the whole land, with the deportation of Jewish immigrants. Jews, for their part, have recognized the Palestinian people and pledged to work toward a two-state solution.

Now Nasrallah comes with a demand at odds with prevailing international conventions: Send the Jews back to wherever they came from. While such an ask would have been partially doable some fifty years ago, today the number of Jewish immigrants in Israel has shrunk significantly, as the majority of Israelis is born in Palestine and knows no other country that it can go back to.

On other issues, Nasrallah joined a regional chorus in expressing opposition to the independence of Iraqi Kurds. Yet instead of arguing against the merit of such Kurdish step, he went after Saudi Arabia, accusing it of sponsoring Kurdish independence, and threatening that any "division" of Iraq would lead to the division of the Saudi Kingdom.

While Riyadh might have loved a Kurdish breakaway that would spite its archrival Iran, Saudis have restrained any such impulses and fallen in line behind the international chorus that opposed an independent Kurdish enclave.

The Saudis have just started their relations with Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar Al-Abadi, and fear that any support of Kurdish independence might hurt their ties with him. Saudis probably think that Abadi can emerge as the Arab counterweight of Iranian Shia leadership in the region.

Saudi Arabi's ally, the United Arab Emirates, however, has openly supported Kurdish separation from Iraq. Yet Nasrallah focused his attack on the Saudis, mainly due to the Iranian-Saudi animosity.

Over the span of ten evenings, Nasrallah covered subjects that varied between faith and war. He has Lebanon under his thumb and thinks he will eventually rehabilitate Assad — now an Iranian vassal — by restoring his ties with Lebanese politicians and easing Assad's international isolation.

Nasrallah perceives himself, his party, and Lebanon as being in an alliance with Iran and Assad, in a bloody fight with a rival alliance that he claims to consist of Israel and Saudi Arabia, and he threatens both: Israel of destruction and Saudi Arabia of division.

He accused America, along with its allies Israel and Saudi Arabia, of creating, training and funding ISIS, oblivious to the fact that Iran and its Iraqi Shia are fighting ISIS, shoulder to shoulder with the Americans.

While Nasrallah did not announce major shifts in his party's position, his speeches were a good update on where Hezbollah — and more so Iran — stand on the region's various issues and its endlessly complicated problems.

*Opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu Agency.