The recent trouble making by Hezbollah has reignited fears, particularly among the Sunnis, of a "Shia Crescent" stretching from Iran to southern Lebanon. A larger concern for the United States is how the Shiites in Iraq are going to react. The prospects of long-term US success in Iraq largely rest on the continuing cooperation, however imperfect, from Shia politicians, religious leaders, and organizations. If, prodded by the events in Lebanon and rising sectarian strife in their own land, they start to break toward Iran and Hezbollah in any significant way, the situation in Iraq would become completely untenable.
In a piece in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, Michael Rubin warned of the wider danger that the conflict in Lebanon is creating:
An old Arab proverb goes, "Me against my brother; me and my brother against our cousin; and me, my brother and my cousin against the stranger." Forced to make a choice, Sunni Arabs are deciding: The Jews are cousins; the Shiites, strangers. U.S. diplomats may applaud the new pragmatism, but the reason behind it is nothing to celebrate.
Faced with a similar choice, what will the Shiites of Iraq decide?
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