Interview to Georges Corm on the present situation in Lebanon. George Corm is a Lebanese economist and historian, consultant to international organizations, he teaches at the University Saint-Joseph in Beirut and he is the author of several books on the questions of devolpment in the Arab world including History of the Middle East and Contemporary Lebanon.

What do you think about the Nasrallah speech of yesterday about the Hariri's murder? There is something new?
Not specifically for those who follow closely and daily what is happening in our country. But the speech is part of a counter attack to all the nasty press leaks about the way the prosecutor of the international tribunal for Lebanon is now targeting Hezbollah as the next culprit in Hariri assassination, after the failure of all the previous accusations against Syria and the four Lebanese generals that were in charge of the security apparatus in Lebanon. All these former accusations were based on false testimonies by witnesses that have been bought; this is why many people rightly fear to day in Lebanon that an accusation targeting Hezbollah might also be based on another set of lying witnesses or forged documentation, as previously.
Mr. Nasrallah information disclosed on the 9th of this month was not particularly new, but assembling it all together for the first time was designed to reinforce the grudge against the International Inquiry Commission and the Tribunal that the hypothesis of an eventual involvement of Israel in the killing of Mr. Hariri was never investigated. After all the basic question of to whom did the crime profit was never raised.

What do you think about the International Tribunal? It have some real effects, or at the end there is not the real idea to find the trust?
Unless one is very naïve, you can not avoid believing that the Tribunal was created exclusively for political reason. Assassination of political personalities was never part of international justice whose main goal is to punish the authors of war crimes, genocides or mass massacres on ethnic or religious grounds. Much more important political personalities than Hariri, like John Kennedy, Olof Palme, Aldo Moro have been assassinated, nobody thought of creating an international Inquiry commission and then a special tribunal to identify and punish the authors of these assassinations. More recently after Hariri assassination, Mrs Bhutto, former prime minister of Pakistan was assassinated and nobody was moved to the point of suggesting to create a special tribunal. So it is clear in the case of Lebanon that creating a special international tribunal to succeed a failed International Inquiry commission was exclusively driven by political motives, the main one being to have a legal institutional tool to silence any protesting Lebanese or to accuse any Lebanese political party antagonizing Western interests.

If the Tribunal accuses some high level militants of Hezbollah, can Saad Hariri continues to have normal reletionship with them?
Well this will create confusion and tensions in Lebanon which is probably what the basic goal of such an eventual accusation would be. But nobody is asking a basic question: why would Hezbollah had wanted to assassinate Hariri, at a time when the relations between the two was excellent since 1996 and even after the adoption of UN resolution 1559 asking Syria to get its army out of Lebanon and requiring the Lebanese Government to disarm all armed groups present in Lebanon.

Which is, now, the real role of Syria in Lebanon? And what is the role of Iran in Lebanon?
It seems the same role as it used to be, i.e. avoiding having Lebanon to become a hostile neighbor or a neighbor whose territory is used by others to destabilize the Syrian regime or to attack Syria militarily through the Bekaa valley corridor who is a very easy military access to the Syrian capital Damascus. This is why supporting Hezbollah and its military capacity in Lebanon is part of prevention of an eventual Israeli attack on Syria.
As for Iran, its role did not change since the 1979 revolution, i.e. supporting armed resistance to Israeli occupation of Lebanese or Palestinian territory. This is a crucial element of the regime ideology which inherited all the previous anti-imperialistic discourse of the Marxist local parties and of the Soviet Union and Islamized its vocabulary to become more familiar to ordinary people in the region. Iran is supplying Hezbollah with its arms and has extended help for reconstruction after the 2006 Israeli war against Hezbollah and Lebanon at no cost for the Lebanese State.
But if we talk of Iranian influence let us not forget that it constitutes a counterweight to the immense Saudi and Western influence in Lebanon; as such it can be considered a stabilizing factor. Traditional political wisdom in Lebanon requires that this strategically located country should not fall under the exclusive influence of one of the main international or regional power in the region.

What is, in your opinion, the real plan of Assad? He speaks with Usa and Saudi Arabia, but show a big relation with Teheran?
As with Assad father, the real plan of the Syrian regime under the presidency of his son, Bachar, is to create checks and balances in the region so that pro-Western Arab regimes, the US and Israel can not dominate the region. This policy has always succeeded in putting Syria as an unavoidable force in the region that can not be ignored by the other big players. The alliance with Iran is part of this traditional policy. It has been completed recently by a new alliance with Turkey that is becoming more and more involved in the Middle Eastern affairs. It is this Syrian policy that George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice tried to eradicate to realize their inconsistent dream of a new Middle East, namely through the Iraqi and the Lebanese gates. They failed to achieve their goal, but this policy brought a lot of suffering and additional destabilization of the region.

What you think about the future? A new balance without a war is possible?

The future will remain bleak as long as Israeli ambitions and ferocious policies implemented against the Palestinians and the Lebanese legitimate rights will not be put in check by the Western powers supporting Israel blindly. In addition, the way Iran is being lambasted and denounced resemble too much to the Western behavior vis à vis Iraq under Saddam Hussein. I hope that the same mistakes will not be repeated this time with Iran. The Western paranoia about the Middle East is responsible for most of the instability and violence that affect this part of the region. Recently, this paranoia was well expressed by Mr. Jose Maria Aznar, former conservative prime minister of Spain, who stated in an article in the London Times on the 17th of June that if the Western and Israeli supremacy in the Middle East continues to be contested, then Western existence will be put in jeopardy. Between reason and geopolitical passion, where will the Middle East go? I do not have an answer to this question, although I hope reason will prevail and the Western powers will stop some day to use double standards in implementing international law or disregarding international and humanitarian laws according to their geopolitical interests and passionate love or hate for this or that of the governments of the region.