Lebanon this week sought security guarantees from U.S. President Barack Obama in any future war with Israel, while Lebanese President Michel Suleiman spoke on Hizbullah’s Al Manar satellite network and praised the terrorist organization.

 

Prime Minister Sa’ad Hariri played down accusations that Syria is transferring missiles, including long-range Scuds, to the Hizbullah army in Lebanon, and expressed concerns that Israel might attack the terrorist organization.

 

President Obama focused on his attempt to persuade the United Nations Security Council, where Lebanon is now the rotating president, to agree to enforce tough sanctions against Iran.

 

While Hariri (pictured below) was asking President Obama for protection and Congress for military aid, Suleiman said on Al Manar that the withdrawal of the IDF from southern Lebanon in 2000 "was the brightest chapter in Lebanon's history” and that "resistance [a code word for terrorism] is the only way to regain usurped rights."

 

Exactly ten years ago, then-Israel Prime Minister Ehud Barak, now Defense Minister, ordered the sudden departure from the ”security zone,” which Israel monitored on the ground to prevent rocket attacks but which also cost the lives of approximately 300 IDF troops.

 

Hizbullah exploited the disappearance of the IDF to build a terrorist infrastructure that allowed it to send all of northern Israel to bomb shelters in the 34-day Second Lebanon War in 2006. The war ended after then-Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni agreed to a United Nations ceasefire resolution that was supposed to include disarming Hizbullah.

 

United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) commanders said they would not and could not enforce the clause, and Hizbullah has re-armed, stockpiling three times the number of missiles it possessed before the war.

 

Hizbullah deputy president of its political council, Mahmoud Qomati, claimed that President Obama told a member of Prime Minister Hariri's delegation that the United States accepts Hizbullah as a de facto entity in Lebanon.  

“The Americans have abandoned the issue of [Hizbullah’s] disarmament and are now demanding that it be content with the size [of arms] it has, in both quantity and quality,” Qomati was quoted as saying, according to the Lebanese news site Yad Libnan.

Lebanon has asked the United States for $100 million in military aid in next year’s budget, but U.S. legislators and military officials fear the arms will end up in the hands of Hizbullah. Josh Rogin, writing on the Foreign Policy Cable blog, said that U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is angry that Hariri played down Syria’s sending missiles to Hizbullah.