Beirut Spring

Blogging Lebanon
since 2005

About

This post is more than 15 years old

Remember that politics move quickly, and people and their opinions evolve.

Lebanon As “Berlin Wall”

January 13, 2011 · Mustapha Hamoui

Richard Spencer:

Lebanon is becoming the Berlin Wall of the new Cold War: the frightening, potentially nuclear proxy struggle between allies of the West and Iran […] Like Berlin after the Second World War, Lebanon is a fractured place, with the major world powers — in this case, the US, Saudi Arabia and Iran/Syria — having their own local front men

Except Lebanon has always been like that. I have no problems with the cold war metaphor (there is indeed one between the US and Iran), but to categorize Lebanon as a Berlin war is to overlook the significant differences and to imply that Iran’s allies are longing to be saved from Iran’s death grip.