Oops! No One Knows Who Invited Ahmadinejad To Visit Lebanon, 20 Years After His First Trip

Gee, don't you hate when that happens?

Judith Miller writes that no one is rushing to take credit for having invited Ahmadinejad to visit Lebanon:

No one in Lebanon seems to know who invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Beirut for a two-day “official visit” -- his first since assuming office in Teheran five years ago. No Lebanese official has claimed credit for a trip that Israel and the U.S. have condemned as “provocative.” But it’s shaping up as a potential powder keg and a huge political embarrassment for Lebanon whose reverberations are being felt in many capitals, not just in the Middle East.

But then again, maybe Ahmadinejad isn't there by invitation--maybe he is just following up on the last time he visited Lebanon, 20 years ago.
Nicholas Blanford of the Christian Science Monitor writes that Ahmadinejad was in Lebanon as an officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard:

While it is Ahmadinejad’s first visit to Lebanon since taking office in 2005, he has been here before, according to residents of the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon. More than two decades ago, as an officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), he helped train the nascent Hezbollah.

Hussein, a farmer in his 50s from the village of Taraya in the Bekaa Valley, remembers Ahmadinejad with affection.

“He was a very gentle man and we became friends. When he left Lebanon, he hugged me and kissed me on the cheek,” he said, adding that he named his son Mahmoud in honor of the future Iranian president.

Meanwhile, while Ahmadinejad was greeted by receptive crowds in Lebanon, back at home--where Iran is dealing with a variety of problems--it does not seem that Iranians will be nearly as happy to see Ahmadinejad return:

“I don’t think the public at large is really that fascinated with Lebanon or the Lebanese resistance, [though] support for Hezbollah is wide within the Iranian population,” says an analyst in Tehran who asked not to be named. “But I’m not sure that anything is going to deflect [Iranians] from where we are right now, which seems to be a crisis. I don’t think it’s going to be that simple to cover it up with a two-day trip to Lebanon, no matter what kind of reception [there is].”

Indeed, back in Iran there are rising concerns about plans to severely curtail energy and gasoline subsidies (even a partial cut in 2007 sparked violence and the burning of gas stations); dramatic fluctuations in the value of the rial against the dollar in the past week; an economy squeezed by UN, US, and European sanctions; and a host of political battles – especially among conservative factions – that have been magnified by the president’s divisive style.

Ahmadinejad's trip to Lebanon may have been a success--even a victory--but the fact remains Iranians have not been doing better during his rule.

And bottom line, that is all that Iranians really care about.

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