Once again, Tehran has done well in managing its negotiations with the west and the United States over its nuclear program and its regional influence. It is has announced that it is enriching more uranium, and at a higher rate (20 percent), after having completed the new stage of enrichment. Meanwhile, the west and the 5 + 1 group of countries are busy with mediation and proposals to transfer enriched uranium from Iran to some states, little by little, and then exchange it for uranium with a lower enrichment level in other countries. This is after these countries were lured into a discussion about the place, where this enrichment would take place – once it was in Turkey, then Qatar, and then Japan – until Iran finally evinced its readiness to see the enrichment take place in the US itself and then see the material transported directly to Iranian territory. In other words, Tehran is continuing its nuclear program amid negotiations, as if nothing has happened. If this situation indicates how confused is the west, and how it is abandoning the Iranian policy that is based on gaining time to deal with problems in Afghanistan and Pakistan in confronting the Taliban, then both the west and Washington are the first to be mired in past failures and attempt to exit them, as in the case of Iraq. These two usually resorts to options that come too late, or cannot be implemented, options that include the recent French and American offers to Syria to split from Tehran. It is naïve, or worse, for Washington, to wager on splitting Syria from Iran, while Israel declines to engage in any negotiations with Syria over returning the Golan, rejects Turkish mediation, busies itself with measures against Palestinians, seizes lands and homes in Jerusalem and claims authority over holy sites in Hebron and Bethlehem, while Washington makes no effort to split Iran from the Palestinians and their pressing issues. It is not realistic at all for Washington to be unable to stop Tehran's increasingly high “enrichment” of nuclear fuel, while ignoring Israel's “castration” of any possibility for the peace process and robbing it of any opportunity to test the possibility of seeing its own “enrichment.” In parallel, it has become natural for Tehran to resort to “enriching” the line of resistance, as a response to pressures on it, whether in preparation for sanctions against the country, or the hinting at war on Iran or its right arm in Lebanon, Hezbollah, by activating the axis of Tehran-Damascus- Hezbollah -allied Palestinian groups, in addition to its confidence that its influence in Iraq will continue, whatever the results of next month's parliamentary elections. Whether it is an “enrichment” of resistance to protect the level of new enrichment of uranium, counter the pressure of sanctions, prepare for a war, or prevent a war, Lebanon returns to being an arena, justifying to regional powers their return to interfering in its affairs and domestic political make-up, its security, and its need for a minimum of stability, which remains fragile. Accompanying the enrichment of various types are the outlines of a return to a previous situation, when resistance and the requirements of steadfastness justified, to various leaders, and over decades, the need for a political authority in the Lebanese “arena, with which they were comfortable. They wanted it to be pliant, weak and ready to give up the minimum level of independent view of the country's conditions and its relations with the crises of the region. In the past, this resistance justified the flagrant mistakes that led to an elimination of the minimum level of components of survival for Lebanese political leaders, who were strong. This involved reactions by them, and by their followers. Over decades, policies such as this dragged Lebanon into roving civil wars, and did much to help the country face the possibility of a destructive sectarian war in the last few years. Today, many Lebanese have a case of déjà vu. As if the enrichment of resistance cannot take place without a subjection of Lebanon and its political authority. They also feel that some of the obstacles and criticisms faced by Prime Minister Saad Hariri (and his allies), as well as the conditions and demands imposed on Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt, have the permanent goal of putting the two Lebanese leaders in front of a test that undermines their position between their partners and the public, upon which they rely. If the masses who gathered on 14 February are not reassuring the leading figures of the resistance, even though they bring together the slogan of accord, reconciliation and solidarity with the slogan of “Lebanon First,” it is difficult for it to adjust them to the coming phase.
