If the street protests roiling Iran since its disputed election have created a problem for the leadership in Tehran, imagine the dilemma it raises for Iran's allies elsewhere in the Middle East. Hizballah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah was quick out of the blocks to congratulate President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when the authorities announced his re-election, calling the result "a great hope to all the Mujahedeen and Resistance who are fighting against the forces of oppression and occupation." But since supporters of defeated candidate Mir-Hussein Mousavi have taken to the streets to decry the election as rigged, Nasrallah has become more circumspect. And he specifically refuted suggestions that either candidate might be more pro-Hizballah than the other, and merely said "Iran is under the authority of the Wali Al Faqih (divinely-inspired clerical rule) and will pass through this crisis."
As a longtime client of Iran, Nasrallah is wise to hedge his bets, for he'll need patronage and weapons from whomever emerges victorious in the post-election battle. But his caution is more than just good politics: The electoral crisis in Iran poses a problem for Hizballah and other Iranian allies in the region that goes far beyond simply who controls the purse strings in Iran.
For Syria, Iran's closest ally, the problem hits close to home: A mass anti-government protest movement over allegations of fraudulent elections is not a welcome sight for an authoritarian regime whose President, Bashar al Assad — who won his first presidential referendum with 97% of the vote. (No surprise, then, that the official Syrian Arab News Agency website is largely ignoring news of Iran's election.) For Syria, the sooner the Iranian government cleans up this mess — by any means necessary — the better.
But for Iran-backed "resistance" movements such as Hamas and especially Hizballah, the dilemma is more acute. Both groups are Islamist organizations committed both to religious law and to secular democracy. Hamas' legitimacy as an expression of the Palestinian political will was put beyond question in 2006, when it was democratically elected as the ruling party in the Palestinian parliament. Hizballah uses the fact that it is the largest political party in Lebanon, and its self-proclaimed commitment to the country's constitutional norms, to burnish its claims to bear arms in defense of Lebanon's national interest. And their devotion to political Islam gives their struggle a resonance among people ruled over by secular autocrats throughout the Arab world.
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