Why Tom Barrack’s Approach to Hezbollah Is ‘Fundamentally Ignorant’

Key Points and Summary – U.S. Ambassador Tom Barrack’s diplomatic approach in the Middle East is undermining American interests and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

-By prioritizing personal relationships with dictators and urging concessions for Iranian proxies like Hezbollah to “save face,” Barrack displays a fundamental ignorance of the region.

Tom Barrack Exposes the Fundamental Ignorance Undermining U.S. Anti-Iran Efforts

Tom Barrack, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey and President Donald Trump’s de facto envoy to Syria, the broader Eastern Mediterranean, and the Caucasus, seems intent on snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

He has embraced a school of diplomacy that prioritizes warm personal relationships with dictatorships over clear assertion of U.S. policy objectives. Every ambassador who has gone down this route in recent memory—Donald Yamamoto in Somalia, Michael Hammer in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Frank Ricciardone in Egypt, and Yuri Kim in Albania—has undermined U.S. security either by allowing terrorism to thrive, empowering dictatorship, and/or sparking anti-Americanism.

Barrack’s acceptance, if not amplification, of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s positions has empowered Hamas and allowed former Al Qaeda leaders to launder their image on the world stage, even as they show no substantive reform internally. While Ahmad al-Sharaa sheds his nom de guerre for his real name and his robes for a business suit, his interim appointments of unrepentant radicals to sensitive posts, his recruitment of foreign Al Qaeda and Islamic State members into the military, and his designation of his own brother to run the Syrian economy are all testaments to his own insincerity.

Barrack increasingly imperils Lebanon’s tenuous stability. It was bad enough that Barrack’s sycophancy toward Erdoğan had allowed Turkey a beachhead into northern Lebanon, an occurrence potentially as dangerous for Lebanon’s cohesion as the rise of Hezbollah in the early 1980s. Now, however, Barrack appears to throw a life raft to Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy group directly responsible for the deaths of several hundred U.S. Marines, diplomats, and other Americans.

In an interview with a Lebanese-Australian podcaster, Barrack related how he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “give Lebanon a break.” He then sought to release the Lebanese government from its obligation to disarm Hezbollah. “There’s not gonna be a LAF [Lebanese Armed Forces] military movement to go blow them [Hezbollah] away.”

Barrack then advised on the necessity of allowing the Shi’a to save face. “What we have to do is engineer a way for the Shias to find relevance, respect, and save face in this process of not being forced to do something that appears to be incongruent to them,” he explained.

Put another way, Barrack seems more intent on representing Hezbollah’s interests than Lebanon’s or America’s.

Barrack is also dead wrong. Hezbollah no more represents the Shi’a than the Islamic State represents Sunnis. Hezbollah is a relatively recent phenomenon, imposed on southern Lebanon by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Historically, Ayatollahs Ruhollah Khomeini and Ali Khamenei are both outliers in the spectrum of Shi’i theology, which eschews the mixing of mosque and state. Grand Ayatollah Hussein al-Sadr mixes no words when he castigates the United States for tolerating Iran’s imposition of itself on the Shi’i world. Lebanese Shi‘a do not admire Hezbollah; they fear and resent them as much as ordinary citizens dislike the mafia that extorts their money and kills their sons. Nor do Lebanese believe the nonsense that Hezbollah is a nationalist organization.

After all, the 6,000 Lebanese Hezbollah “martyrs” whose pictures dot signposts and fences across southern Lebanon died not for the Bashar al-Assad regime inside Syria.

The United States must shed the notion that the Islamic Republic of Iran or its proxies in Iraq and Lebanon represent Shi’ism. If Hezbollah wants to stake that claim, let them compete at the ballot box after their complete disarmament.

Conversely, to allow Hezbollah to save face is to tell Baghdad that Kata’ib al-Hezbollah, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, and Harakat al-Nujaba should continue to operate in the name of avoiding bruising their supporters’ pride.

After Israel’s beeper operation figuratively and in many cases literally castrated Hezbollah’s fighting force, the Lebanese moved on quickly; they threw themselves into rebuilding their country and reconstituting a political order that prioritizes Lebanese interests above those of Iran.

For Barrack, now, to accept Iranian and Hezbollah talking points undermines Lebanon’s best opportunity for recovery in half a century, embarrasses and undermines Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, and could undermine Trump’s desire to expand Abraham Accords-style peace in the region.

It is time to bring Barrack home.

About the Author: Dr. Michael Rubin

Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum. The opinions and views expressed are his own. A former Pentagon official, Dr. Rubin has lived in post-revolution Iran, Yemen, and both pre- and postwar Iraq. He also spent time with the Taliban before 9/11. For more than a decade, he taught classes at sea about the Horn of Africa and Middle East conflicts, culture, and terrorism, to deployed US Navy and Marine units. The views expressed are the author’s own.

More Military

The B-1B Bomber Is Headed for the Boneyard 

The A-10 Warthog Is Obsolete 

Russia’s Air Force Is Falling Apart 

Boeing’s X-32 vs. China’s J-20 Stealth Fighter: Who Wins?