Shiite Mufti of "Hizbulland" (aka South Lebanon) condemns Hizbullah's "military" allegiance to Iran

This is something that certainly hasn't been widely disseminated. As Middle East Transparent's Peter Akel reports:

While Lebanon’s ongoing crisis has enjoyed prominent media coverage all over the world, no one seemed to notice that Hizbullah, which received up to 3 billion US dollars from Teheran, in the aftermath of its July war against Israel, had never enjoyed the allegiance of Lebanon’s important Shiite Intelligensia. Rather, the most outspoken opponents of Hizbullah’s adventurism had come from the heart of Lebanese Shiism. Even when the Shiite party started its own daily journal, it had to put it into the hands of a Christian editor, seconded by an ex communist Shiite journalist.* However, the liberal Shiite mufti [Sheikh el Amin] of South Lebanon (so-called Hizbulland land) is a case apart. Not only as a holder of a prominent position in the Shiite establishment, but also as one who had been at the heart of the religious movement that gave birth to Lebanon’s fundamentalist party...

Sheikh el Amin confirmed that he had been very close to Hizbullah’s three successive leaders: Abbas el Moussawi (assassinated by Israel), Sobhi Toufaili and Hassan Nasrallah. (Sheikh Sobhi Toufaili claims he had lost his position as leader of Hizbullah when he stood up against Iranian hegemony on the party and because he did not adhere to Khomeini’s Wilayati Faqih theory.)

As Akel goes on to report:

[He] firmly condemned Hizbullah’s transformation from a «cultural » to a «military» movement vowing allegiance to Iran...

On Iran’s attempts to mobilize Arab Shiites to support Teheran’s policies, Sheikh el Amin had the following to say: « we would like to see Iran victorious in its war on ignorance, poverty, aggression and underdevelopment. But, in every country, confessional allegiances should not be at the expense of national loyalties. To tell you the truth, we have nothing to do with Iran’s political strategies ».

Adding: « The Iranians would never enjoy the allegiance of all Lebanese shias, but even if they did, would it serve Iran’s interests to win them over only to lose the trust of the whole Islamic world? Does it really serve Iran’s interests to be viewed by awe and distrust by Muslims all over the world?»

Barry Rubin: The Middle East has indeed changed

Barry Rubin, a prominent Israeli-based Middle East scholar, says in the Jerusalem Post says that the Middle East has just undergone its most significant shift in alignments since perhaps the 1950s. On one side he says are Hizbullah, Iran, Syria, Hamas; and on the other, are almost every other Arab state, Israel and the United States.

This shift has occurred, he says, because of Iran’s insistence on being able to pursue a nuclear program, widely believed to have as its end goal a nuclear bomb; Iran’s designs on Iraq; and of course its proxy, Syria’s designs on Lebanon.

Saudi Arabia is reported to be trying to resuscitate interest in its 2002 Middle East peace initiative, the terms on which Riyadh suggested the Arab states would be willing to normalize relations with Israel. In Lebanon, Saudi Arabia is said to be trying to prop up the more moderate Fatah party in opposition to Hamas, the U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization which is the ruling party of the Palestinian National Authority, which calls for the destruction of the Jewish state.