11-21-2017(Photo:Beirut )http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/contacthttp://JohnBatchelorShow.com/schedulesTwitter: @BatchelorShow

The land bridge from Tehran to Baghdad to Damascus Beirut is complete. @MPPREGENT

The strategic breakthroughs by Iran and several of its key Arab clients and proxies in northern and western Iraq, as well as eastern Syria, will be nothing short of regionally transformative if consolidated over the coming months and years.

Almost 15 years ago, King Abdullah II of Jordan, alarmed by evident Iranian meddling in Iraq’s first post-Saddam election, warned of the emergence of a “Shiite crescent”, dominated by Tehran and arching across the northern Middle East. Ever since, this prospect has haunted the nightmares of many Arab states and Israel, as well as insightful and well-informed Turks and Americans.

The essential precondition for the development of such an Iranian-dominated mini-empire in the Middle East is the creation of a long-cherished “land bridge” linking Tehran to Beirut and the Mediterranean. This is a prize of such enormity that even the great Persian empires of the past have scarcely dreamt of it.

It would give Iran direct and full control of a military corridor to its key Arab proxy, Hizbollah, and to Lebanon, the epicentre and locus of its influence in the Arab world dating back to the early 1980s.

Yet this ambition has been fanciful and speculative ... until now.

In recent weeks, Iran and several of its proxies, including Hizbollah, various Iraqi militias, including Iraq’s own version of Hizbollah and the so-called “Popular Mobilisation Forces” – as well as elements of Baghdad’s military and the army of Syrian dictator Bashar Al Assad – have seized control of key areas in northern and western Iraq and eastern Syria. This makes the establishment, at least for now, of an Iranian-controlled land bridge to Lebanon a virtual fait accompli.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/iran-s-long-cherished-tehran-to-beirut-land-bridge-moves-closer-to-reality-1.674875