Fear of Iran, Obama's words swayed Lebanon vote

BEIRUT (AP) - Fears of a hard-line Iran helped swing Christian voters from the militant Shiite group Hezbollah and deliver election victory to a pro-Western coalition in Lebanon. President Barack Obama's outreach to Muslims lingered in voters' minds, too.

Now the question is whether similar factors will sway Iran's own elections Friday for the presidency, considered too close to call between incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and a self-styled reformist challenger.

Lebanon and Iran are different in key ways, with voters in Lebanon, an Arab country, tending to vote along Shiite and Sunni Muslim and Christian sectarian lines and out of family loyalties.

Iran, in contrast, which is mainly Persian and mostly Shiite Muslim, is divided by a sharp struggle between the Islamic establishment and desires for greater personal freedom and more liberal foreign and economic policies.

Neither country has any accurate, independent or publicly available political polling, and no poll has attempted to substantively gauge the effect of Obama's presidency or his recent Cairo outreach speech to Muslims on either country.

One recent poll done on behalf of two U.S.-based public-interest groups found that few Iranians - only 29 percent - said they have favorable opinions of the United States, and that the view had changed little since Obama's election.

The survey was conducted by telephone into Iranian households from a nearby, unidentified country in Farsi, Iran's language, but regional experts noted it could have been influenced by the fears of random Iranians who answered the phone calls, in a country where private communication is often monitored.

The poll was conducted for Terror Free Tomorrow, a bipartisan group that tries to undermine support for terrorism, and for the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan public policy institute, both based in Washington.

In general, concerns over Iran's recent hard-line positions - and interest in Obama's call for dialogue with Iran and his outreach to Muslims overall - are intense across many parts of the Mideast, showing up often as a topic in media and conversations.

In a high-profile speech in Cairo last week in the final stretches of both countries' campaigns, Obama challenged the Islamic world to confront violent extremism and find ways to achieve peace between Palestinians and Israelis. He has previously called for dialogue with both Iran and Syria, now at loggerheads with the West.

The speech came amid high tensions between Arab allies of America and Iran in the region itself.

"My sense is that Iranians feel there is a window now to move in a new direction with America, and change Iran's reputation in the region," said Adbulkhaleq Abdulla, a professor of political science at Emirates University in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates. "The question is can opponents of Ahmadinejad make this feeling translate into votes on election day?"

"I don't want to overestimate it," added political analyst Sharif Emam Jomeh in Iran. "But people do think that now the world has changed. ... Obama has come to power and it's time for Iran to change."

In Lebanon, Obama's effect was equally muted though still evident. Iran's effect on Lebanese Christian voters, however, was glaringly out in the open.

Christians were the swing voters in Sunday's balloting and the votes in two key Christian districts helped the pro-Western coalition retain its majority in parliament over a coalition including the Shiite Hezbollah group, which is backed by Iran.

A key factor was a last-minute warning against Iranian influence from Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir, head of the influential Maronite Catholic Church in Lebanon. He warned that the nation's character and its Arab identity were under threat - an allusion to Iran, Hezbollah's mentor.

Lebanon's large Christian minority fiercely guards its liberal lifestyle and freedoms.

"What the patriarch said affected the way people voted," said Edmond Samir, a Christian shopper in his mid-30s who said he backed the winning ticket.

The pro-Western camp won 68 seats while Hezbollah and its allies - including one Christian faction - ended up with 57.

An estimated two-thirds of Lebanon's Christian voters had supported Hezbollah's Christian ally, former army chief Michel Aoun, in the last election in 2005. But results indicated enough turned away from Aoun this time in favor of the pro-Western bloc to make the Christian split even, and to swing the outcome toward the pro-Western bloc decisively.

Aoun still emerged with several more seats to remain the largest Christian bloc in parliament.

Lebanese Sunnis, supporting the pro-Western camp and fearing Shiite domination, also were mobilized to vote en mass to give their factions a majority to stop Hezbollah.

Hilal Khashan, head of the political sciences department at the American University of Beirut, said Aoun's alliance with Hezbollah was "extremely difficult to justify" for the Christian community, describing it as "most unlikely and most improbable."

However, Obama's recent speech also may have been a "contributor or a reinforcing statement" to the voters, too, he said. It was "not decisive, but did have some impact."

Added middle-aged Christian shop owner Lena al-Awar of Obama: "He didn't change the way I voted ... But maybe because Obama supports freedom and democracy, then that has an effect."
MyWay