Augustus Richard Norton is professor of international relations and anthropology at Boston University, and an authority on the Shiites of Lebanon. (I once wrote about him here, in another context.) He’s had a strong presence in the media over the last month, with op-eds, radio appearances, and quotes. It’s not the first time.

As the 1990s closed, some Israelis began to propose a unilateral withdrawal from south Lebanon, which Israel had occupied since 1982. Strategists and analysts debated the pros and cons. The biggest con was the prospect that Hezbollah might come down to the border and continue to attack Israel from there. Hezbollah didn’t make the decision any easier for Israel: its leader, Sayyid Hasan Nasrallah, gave elusive answers about what Hezbollah might do. Norton entered this debate, with the authority of someone who claimed contacts inside and around the movement.

Despite the intentional ambiguity [Norton wrote in 1999], one walks away from such discussions with a clear sense that Hizballah has no appetite to launch a military campaign across the Israeli border should Israel withdraw from the south, whether unilaterally or as a result of negotiations with Lebanon and Syria. This is also the firm impression that one gains from the supporters of Hizballah who hide neither their hatred of Israel nor their view that attacks across the border would only inflict further suffering on the people of the south. Hizballah, of course, must be mindful that the mood of general support that it now enjoys is hardly guaranteed, and it would sacrifice much of its support base if it provoked violent Israeli retaliation against southern Lebanon.

According to Norton, “Hizballah’s social base will simply not support attacks into Israel, given the likely costs of retribution. There is no appetite for taking the fight to Israel.” As Israel’s withdrawal drew closer, Norton’s predictions became more emphatic. “Episodic attacks on Israel might occur from Lebanon,” he wrote in 2000, “but the broadly popular resistance will close up shop when Israel leaves.” Indeed, Hezbollah was even poised to give up its arms. “Certainly,” wrote Norton, “the modality of an Israeli withdrawal would include provisions for disarming Hizballah in the south, as well as the creation of a security regime for the area. It is precisely this eventuality for which Hizballah has been visibly preparing since its party congress in July 1995.”

Of course, we now know that Hezbollah was invisibly preparing for exactly the opposite: the takeover of the south as an extra-territorial zone, fortified with bunkers, tunnels, and command posts. Not only did the “resistance” not close up shop; it turned into a clandestine supermarket of rockets and missiles. Hezbollah didn’t have an appetite for out-and-out confrontation with Israel, but it developed a taste for dangerous brinksmanship and periodic crises along the border.

All of the forces that Norton had cited as constraints on Hezbollah–Hezbollah’s “social base,” its “support base,” its “constituency”–didn’t constrain it at all. Instead, Hezbollah deployed its media to build a personality cult around Nasrallah, so that it became impossible to question his political and strategic judgment. Since Israel’s withdrawal in 2000, Hezbollah has progressively evolved into a kind of Arab mini-state: highly centralized, sustained by (Iranian) rent, militarized from within, and insistent on total obedience to the leader.

Since the confrontation began on July 12, Norton has resurfaced as a pundit. His analysis is always well-formulated. The problem is that he contradicts the analysis he made only a few years ago, issuing predictions whose premises diametrically oppose his earlier ones. Here’s one example:

Just because many tens of thousands of Lebanese Shiites may have to live in tents does not mean that they are going to emerge from this war a diminished political force. I expect the contrary to be true. There will be two beneficiaries of their politicization: Hizbullah and Iran.

Recall Norton’s earlier assessment, that Hezbollah “would sacrifice much of its support base if it provoked violent Israeli retaliation against southern Lebanon.” Well, Hezbollah finally provoked violent Israeli retaliation against southern Lebanon. So why does Norton now think that this will increase support for Hezbollah, when earlier he predicted it would diminish it? (Or were both assessments colored by Norton’s own time-specific agendas: before 2000, to encourage Israel to leave Lebanon, and now, to chastise it for going back in?)

Personally, I’m hoping that Norton 1.0 is right and Norton 2.0 is wrong–that Israel’s pummeling of areas in Hezbollah’s orbit will undercut Shiite support for the movement, not increase it. But I don’t know for sure. Does he?

Update, August 18: NPR’s Mike Shuster now gets this from Norton, about Israelis’ grasp of Hezbollah:

They have been god-awful at really understanding Hezbollah, and this has been a consistent problem…. They have continually thought that if they inflict punishment and pain on the Lebanese, the Lebanese would turn against the Syrians and Hezbollah. But instead, what happens is that people end up getting mad and angry at Israel.

If Israel’s problem has been “consistent,” Norton’s problem has been inconsistency. Again, here’s that 1999 quote from Norton: Hezbollah “would sacrifice much of its support base if it provoked violent Israeli retaliation against southern Lebanon.” Now he has the temerity to describe this idea, which he himself retailed up to 2000, as a “god-awful” misunderstanding limited to those dense Israelis. It’s intellectually dishonest.

Posted retroactively at Sandbox.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL EDITORIAL REPORT

The Politics of War

Monday, August 14, 2006 12:01 a.m.

Paul Gigot: Welcome back. Iran’s Supreme Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered Muslims across the world this week to support Hezbollah in its ongoing battle against Israel. He praised the group’s jihad against the Jewish state, describing Israel’s offensive in Lebanon and Palestine as a bitter phenomenon, and warning other Islamic nations that they could meet a similar fate. Martin Kramer is a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He joins me now from Tel Aviv.

Mr. Kramer, thank you for being on the program. We often hear that Iran and Hezbollah are very closely linked. Just how close are they? Can Hezbollah act independently on something like Lebanon without Iran’s approval?

Martin Kramer: Well, the link is very intimate, and it goes back a very long way, even to the first days of the Iranian revolution. The Iranians at the time, Ayatollah Khomeini, sent his emissaries throughout the Muslim world, especially among the Shia, to win support. There was a strong pushback in many of the other states because the regimes opposed it. But in Lebanon, there was a civil war at the time and no one to oppose it. So Iran built up Hezbollah really from scratch, and although there have been ups and downs in the degree of intimacy of the relationship, I think it has actually gotten more intimate of late, as Iran approaches a possible crisis with the West over its nuclear capabilities.

Gigot: Do you believe that Hezbollah would have struck Israel the way it did without Iran’s approval?

Kramer: I think Iran had given a blanket approval for operations along Israel’s border in order to keep that on a simmer. Now, the precise modus operandi in any given situation–when to attack, when to strike–was pretty much left to Hezbollah.

I think that actually, in this respect, it might have been an Iranian mistake to have not corrected their standing instructions to Hezbollah, because they effectively provoked Israel into launching a large-scale offensive, which from Iran’s point of view is badly timed. I think Iran wanted to use the capabilities of Hezbollah that you see on display now–the rockets and the guerrilla fighters–at a later time and a megacrisis over Iran’s nuclear capabilities. But Israel chose the time for this war, not Hezbollah, effectively. And so, to some extent, it’s been a strategic step-back for the Iranians.

Gigot: But there are some people who’ve said that the timing was actually appropriate for Iran, that they would have liked it to happen when it did because of the G-8 summit, which was going on and focused on Iran’s nuclear program. And this attack has really changed the world’s discussion about the Middle East for the last month or so. Wasn’t the timing helpful for Iran?

Kramer: I think that in the scale of things, it would have been much more advantageous for Iran to have had this kind of war in the very midst of tremendous U.S. pressure, perhaps even U.S. military action, against Iran. That’s exactly what Saddam Hussein tried to do. He tried to turn a confrontation over his WMD into a general conflagration in the Middle East. I think that would have been Iran’s goal, in the midst of a crisis to say, Here, it’s not just the United States and the Arab states against us. We’re going to undercut the Arab states by bringing up popular support for resistance to Israel. So in a way I think it made sense for Israel to say, Look, we want to split this campaign against Iran into its parts. First, deal with Hezbollah, and later, at another stage, deal with Iran, and not have those two campaigns waged together.

Gigot: All right, well, this conflict has now been going on for roughly a month. There doesn’t seem to be a clear-cut military victor, although Hezbollah’s been damaged militarily. We don’t know when it will end. What lessons do you think Iran is taking from the conflict so far? Do they feel more assured in their nuclear ambitions or maybe a bit more cautious?

Kramer: Well, as in any conflict, it’s a mixed picture. I think from the point of view of public relations and their stature in the Muslim world and Arab world, Iran has gained. There is a lot of hailing of Iran helping Hezbollah to be the only Arab-Muslim force standing up to Israel. But as Iran knows deep down inside, you can’t take the Arab street to the bank. There’s not a lot you can do with the Arab street in the midst of a crisis. Saddam Hussein discovered that. Yasser Arafat knew it. Even Nasser knew it.

So there is a PR gain. I think, in the longer term, though, they have to wonder whether a card has been taken from their hand. Because even if it’s not a decisive defeat–an elimination of Hezbollah from the Lebanese landscape–a regime is going to put in place on the Israeli-Lebanese border, and perhaps even deeper within Lebanon, which will make it much more difficult for Iran to mobilize and play the Hezbollah card in a bigger crisis. So I think that what Iran is going to do in the aftermath of this is say, Well, if we can’t do it in Lebanon, where else can we do it? And I would not be surprised to see Iran bolster its support–for example, for Moqtada al Sadr and the extreme Shiites in Iraq, as another card to replace the Hezbollah card.

Gigot: All right, Martin Kramer, thank you for those very interesting insights. When we come back, word this week that British officials disrupted terrorist plans to blow up planes heading to the U.S. It gave both Republicans and Democrats an opportunity to emphasize their positions on national security. We’ll highlight the differences facing voters. And a significant date on the Islamic calendar has a prominent Middle East scholar warning of Iran’s potentially cataclysmic plan. We’ll have the details when “The Journal Editorial Report” continues.