Grimly foreboding though the Middle East looks, things could be worse. For instance, the general election in Lebanon has left the country almost exactly unchanged. Things will stagger on as before in all their contradictions and dangers. The coalition of Fouad Siniora, comprising Christians and Sunnis, has the slight majority required to govern. The opposition, Hezbollah, the Shia party, is really only a foreign-policy arm of Iran, and quite a few Lebanese Shias are brave enough to defy it. Most observers thought it would win, but it got only 58 seats in a parliament of 120. Enough to be wreckers but not to form a government. That passes for good news in these parts.

Hezbollah’s leader is Hassan Nasrallah, and he offers an outstanding example of the kind of men who come to the top in Arab and Muslim politics. He knows exactly how to obtain arms and financing, how to organize his supporters into a militia that will jump to do whatever he wants on pain of death and disgrace. He’s a perfect miniature of the one-man ruler that this system of politics invariably throws up. Within hours of the election results, he made a distinction between a parliamentary majority and a popular majority. In plain language he is reserving the right to use force if he sees advantage in doing so. More blunt still, a spokesman of his lays down that the Siniora majority must promise not to question Hezbollah’s role or the legitimacy of its weapons. That means reserving another right, namely to fight Israel again, when convenient.

Hezbollah only has its numbers thanks to General Michel Aoun, another outstanding example of the kind of men who thrive in an absolute political system like this. A renegade Christian, a warlord, Aoun fought for years against Muslims, in the end fleeing to Paris as an exile. Throwing his lot in with Hezbollah is purely and simply a careerist move, quite natural, however unnatural it may look. A Lebanese Christian friend of mine sends him e-mails imploring him to abandon personal aggrandizement that could bring down the whole country. There is never an answer, needless to say.

The Lebanese election freezes the situation, unless or until the imminent and more decisive election in Iran heats it up again.