Hezbollah and Iran are making it clear to the Lebanese people and anyone else who is interested: It is they — and not Prime Minister Siniora’s elected government — who control the country that only recently was seen as a success story in the Western drive to democratize the Arab Middle East.

America, France, the West, Arab leaders, and even more so those in Lebanon who dreamed about a Cedar Revolution have only themselves to blame for allowing Syria to regain its footing in Lebanon and allowing Iran to turn Lebanon into a launching pad for wars on Israel. Israel is also to be blamed for not finishing what it began in 2006 and for allowing the United Nations and the “international community” to become the rug under which the Hezbollah dust was swept.

Yesterday, Hezbollah took on Druze forces in the Chouf mountains and confronted all other would-be rivals in the eastern Bekaa Valley and the northern region around Tripoli. Earlier last week, Hezbollah overwhelmed the Future movement, headed by the Saudi-backed Saad Hariri. The 2005 assassination of Mr. Hariri’s father supplied the spark for a short-lived attempt to liberate Lebanon from Syria and democratize it, which became known as the Cedar Revolution.

Lebanon’s army, headed by General Michel Suleiman, abetted Hezbollah last week rather than confronting it. Mr. Suleiman, the leading candidate for taking over the presidency that has been vacated since last November, already has the support of Riyadh, Washington, Paris, Mr. Siniora, and others among Lebanon’s Western allies. Now he needs the Shiite vote, which may explain his reluctance to confront Hezbollah.

Here is yet another demonstration of how armed militias — Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Mehdi Army in Iraq — are the biggest threat to Middle Eastern democracy. Even if they maintain a “political wing,” organizations that own bullets should not take part in ballot contests. Given a choice, wouldn’t you vote for the man who aims a gun at your head?

The seeds of this week’s troubles were sown with the Arab League-sponsored 1989 Taif Accord, so named after the Saudi city in which it was negotiated, that ended a 15-year Lebanese civil war. The accord included a license for Syria to control the country for a short period — just until the fatigued warring factions could be gelled back into a whole country again. Syria’s occupation lasted 15 years, during which the Shiites in the south were exempted from the Taif vision of disarming all the militias — mostly because they argued they needed weapons to confront Israel.

Backed by Iran’s cash, military guidance, and armaments that kept streaming through Syria, the Shiites grew to become a formidable army. When Israel finally confronted Hezbollah in 2006, the Jewish state enjoyed tacit but unmistakable support from the West, from most Arab countries, and even from most Lebanese — even as in public statements all of them followed the lead of Turtle Bay and such organizations as Human Rights Watch, who wailed against what they called the disproportional use of force.

Israel succeeded in partially disarming Hezbollah. But rather than leveraging the rare international support it received and concluding a campaign that would significantly set back Hezbollah’s military capabilities for years to come, Israel succumbed to outside and internal pressure from a public reeling from attacks on its cities. It then turned the game over to the United Nations.

Just like the Taif enforcers and the U.N. troops that were stationed in southern Lebanon since the 1980s, the new, enlarged U.N. presence stationed in Lebanon in the aftermath of the 2006 war was unmotivated and incapable of confronting Hezbollah and disarming it, even though all Security Council resolutions demanded such a disarmament. American warships patrolling Lebanese shores last week similarly allowed Hezbollah’s takeover of Lebanon without firing even a warning shot. France, the most influential Western power in Lebanon, moved not a finger. The Security Council and Secretary-General Ban have been silent as at least 45 people died in Hezbollah’s assault on Lebanon.

Mostly, the Lebanese people made no real attempt to rise up. “How could we help Siniora if he doesn’t even make a public request for international help?” a Western diplomat told me yesterday.

Hezbollah is one tentacle in Iran’s war machine. Israel keeps “one eye on what goes on in Gaza, another on Syria and Lebanon, and of course both eyes follow what goes on in Iran,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak said yesterday. Nevertheless, any military plan to confront Iran’s nuclear power should now take into account Iran’s ability to strike at Israeli cities simultaneously from south and north.

beavni@nysun.com