BEIRUT (Reuters) — US President George W. Bush has called Iranian-backed “Shi’ite extremists” as great a peril to his nation as al Qaeda, singling out Lebanon’s Hezbollah as well as the Shi’ite militias which his war in Iraq helped to power.In his annual State of the Union speech, Bush raised the “nightmare scenario” of a premature US pullout sparking an “epic battle between Shi’ite extremists backed by Iran and Sunni extremists aided by al Qaeda and supporters of the old regime”. An official from a top Shi’ite party in Iraq bristled at Bush’s remarks, but some Sunni politicians welcomed his focus on the danger from Shi’ite militias, as well as Sunni insurgents.

“Comparing Shi’ite militias to al Qaeda is ridiculous,” said the Shi’ite official, who asked not to be identified.

“They are protecting their own communities after a three-year onslaught by terrorists and only a few outlaws take revenge. How are the militias a threat to the United States?”

There was no immediate official reaction from Tehran or from Hezbollah, but one Iranian analyst said Bush was “softening up” his critics in Congress for a possible strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Iran says the programme is civilian not military. Hermidas Barvand, a Tehran university professor, said Bush sought to “magnify the menace of Shi’ites” for two reasons: “to mobilise Sunni Arabs...and to legitimise future measures by creating a resemblance between Shi’ite extremism and al Qaeda”. Bush’s broadside was in line with his “for us or against us” division of the Middle East since the 9/11 attacks.

He has opted to isolate and confront Iran and Syria, along with the political-military Islamist groups Hezbollah and the ruling Palestinian Hamas, rather than talking to them.

Both states have tried this month to avoid isolation and show they can’t be ignored in a region of intertwined conflicts. Syria has hosted Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and brokered talks in Damascus between Hamas and its Fatah rivals.

Shi’ite Iran has reached out to Saudi Arabia, US ally and bastion of Sunni Islam, in an apparent effort to keep sectarian warfare in Iraq from igniting in Lebanon and beyond.

“Some of the contacts between Saudi Arabia and Iran are very significant,” Paul Salem, director of the Middle East Centre of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Reuters.

He said Tehran and Riyadh feared that Sunni-Shi’ite strife could spin out of control and wanted to ensure that “the brush fire that exists in Iraq doesn’t become a forest fire that could consume Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and parts of Saudi Arabia”. Bush’s emphasis on Shi’ite radicals seemed designed in part to please US-backed Sunni Arab rulers, who are alarmed by rising Shi’ite power and Iranian influence in Iraq. Bush said Sunni militants such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in Iraq, and al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden were just one part of a “totalitarian” threat from Islamist radicals. “In recent times, it has also become clear that we face an escalating danger from Shi’ite extremists who are just as hostile to America, and are also determined to dominate the Middle East,” he told Congress.

“Many are known to take direction from the regime in Iran, which is funding and arming terrorists like Hezbollah — a group second only to al Qaeda in the American lives it has taken,” Bush said. Washington says Hezbollah was behind a 1983 suicide bombing in Beirut which killed 241 US military personnel.

The United States has taken sides in Lebanon’s internal crisis, vowing to back the government against Hezbollah and its Shi’ite and Christian allies, who accuse Sunni Prime Minister Fouad Siniora of taking his orders from Washington.

Bush accused “Hezbollah terrorists” of “seeking to undermine Lebanon’s legitimately elected government”. For now, Iran has refrained from matching US rhetorical escalation, amid signs it wants to calm the Lebanese crisis.

Iranian-Saudi diplomacy may have influenced Hezbollah’s decision to suspend a shutdown that brought chaos and bloodshed to Lebanon on Tuesday and raised fears of a return to civil war.

A Lebanese political source said the ambassador of Saudi Arabia, which supports Siniora, and his Iranian counterpart had been in touch with rival factions to try to defuse the conflict.

Senior Saudi diplomat Prince Bandar bin Sultan was now in Tehran to discuss Lebanon, the source said. Iran’s overtures may also be linked to the recent domestic political setbacks of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose fiery tirades have done much to raise US and regional worries.