From the category archives:

Hezbollah

Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s speech delivered in Lebanon today

August 3, 2010

The following speech by the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah was delivered today via video feed in front of a large crowd in Beirut. The translation provided below came in tweets (hence the format below) from Roqayah at iRevolt who did instant translating and tweeting while watching the broadcast.
We are celebrating our victory over the biggest [...]

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Israeli provocation on Lebanese border could trigger new war

August 3, 2010

Update below
Border clashes between Israeli and Lebanese troops have left three Lebanese soldiers and a journalist dead. Lebanon’s Hezbollah TV, Al Manar, reports one high-ranking Israeli officer has been killed but this has not been confirmed by the Lebanese army or UN troops stationed in southern Lebanon.
As the photo above makes clear, this was a [...]

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Drums of war: Israel and the “axis of resistance”

August 2, 2010

In a new report, the International Crisis Group warns that the situation in the Levant, four years after the last war between Israel and Hezbollah, is exceptionally quiet and uniquely dangerous.
Of all the explanations why calm has prevailed in the Israeli-Lebanese arena since the end of the 2006 war, the principal one also should be [...]

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Tension mounts in Lebanon

July 29, 2010

Nicholas Noe (co-founder of Mideastwire.com) writes at Foreign Policy:
With the announcement from Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah this week that Hizbullah members may be indicted for the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Raifk Hariri, one thing is now (publicly) clear, no matter what one may think about the integrity of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon [...]

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A source of emulation

July 10, 2010

Consider this: When Jimmy Carter visited Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah in Beirut just over a year ago, protection for the former US president was provided not only by the Secret Service but also Hezbollah’s own security personnel, both of whom feared that Carter might be assassinated by Israel’s Mossad!
Fourteen years earlier Fadlallah escaped an [...]

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When honesty gets dangerous, liars succeed

July 9, 2010

No, Ariel Sharon has not just died. But when he does, will Wolf Blitzer lose his job if he writes a tweet like the one above (a fake of course, created by yours truly)?
Certainly not, because as Glenn Greenwald correctly noted yesterday: “The speech prohibitions and thought crimes on the Middle East all run in [...]

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It’s obvious, go talk to the Islamists

July 4, 2010

Rami G Khouri writes:
This nagging issue just will not go away: How do local or foreign governments best deal with leading Islamist groups in the Middle East and South Asia? Do you engage, negotiate with, ignore, or actively fight politically and militarily against Hizbullah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban and other such groups that [...]

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Mainstreaming realism

July 1, 2010

It was widely assumed that George Bush’s departure from Washington would coincide with a revival of strength for the reality-based community — the people the neocons swept aside for the sake of empire. But though the neocon dream was quick to perish, the reality-based community is still struggling to assert itself — at least inside [...]

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Hezbollah’s coalition partner meets Obama

May 23, 2010

At the pro-Israeli Washington Institute for Near East Policy, David Schenker writes:
On Monday, Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri will visit Washington for a meeting with President Obama. In announcing the meeting, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs called it “a symbol of the close and historic relationship between Lebanon and the United States.” Indeed, between [...]

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Talking to terrorists

March 17, 2010

The Washington Post has a passage from Mark Perry’s new book, Talking to Terrorists: Why America Must Engage With Its Enemies. As Perry notes, talking to groups that the US government has labelled as “terrorists” is not only necessary but is a choice that has already been pursued and shown highly effective. As he [...]

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American hypocrisy on weapons in the Middle East

March 2, 2010

Haaretz reports:
The U.S. administration has asked Syrian President Bashar Assad to immediately stop transferring arms to Hezbollah. American officials made the request during a meeting Friday with the Syrian ambassador to Washington.
Al-Hayat reports Hillary Clinton sent a message to Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on the need to curtail arms smuggling to Hezbollah. “Not a [...]

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Lebanon’s AK-47 index may be pointing to war

February 4, 2010

From The National:
[Abu Mahdi, an arms dealer in southern Beirut] says the high point for the price of the AK-47 was in the period of major Sunni and Shiite sectarian tension that preceded the May 2008 clashes between Hizbollah and its allies against groups of Sunnis loyal to the government.
“In the days before the action, [...]

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Which is more dangerous: reckless or clueless?

February 1, 2010

When Obama took office, many citizens of this nation (including me) let out a sigh of relief, comforted by the thought that a reckless fool had been replaced a calm and sometimes inspiring realist.
How can a year seem like such a long time ago?
Engagement turned out to a piece of campaign pap that fizzled out [...]

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