Category Archives: Hezbollah

NEWS: Israel’s new intelligence estimate – mixed threats

Exclusive: Annual Israeli Intelligence Estimate
By Ron Ben-Yishai, Ynet, December 16, 2007

Deep pessimism alongside cautious optimism- those are the two key principles that emerge from this year’s Annual Israeli Intelligence Estimate. The report will be presented to the security cabinet in several days time by IDF Intelligence Chief Major-General Amos Yadlin, but the highlights are here for you now in a Ynet exclusive report.

The aforementioned pessimism concerns Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The American National Intelligence Estimate “dropped quite a bomb” on Israel’s struggle against Iran’s nuclear program, said officials within Israel’s defense establishment. The US report only diminishes the likelihood that the international community will impose harsh, effective sanctions on Iran and also that the US itself will strike Iranian nuclear facilities.

“It is clear to us now that no one will do the work for us,” one of the report’s authors told Ynet, Israel can now rely solely on its own military capabilities, if and when the Iranian nuclear program achieves its aims.

The differences of opinion among the Israeli and American intelligence communities stem from different methodologies for analyzing raw data. Washington and Jerusalem are in almost total agreement regarding the known facts, as the two supply each other with whatever information they posses. [complete article]

Israel: US Iran report may spark war
AP, December , 2007

Israel’s public security minister warned Saturday that a U.S. intelligence report that said Iran is no longer developing nuclear arms could lead to a regional war that would threaten the Jewish state.

In his remarks — Israel’s harshest criticism yet of the U.S. report — Avi Dichter said the assessment also cast doubt on American intelligence in general, including information about Palestinian security forces’ crackdown on militant groups. The Palestinian action is required as part of a U.S.-backed renewal of peace talks with Israel this month.

Dichter cautioned that a refusal to recognize Iran’s intentions to build weapons of mass destruction could lead to armed conflict in the Middle East. [complete article]

Israeli envoys to U.S. to argue Iran still aiming for nuclear bomb
By Barak Ravi, Haaretz, December 16, 2007

Israel has dispatched an unscheduled delegation of intelligence officials to the U.S. to try to convince it that Iran is still trying to develop nuclear weapon – contrary to the findings of a recent U.S. intelligence report, security officials say.

The delegation, which set off last week on its unscheduled mission, will wind up its visit this week, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with the media.

It was not clear what type of material the Israeli delegation – for the most part military intelligence officers – presented to U.S. officials.

“The U.S. and Israel will also hold additional joint formal meetings on the matter in coming weeks,” the Israeli officials said. “Israel will use these forums to try to persuade the Americans that Iran is trying to development nuclear weapons, and intends to present information classified as top secret for security reasons,” the officials said. [complete article]

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NEWS: North Korea may have aided Hezbollah

North Korea may have aided Hezbollah: U.S. report
By Arshad Mohammed, Reuters, December 13, 2007

North Korea may have given arms to Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers, according to a report compiled for Congress that could complicate U.S. plans to drop Pyongyang from its terrorism blacklist.

The report obtained on Wednesday by Reuters was written by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), which provides independent analysis to Congress, and cited “reputable sources” as saying Pyongyang had given arms and possibly training to the militant groups, which Washington regards as “terrorist” organizations.

As part of a deal to get Pyongyang to give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons, Washington has dangled the possibility of removing North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism if it fully discloses its nuclear programs. [complete article]

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NEWS & OPINION: Rising fear in Lebanon

Darkness falls on the Middle East
By Robert Fisk, The Independent, November 24, 2007

It’s difficult to describe what it’s like to be in a country that sits on plate glass. It is impossible to be certain if the glass will break. When a constitution breaks – as it is beginning to break in Lebanon – you never know when the glass will give way.

People are moving out of their homes, just as they have moved out of their homes in Baghdad. I may not be frightened, because I’m a foreigner. But the Lebanese are frightened. I was not in Lebanon in 1975 when the civil war began, but I was in Lebanon in 1976 when it was under way. I see many young Lebanese who want to invest their lives in this country, who are frightened, and they are right to frightened. What can we do? [complete article]

Hezbollah raises specter of long Lebanon power void
By Tom Perry, Reuters, November 25, 2007

Lebanese opposition group Hezbollah said on Sunday that failure to reach agreement on a new president in the week ahead could leave the divided country without a head of state for a long time.

Deputy Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Kassem also said the Western-backed government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora had no right to assume the powers of the presidency, which has been vacant since Friday when Emile Lahoud’s term ended. [complete article]

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NEWS: Lebanon’s political limbo

Lebanese fail to elect president
BBC News, November 23, 2007

Lebanese MPs have failed to convene to elect a new president as the term of the incumbent, Emile Lahoud, expires.

Members of the Western-backed majority had hoped to hold a vote, but the pro-Syrian opposition did not allow the session to achieve the quorum needed.

The crisis has raised fears of civil strife, including the possibility of rival administrations, as happened during the 15-year civil war. [complete article]

From hopeful to helpless at a protest in Lebanon
By Anthony Shadid, Washington Post, November 23, 2007

Squalls of rain lashed the offices of Carmen Geha and other young activists. Thunder rolling off the Mediterranean provided a cadence to their work. The weather was a little like politics this week in Lebanon — turbulent and baleful. And Geha, optimistic against the odds, was determined to provide a glimmer of hope.

Lebanon finds itself in a familiar place these days, facing the unknown. Its worst crisis since the 1975-90 civil war builds to a climax at midnight Friday, when the term of President Emile Lahoud ends. Despite weeks of French-led mediation, Lebanon’s factions appeared unlikely to reach a consensus on Lahoud’s replacement by the deadline, plunging the country into a constitutional limbo that sets up scenarios as diverse as the country’s problems: rival governments, military rule or a vacuum, along with the civil strife each option could bring.

Geha and her colleagues readily admit the confrontation is bigger than they are. But on Wednesday, they organized a protest outside the parliament, planning to deliver a blunt demand, in the hopes that others would join them. Enough of a crisis, they said, that has brought a country still scarred by one war to the brink of another. [complete article]

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OPINION: Lebanon on the brink

A powder keg in Lebanon
By Milton Viorst, Los Angeles Times, November 21, 2007

While the eyes of the world are focused on the fading prospects of ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the upcoming meeting in Annapolis, Md., an electoral deadlock in Lebanon grinds inexorably to a climax, threatening to upset an 18-year factional truce and ignite a new civil war that will add one more explosive ingredient to Middle East instability.

Lebanon’s problems are not new. They are rooted in the 1920s, when France’s colonial regime created the country out of Syrian territory and squeezed Christians, Druze and Muslims — Sunni and Shiite — into it. At that time, the Maronite Christians, whose close ties to France dated to the Middle Ages, were the colonial power’s political allies, so the constitution that France imparted required that Lebanon’s president, its most powerful official, be a Maronite. The prime minister, under the constitution, would be a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of the parliament would be a Shiite. The system, a peculiar form of democracy, is called “confessionalism.”

For most of the ensuing years, confessionalism enabled the sects to coexist in a fragile balance. The enormous exception was the horrible civil war that raged from 1975 to 1989, killing 100,000 and leaving much of the country in ruins. None of the sects wants a repetition. [complete article]

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NEWS: Time running out for picking a president

What happens next in Lebanon is anyone’s guess
By Michael Bluhm, Daily Star, November 21, 2007

Despite frantic international mediation and declarations of a desire for consensus from both of Lebanon’s feuding political camps, it remains impossible to say what will happen in the few days remaining before the country risks sliding into a constitutional vacuum, a number of political analysts told The Daily Star on Tuesday.

“Nobody knows,” said Timur Goksel, former senior adviser to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). “I don’t know either.”

Legal expert Ziad Baroud echoed that sentiment.

“I simply don’t know,” he said. “Things are so complicated that you could hardly predict what could be the outcome. I don’t think that we have enough information. [complete article]

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NEWS: Lebanon’s presidential election deadline looms

As presidential vote nears, Beirut’s residents sense they won’t be the winners
By Nada Bakri, New York Times, November 17, 2007

Mireille Adas took part in a march through downtown Beirut this week, demanding that Hezbollah end its yearlong occupation of the city’s commercial center. Her jewelry shop, steps away from the organization’s tent camp, has suffered major losses as a result of the power struggle between Hezbollah and the government, which has paralyzed the capital and brought Lebanese politics to a standstill for nearly a year.

Like most Lebanese, Ms. Adas has felt new heights of anxiety as the clock counted down to next Friday’s deadline for the country to choose a new president. Hezbollah and the pro-Western governing coalition have faced off in a game of brinkmanship over the selection of a president, the head of state, making no visible progress during two months of crisis negotiations that began when Parliament met to elect a president on Sept. 25 and promptly disbanded for lack of a quorum of two-thirds of its members.

Echoing many politicians and analysts here, Ms. Adas worries that the Friday deadline is likely to bring one of two outcomes, either of them bad: a deal that prolongs the current standoff, extending a long period of stagnation and malaise, or a catastrophic head-on clash between the governing coalition and the opposition led by Hezbollah, the Islamist Shiite faction. [complete article]

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NEWS: Al-Qaeda cell tried to assassinate Nasrallah

Report: Al-Qaeda planned hit on Hizbullah chief
By Roee Nahmias, Ynet, November 15, 2007

An al-Qaeda cell tried to assassinate Hizbullah Secretary-General Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah last summer, the Lebanese, Arab-language newspaper As-Safir reported Thursday.

According to the report, the Lebanese security services are currently conducting a vast investigation into al-Qaeda’s activities in Lebanon. Several al-Qaeda cell members have been arrested, and have admitted – among other things – to firing Katyusha rockets at Israel on several occasions.

The cells are also investigated in connection with a conspiracy to attack UNIFIL forces in southern Lebanon. The attack, which failed to materialize, was meant to look link the Hizbullah’s handiwork, deterioration further the fragile relations between the two.

Lebanese security services, said As-Safir, have uncovered three al-Qaeda cells operating in southern Lebanon. Search and seizure operation in the region further uncovered some 150 pounds of cyanide and other chemicals used to make explosive devices; several hundred pounds of explosive, said the report, have already been shipped back to Iraq. [complete article]

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Not a counterintelligence case?

How big a role did disgraced CIA officer have?
By Andrea Mitchell and Robert Windrem, NBC News, November 14, 2007

There’s new information about the young Lebanese woman who pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges she lied about her background to get jobs at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency.

Current and former intelligence officials tell NBC News that Nada Nadim Prouty had a much bigger role than officials at the FBI and CIA first acknowledged. In fact, Prouty was assigned to the CIA’s most sensitive post, Baghdad, and participated in the debriefings of high-ranking al-Qaida detainees.

A former colleague called Prouty “among the best and the brightest” CIA officers in Baghdad. She was so exceptional, agree officials of both agencies, the CIA recruited her from the FBI to work for the agency’s clandestine service at Langley, Va., in June 2003. She then went to Iraq for the agency to work with the U.S. military on the debriefings. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Sometimes the press can’t resist jumping on a narrative that seems irresistable even if it might not be true. If this is really a tale of intelligence intrigue on a par with the best ones from the Cold War, how come Nada Nadim Prouty is merely facing charges of violating immigration laws and making unauthorized computer searches? No doubt there are and should be strict regulations preventing government officials accessing classified records for personal reasons, but the Hezbollah angle on this story sounds utterly contrived. Somehow, I don’t imagine that Prouty truly stands out as a disgraced CIA officer if the main thing she is guilty of is using the privileges provided by her position just to look for information about her own relatives.

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ANALYSIS: Is Israel about to attack Hezbollah?

Is Israel about to attack Hizballah?
By Nicholas Blanford, Time, November 4, 2007

Is Israel laying the ground for pre-emptive air strikes against targets belonging to the militant Shi’ite group Hizballah in Lebanon?

Tensions have been building along the Lebanon-Israel border in recent days. The Israeli army was engaged last week in large-scale military exercises in northern Israel, close to the border with Lebanon, putting into practice the lessons learned from last year’s 34-day war against Hizballah. The exercises took place at the same time as Israeli jets conducted a growing number of mock air raids and overflights in Lebanese airspace. Israeli aircraft fly in Lebanese airspace on a near daily basis, but last week Lebanese army anti-aircraft units fired at the jets for the first time since the end of the war.

Hizballah, too, is reported to have carried out over the weekend its largest ever military manouevers in south Lebanon. According to a report Monday in Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar newspaper, Hizballah’s three-day exercise was a response to the Israeli army’s own maneuvers and was intended, according to quoted Hizballah sources, to “deter the enemy from undertaking any further Lebanese adventures.” [complete article]

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OPINION: Engaging Hamas and Hezbollah

Engaging Hamas and Hezbollah
By Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, October 29, 2007

Nothing could be easier in the present atmosphere than to accuse anyone who calls for recognition of and dialogue with Hamas, Hezbollah and other Islamist movements of being closet supporters of reactionary “extremism” or naive fellow travelers of “terrorists.” This tactic is not surprising coming from neoconservatives and Zionists. What is novel is to see it expressed in supposedly progressive quarters.

Arun Kundnani has written about a “new breed of liberal” whose outlook “regards Muslims as uniquely problematic and in need of forceful integration into what it views as the inherently superior values of the West.” The target of these former leftists, Kundnani argues, “is not so much Islamism as the appeasing attitudes they detect among [other] liberals.”

Such views are now creeping into the Palestinian solidarity movement. MADRE, an “international women’s human rights organization,” presents one example. In the wake of the Hamas election victory and takeover of Gaza from US- and Israeli-backed Fatah warlords, MADRE declared that the challenge for Palestine solidarity activists is “how do we support the people of Palestine without endorsing the Hamas leadership?” Calling for what it terms “strategic solidarity” as opposed to “reflexive solidarity,” MADRE defines Hamas as a “repressive” movement “driven by militarism and nationalism,” which “aims to institutionalize reactionary ideas about gender and sexuality,” while using “religion as a smokescreen to pursue its agenda.” Similarly strident and dismissive claims have been made by a Washington-based pro-Palestinian advocacy group. [complete article]

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NEWS: Hezbollah warns U.S. not to set up base

Hezbollah warns U.S. not to set up base
AP, October 22, 2007

Hezbollah’s deputy leader warned the U.S. on Sunday against setting up a military base in Lebanon, saying the guerrilla group would consider such a move “a hostile act.”

Sheik Naim Kassem’s warning came days after a senior Pentagon official said the U.S. military would like to see a “strategic partnership” with Lebanon’s army to strengthen the country’s forces so that Hezbollah would have no excuse to bear arms.

Eric Edelman, undersecretary of defense for policy, spoke on Lebanese television Thursday after holding talks on military cooperation with Prime Minister Fuad Saniora. He did not say the U.S. government wants to build a military base in Lebanon.

But Hezbollah and Lebanon’s opposition seized on Edelman’s comments as subtle confirmation of a pro-opposition newspaper’s claim that Washington was offering a treaty that provides for bases and training in the country. [complete article]

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NEWS: Hezbollah slams U.S. call for ‘partnership’ with Lebanon army

Hezbollah slams U.S. call for ‘partnership’ with Lebanon army
AP, October 19, 2007

Hezbollah on Friday denounced a senior Pentagon official’s call for a U.S. strategic partnership with Lebanon’s army, saying American attempts to boost military ties were a ploy for domination and could turn the country into another Iraq.

Washington has dramatically increased military aid to Lebanon’s pro-Western government over the past year. On Thursday, Eric Edelman, undersecretary of defense for policy, said the U.S. wants to make military ties even closer, with a strategic partnership to strengthen the country’s forces.

Edelman said in an interview with Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. television that the building up of the military would mean the Shiite Muslim guerrilla group Hezbollah would have no excuse to bear arm. His comments came on the same day that a Lebanese newspaper reported that Washington is proposing a treaty with Lebanon that would make it a strategic partner and lead to the creation of American bases. [complete article]

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ANALYSIS: The sparks of a conflagration

Ticking clocks and ‘accidental’ war
By Alastair Crooke, Conflicts Forum, October 14, 2007

Whilst Washington looks at the Iranian prospects through the prism of a binary, to bomb or to acquiesce decision, facing President Bush over the remainder of his presidency, the actors in the region see the conflict as imminent and arriving in a roundabout way, through the backdoor – either via escalation of Western and Israeli tension with Syria; or from events in Lebanon, or a combination of both interacting with each other. All these key actors are convinced that conflict, should it occur, will convulse the entire region. They see the Wursmer ‘engineered’ war that ultimately will extend to Iran, as almost upon them; and they wonder at the silence from Europe and from informed observers in the US. Is it, they speculate, that everyone is so focused on Iraq, and so convinced that Iraq will be the arena in which the decision on Iran will be shaped, that they have forgotten to attend to the backdoor that David Wurmser (until last month Dick Cheney’s Middle East adviser) already has a foot around? [complete article]

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NEWS: Can Lebanon avoid civil war?

Christian split in Lebanon raises specter of civil war
By Thanassis Cambanis, IHT, October 6, 2007

With the Islamist group Hezbollah having brought Lebanese politics to a standstill, the country’s once-dominant Christian community feels under siege and has begun re-establishing militias, training in the hills and stockpiling weapons.

Many Lebanese say another civil war – like the 15-year one that started in 1975 – is imminent and that the most dangerous flash points are within the divided Christian community.

Christian youth are signing up for militant factions in the greatest numbers since the end of the civil war, spray painting nationalist symbols on walls and tattooing them on their skin, and proclaiming their willingness to fight in a new civil war – in particular, against fellow Christians.

“When the war begins, I’ll be the first one in it,” said Fadil Abbas, 30, flexing his biceps in Shadow Tattoo as an artist etched a cross onto his shoulder. “I want everyone to know I am a Christian and I am ready to fight.”

The struggle is over who gets to be the next president, a post reserved for a Christian under Lebanon’s Constitution, and which must be filled by the end of November. But the larger question – one that is prompting rival Christian factions to threaten war – is whether Lebanese Christians must accept their minority status and get along with the Muslim majority (the choice of the popular Michel Aoun) or whether Christians should insist on special privileges no matter what their share of the population (the position of veteran civil war factions like the Phalange and the Lebanese Forces). [complete article]

Nasrallah calls on Saudi Arabia to boycott the upcoming Middle East conference
Syria Comment, October 6, 2007

Nasrallah gave the March 14 group 3 options:

1. Accept the Berri initiative where the opposition would accept a consensus president in return for dropping its demand for a unity government.
2. Amending the constitution one time only for a direct “one man one vote” for the president and drop the debate of “half+1” vs. “two thirds” (of votes in the parliament). This would sideline all the sectarian Zaiims and give power to the people.
3. Hire 5 scientific polling companies to survey the Lebanese public on all presidential nominees and accept the findings in the parliament as the next president of Lebanon. [complete article]

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NEWS: Hezbollah will avoid war; increases in popularity

Hezbollah won’t go into war with Israel if Syria, Iran attacked
Ya Libnan, October 2, 2007

Hezbollah stressed that it would not go into war with Israel if Syria and Iran were attacked by the Jewish state or the United States.

The stand was outlined by Hezbollah MP Hussein Hajj Hassan( right) in an interview with Naharnet.

Hajj Hassan also said reaching consensus on a presidential candidate is “the destiny of the Lebanese people and not a choice,” noting that Hezbollah has not announced its “official Candidate for the presidential office.” [complete article]

Hezbollah Regains Strength in Lebanon
AP, October 3, 2007

When 30,000 U.N. and Lebanese troops deployed across southern Lebanon at the end of last year’s Israel-Hezbollah war, the Islamic militant group’s presence shrank in the zone bordering Israeli and its influence seemed likely to diminish as well.

But more than a year later, Hezbollah appears to again be solidly entrenched across Lebanon’s south — looking, in fact, as if its fighters never really left but merely went underground.

The Shiite militia’s banners hang everywhere, boasting of the “divine victory” over Israel and thanking its chief sponsor, Shiite-majority Iran, for helping with post-war reconstruction. Villagers report the militia’s recruitment of young men is booming and its popularity is firm. [complete article]

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ANALYSIS: Elections in Lebanon

All power to the weak in Lebanon
By Sami Moubayed, Asia Times, September 27, 2007

Lebanon’s Parliament on Tuesday postponed the first stage in electing a new president after a Hezbollah boycott. If legislators do manage to complete the process – despite the mountainous obstacles – it will be the first real election in Lebanon since the country erupted into civil war in 1975.

Parliament’s 127 deputies will now vote next month on who should replace pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud, whose term ends on November 23. Parliament has until then to finalize the issue, though there is disagreement over just how this should be done to get a new man in Baabda Palace.

Lebanese politics is sharply polarized into two camps, which refuse to back down. On another level, the contenders are divided Lebanon caught in a proxy war between the great powers. [complete article]

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OPINION: The rise of political Islam

Democracy, not terror, is the engine of political Islam
By William Dalrymple, The Guardian, September 21, 2007

The Bush administration proclaimed in 2004 that the promotion of democracy in the Middle East would be a major foreign policy theme in its second term. It has been widely perceived, not least in Washington, that this policy has failed. Yet in many ways US foreign policy has succeeded in turning Muslim opinion against the corrupt monarchies and decaying nationalist parties who have ruled the region for 50 years. The irony is that rather than turning to liberal secular parties, as the neocons assumed, Muslims have lined up behind parties most clearly seen to stand up against aggressive US intervention.

Religious parties, in other words, have come to power for reasons largely unconnected to religion. As clear and unambiguous opponents of US policy in the Middle East – in a way that, say, Musharraf, Mubarak and Mahmoud Abbas are not – religious parties have benefited from legitimate Muslim anger: anger at the thousands of lives lost in Afghanistan and Iraq; at the blind eye the US turns to Israel’s nuclear arsenal and colonisation of the West Bank; at the horrors of Abu Ghraib and the incarceration of thousands of Muslims without trial in the licensed network of torture centres that the US operates across the globe; and at the Islamophobic rhetoric that still flows from Bush and his circle in Washington.

Moreover, the religious parties tend to be seen by the poor, rightly or wrongly, as representing justice, integrity and equitable distribution of resources. Hence the strong showing, for example, of Hamas against the blatantly corrupt Fatah in the 2006 elections in Palestine. Equally, the dramatic rise of Hizbullah in Lebanon has not been because of a sudden fondness for sharia law, but because of the status of Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah’s leader, as the man who gave the Israelis a bloody nose, and who provides medical and social services for the people of South Lebanon, just as Hamas does in Gaza. [complete article]

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