It is pleasant weather for a walk at dusk, with the midsummer buzz of insects and the traffic hum of a healthy economy. Only the flashes of lightning in the storm clouds on the horizon temper complacency with an awareness of being outside and unprotected. The fighting in Lebanon continues and there are excellent reviews of exactly who the enemy is and why the enemy exists in this one location.
God's army has plans to run the whole Middle East: Many Hezbollah militants and officials have married into Iranian religious families, often connected to influential ayatollahs. Dozens of Lebanese Shi’ites have worked and continue to work in the Iranian administration, especially in the ministries of security, information and culture. Since the mid-1980s, most of the Lebanese Shi’ite clerics have undertaken training in Iran.
In exchange, thousands of Iranian security officers and members of the Revolutionary Guards have lived and worked in Lebanon. As Ali Yunesi, Iran’s former intelligence minister, said: “Iran is Hezbollah and Hezbollah is Iran.”
NRO expands the discussion to the global reach of the terrorist network, with a reminder that effective organizations have leaders excelling at planning and achieving goals.
Terror in Buenos Aires: Another factor explaining Hezbollah’s long reach is the organizational genius of Hezbollah’s security chief, Imad Mughniyah. A former gunman with Yasser Arafat’s elite Force 17, Mughniyah is on the FBI’s most-wanted list for his role in the 1985 hijacking of TWA 847 in which a U.S. Navy diver was tortured and killed. Linked to numerous terrorist attacks, including suicide bombings and hostage taking in Lebanon, and the Buenos Aires attacks, Mughniyah is currently believed to be coordinating Iranian and Hezbollah support for Palestinian terrorists. He also met with Osama bin Laden in the early 1990s to forge an alliance between al Qaeda and Hezbollah. Wanted by several governments, Mughniyah keeps a low profile. However, he is believed to have appeared publicly, for the first time in over a decade, with Iran’s President Ahmadinejad at a meeting in Damascus in January.
Word from Israel today confirms the 23 tons of bombs targeted against the leadership bunker five days ago was intended to kill both Nasrallah and Mughniyah, but Iranian engineering apparently has worked as designed.
Opening a window on intelligence: Hidden under an innocent-looking mosque, the bunker had been built by Iranian engineers who specialized in the construction of protected subterranean building for their country's nuclear facilities. … It is clear that the chief target, Nasrallah, is still alive today, and so apparently is Imad Mughniyah.
Iran is a formidable opponent and the anti-war Senators and Clinton era appeasers downplay the risk to the American way of life with a nonchalance that raises serious questions about their commitment to our way of life. The Bush Administration, for all its faults, clearly does value the way we live and understands that peace is not the temporary absence of violence, but rather the permanent absence of danger.
White House Press Briefing: But the more important thing is, sustainable really does matter, because as we've seen in some places, if you allow terrorists to proclaim victory and to continue to take root within a country, you actually encourage further misbehavior. There's no place on the record where as a result of a negotiation a terrorist organization has said, okay, we give up, great treaty.
God’s Army will be continue to be told that survival is a sign of favor, so appeasement only strengthens the psychology behind their malevolent pathology.
