Iran, Syria Used Hizballah As Proxy to Attack Israel, Analysts Say

Since 07-14-06

By Julie Stahl
CNSNews.com Jerusalem Bureau Chief
 

July 13, 2006

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=/ForeignBureaus/archive/200607/INT20060713e.html

Jerusalem (CNSNews.com ) - The Israeli government said it is holding the government of Lebanon responsible for attacks along its northern border, but Israeli analysts and government sources said that Iran and Syria are ultimately behind the attack.

Israel bombed sites in Lebanon on Thursday and Hizballah launched dozens of Katyusha rockets at northern Israeli communities, killing at least two Israeli women and forcing residents into bomb shelters. This comes one day after Hizballah carried out a cross-border attack, killing eight Israeli soldiers and abducting twoothers.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called the Hizballah attack an "act of war." But Israeli officials also said the fingerprints of Iran and Syria are all over the attack and analysts have said the timing was not a coincidence.

"It's not coincidental that we had these two attacks and they're pretty much coordinated -- in the south with Hamas and with Hizballah in the north," Israel's ambassador to the U.S. Daniel Ayalon said in a Fox News interview on Thursday. Both groups are supported by Teheran and Damascus, Ayalon noted.

In his official letter of protest to the United Nations, Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Daniel Gillerman wrote that the "ineptitude and inaction" of the Lebanese government has prevented it from controlling its own territory.

The "axis of terror" thrives in such a "vacuum," Gillerman wrote, accusing Hizballah and the terrorist states of Iran and Syria of opening another chapter in their terror war.

Pulling strings

"Iran is definitely pulling the strings. Hizballah wouldn't do anything without permission or an order from Iran," said Yoash Tsiddon-Chatto, an analyst with the Ariel Center for Policy Research, Israeli Air Force Colonel and former head of planning for the IAF.

"The Iranians explained what they want to do with Israel," said Tsiddon-Chatto.

Earlier this week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- who previously said that Israel should be wiped off the map and suggested that the Holocaust is a "myth" -- warned Western nations not to support Israel.

"Behold, the rage of the Muslim peoples is accumulating...[and] may soon reach the point of explosion. If that day comes...the waves of this explosion will not be restricted to the boundaries of our region," he said.

According to Tsiddon-Chatto, the Hizballah attack may have been timed to deflect attention from the "fiasco" of the Iranian nuclear talks. The Hizballah said they had prepared the operation for five months, and Iran probably knew a few days ago that time was running out on the nuclear issue, he said.

The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany decided on Wednesday that the time was up for Iran to accept a package of incentives it had been offered in exchange for halting uranium enrichment. The nations agreed that the issue should be referred back to the Security Council.

Iran was most likely trying to deflect attention from itself as well as send a message that it can defy the West in an act of violence by attacking Israel, said Tsiddon-Chatto.

Global impact

Dan Schueftan of the National Security Studies Center at the University of Haifa, predicted that the current crisis would have global as well as regional impact.

"[Hizballah leader Sheikh Hassan] Nasrallah is in the service of the Iranians and so is [Palestinian] Islamic Jihad. The Syrians and Iranians are very much involved in Palestinian terrorism and what happened with Hizballah," said Schueftan.

Schueftan suggested that perhaps it is better that this conflagration happened now rather than after Iran obtained nuclear weapons.

"What would happen if this provocation [had taken place] under a nuclear umbrella?" Schueftan asked. Israel would not have had the freedom to respond, he said.

They said it themselves

The Middle East Media Research Institute, which monitors and translates Arabic and Iranian media, said the escalation along Israel's northern (Lebanon) and southern (Gaza Strip) borders was initiated by elements that Iran supports -- Hamas, Hizballah and Syria.

"It is possible that the escalation on Israel's borders...is meant to take the pressure off Iran by triggering a major military clash in the Middle East, which will divert international attention from Iran's nuclear program," MEMRI said.

The close ties between Iran, Syria and Hizballah are self-proclaimed.

Iran and Syria signed a military cooperation pact last month.

The Arab language London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat at the time quoted unnamed sources in Tehran as saying that talks between the Iranian and Syrian defense ministers dealt with "the situation in Lebanon...the situation in Palestine, and with the ways of assisting the Hamas and the [Islamic] Jihad in their conflict with Fatah."

The Syrian defense minister was quoted as saying that Iran and Syria were examining ways of countering American threats "and are establishing a joint front against Israel's threats... [since] Iran regards Syria's security as its own."

On Wednesday, the conservative Iranian daily Jomhouri-ye Eslami published a speech given by Nasrallah in May on the culture of "resistance" -- a euphemism for terrorism.

"We can hit Israel's entire northern region with thousands of rockets... All of Israel is now within the range of our missiles. Its seaports, [military] bases, industrial plants and everything else are all within our range... Our stockpile of weapons is significant, both in quantity and in quality," Nasrallah boasted, according to a translation provided by MEMRI.

Al-Sharq Al-Awsat also reported in May that a senior Iranian official told a closed-door meeting with Western diplomats that Hizballah was critical for Iran's defense.

"HizbAllah is one of the pillars of our security strategy, and forms Iran's first line of defense against Israel. We reject [the claim] that it must be disarmed," the official was quoted as saying.

Hizballah, an indigenous Lebanese group, got its start in 1982, following Israel's incursion into Lebanon to stop cross-border terror attacks by the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Hizballah adheres to the radical Shiite ideology of Iran and has received training by Iran's Revolutionary Guard. According to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Western diplomats estimate that Iran gives Hizballah some $200 million a year, according to material provided by the Israel Project.

Syria allows Hizballah to operate in southern Lebanon and facilitates the movement of supplies to the group.

Hizballah was responsible for a number of deadly terror attacks on Western targets in Beirut in the early 1980s. including the bombing of the U.S. Embassy and an American Marine Corps base and French military base. Some 260 American servicemen and 60 French died in those attacks.

It is also accused of involvement in attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets in Argentina in the 1990s as well as numerous cross-border rocket and other terror attacks throughout the years.