Newsmax.com
Iran Behind Beirut Takeover, Eyes Israel
Wednesday, May 14, 2008 10:53 AM
By: Kenneth R. Timmerman
Senior Iranian officials were directly involved in planning and carrying
out
Hezbollah's successful takeover of Beirut last week, and believe that
their
victory is the first step in a new war on Israel and stepped up attacks in
Iraq, sources in Tehran tell Newsmax.
The coordination between the Iranian regime and Hezbollah was so close
that
Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah dispatched a personal envoy to
brief Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
in
Tehran last week, just as his fighters were encircling the prime
minister's
residence in downtown Beirut late Thursday night.
The envoy, Seyed Hussein Ghanon, arrived in Tehran on the morning of
Friday,
May 9, to personally brief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, following a telephone
call between the Iranian Supreme Leader and Nasrallah, in which Khamenei
pledged full Iranian government sup****t for the Hezbollah takeover of
Beirut.
Just hours before the Hezbollah push into downtown Beirut, the chief of
the
Revolutionary Guards liaison mission in Beirut, Col. Ahmad Mashayekhi, was
ordered to evacuate family members of Rev. Guards personnel and some
Iranian
embassy staff from Beirut, in the event the Hezbollah assault met with
stiff
resistance.
Those precautionary measures appeared to have been unnecessary, as
Hezbollah
took over the city in a single push during the night and by Friday morning
had routed the Lebanese army, many of whose units in Beirut simply laid
down
their arms rather than fight against fellow ****ite Muslims.
Iran ordered its Revolutionary Guards garrison in the Bekaa Valley to move
military hardware from that region into Beirut on Wednesday evening,
sources
in Tehran said. By Thursday evening, at least 58 Guards officers were
directing combat operations in Beirut, side-by-side with their Hezbollah
allies.
Hezbollah declared war on the U.S.-backed government of Prime Minister
Fuad
Seniora last week after the government fired the pro-Hezbollah security
chief at Beirut International Air****t for installing security cameras to
monitor the movement of anti-Syrian and anti-Iranian politicians and
others
on Hezbollah's behalf.
More than a dozen top politicians, including former Prime Minister Rafic
Hariri, have been assassinated in Lebanon over the past three years,
re****tedly by terrorist networks working on behalf of Hezbollah backers,
Syria, and Iran.
Hezbollah also cited as a pretext for the takeover the government demand
that it close a parallel network of buried fiber optics telephone cables
it
had been using to communicate with fighters in the south, the Bekaa
valley,
and even in Christian areas.
The parallel communications system allowed Hezbollah to maintain a secure
command and control system during the summer 2006 war with Israel, both
Israeli and Lebanese officials told Newsmax.
The United States strongly condemned Iran and Syria's involvement in the
recent fighting in Lebanon.
Speaking on the eve of his latest trip to the Middle East, President Bush
on
Monday condemned Hezbollah and "their foreign sponsors in Tehran and
Damascus" for launching the attack, which he called an "effort to
undermine
the hard-fought gains in sovereignty and independence the Lebanese people
have made in recent years."
The president pledged continued assistance to the Lebanese Armed Forces,
even though the army failed to defend government offices in downtown
Beirut
during the fighting.
National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley told re****ters the Lebanon
fighting
was "a big deal," and said the U.S. would take Syria and Iran's
involvement
to the United Nations Security Council in New York, although he doubted
that
U.N. members had much appetite for additional sanctions.
He called the fighting in Lebanon and Iraq "a struggle between the forces
of
freedom, democracy, and a positive future on the one hand, and the forces
of
terror, backed largely by Syria and by Iran."
Advisers to Ahmadinejad have been arguing since Friday that the Hezbollah
victory should be the first step in a two-pronged attack on Israel in the
coming months, Newsmax sources in Tehran say.
Hezbollah fighters will attack Israel from the north, while Iranian-backed
Hamas fighters will step up pressure on Israel from Gaza and the south,
the
sources said.
They will use thousands of surface-to-surface missiles that have been
assembled under the supervision of Iranian Revolutionary Guards
specialists
at small factories in Lebanon itself, sources in Tehran said.
Iran's network of small missile component factories in Lebanon has become
so
efficient that they bring few fully-assembled missiles into Lebanon from
Syria, the sources said.
Only the most sensitive components, such as explosive warheads, are still
im****ted from Iran. The rest of the components are purchased or
manufactured
locally, then assembled at small factories often no bigger than an
ordinary
house.
"The situation in Beirut has boosted the morale of the regime and in
particular of the Revolutionary Guards officers in charge of Iraq," the
sources added. "The victory in Beirut has emboldened them to step up their
offensive in Iraq as well."
On Wednesday, a former top aid to Gen. David Petraeus told a forum at the
American Enterprise Institute that re****ters and others should stop using
the qualifier "allegedly" when talking about Iran's sup****t for insurgents
in Iraq.
"In the case of what Iran is doing in Iraq, it is so damned obvious to
anybody who wants to look into it," Army Col. H.R. McMaster told AEI.
Iran's
intention is to destabilize the Iraqi government, he said.
The recent battle of Basra was a case in point, McMaster added.
The "bold, very quick action" by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to put
down
the Iranian-backed attempt to takeover the southern Iraq city, "foiled
what
was to be, perhaps, a much larger and coordinated effort - maybe even
coordinated with efforts in other places in the region, like what's been
happening right now in Lebanon," McMaster said.
During a recent re****ting mission to Iraq, a senior Iraqi official from
Basra, a ****ite, said he was "thrilled" by the government's success in the
battle of Basra, and called it a "turning point" in the government's war
against Iranian-backed militias.
"The very next day after the government victory, oil revenues in Basra
jumped by $6 mlllion," he said. "That was the amount of oil the
Iranian-backed militias had been stealing every day before this."
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