(Source: Wikipedia)
Table Of Contents
Hezbollah Isn’t Iran’s Favorite Proxy Anymore: Anchal Vohra, Foreign Policy, June 4, 2019
Hezbollah-Iran Dynamics: A Proxy, Not a Partner: Hanin Ghaddar, Washington Institute, Apr. 12, 2019
Hezbollah’s Largest Attack Tunnel and It’s Financial Supporters: Eric H. Mandel, Israel Hayom, July 13, 2019
Same Old, Same Old From Tired Old Hassan Nasrallah: Dr. Theodore Karasik, Arab News, July 15, 2019
______________________________________________________
Hezbollah Isn’t Iran’s Favorite Proxy Anymore
Anchal Vohra
Foreign Policy, June 4, 2019
Last week, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah threatened a regional war were Iran to be attacked by the United States amid rising tensions between the two countries. It was an expected statement of support by Hezbollah, Tehran’s closest regional proxy. But just as important, if less noticed, was what Nasrallah added immediately afterward—namely, that nobody should fear tensions escalating that far. It was simultaneously a warning to Washington and an attempt to assuage the concerns of the group’s local supporters.
Hezbollah has historically been Iran’s most effective allied militia; it has long been expected to participate in all of Iran’s wars. But domestic pressures in Lebanon have complicated such participation, and Iran is shifting its foreign policy accordingly. There are a growing number of signs that Tehran now believes the Houthi insurgents of Yemen should be their preferred regional proxy in the growing confrontation with the United States and its allies.
In mid-May, nine days after the United States sent an aircraft carrier group and Air Force bombers to the Persian Gulf, citing an imminent threat from Iran, it was neither Hezbollah nor Shiite militias in Iraq that struck back, but the Houthis, who later admitted to attacking a Saudi pipeline with drone-borne weapons. They also claimed responsibility for attacking a Saudi arms depot in Najran, a city near the border with Yemen. The incidents came well before the end of a 60-day deadline from Tehran to Europe to come up with an alternative mechanism to ensure Iran can sell its oil despite U.S. sanctions, and seemed calibrated to serve as a warning about Tehran’s seriousness: loud enough to be noticed by Tehran’s adversaries, but not large enough to demand an immediate and demonstrative response.
Iran’s shift of attention from Hezbollah to the Houthis shouldn’t come as a complete surprise. Tehran has always carefully considered which of its allied militias to activate in the specific circumstances of a given conflict. In the present confrontation with the West, Iran’s focus seems to be on signaling its seriousness, and raising the stakes of the conflict in ways that would give its adversaries pause. The goal is to ensure any military action is painful for Iran’s enemies but remains clearly short of war.
The Houthis, already at war with Saudi Arabia over the kingdom’s support of President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, a man the Houthis deem a Saudi puppet, serve this function well by offering Iran the greatest degree of deniability. The Houthis have been launching attacks in Saudi Arabia for a while; the current uptick in the attacks has come in the middle of a U.N.-supported peace deal between the warring sides, but perfectly supported Iran’s interests by demonstrating Saudi Arabia’s vulnerability. The timing of the attacks strongly suggests they were conducted at Iran’s behest.
Seyed Mohammad Marandi, an Iranian-American academic and political analyst based in Tehran, said he would not be surprised if the Houthis had come to Iran’s aid. “It is possible that the Houthis did not like the pressure of sanctions on Iran,” he said. “Iran is not asking them to do anything, but I think as the Saudis and the Emiratis hurt Iran’s economy, Iran would use all its means to hurt them back.” … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
____________________________________________________
Hezbollah-Iran Dynamics: A Proxy, Not a Partner
Hanin Ghaddar
Washington Institute, Apr. 12, 2019
As the United States increases sanctions on Iran and its proxies, conventional debates surrounding Hezbollah’s designation as a partner or proxy of Iran have resurfaced in Beirut and Washington. Should Washington consider the group a Lebanese actor or an Iranian military subsidiary?
When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Lebanon last month, President Michel Aoun and Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil characterized Hezbollah as a non-terrorist Lebanese party with a popular base and stated that U.S. sanctions are hurting Lebanon’s economy. A number of Washington-based analysts have also argued that Hezbollah’s role as a direct Iranian proxy is a “common misconception dually perpetuated by Tehran and Washington,” as a recent Foreign Policy article put it. But this notion denies historical facts that prove Hezbollah’s organic connection to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and could allow the terrorist organization to evade sanctions and other consequences.
NOT A PARTNERSHIP
Hezbollah’s connection to Iran is more organic than an equal partnership, and there have been a number of occasions throughout the group’s history where Tehran either directly influenced its decisions or blatantly gave it specific orders. Consider Hezbollah’s involvement in the 2015 battle for Aleppo. Until that moment, the group had justified its involvement in Syria to its constituents as a necessity to protect Lebanon’s borders, Shia villages, and Shia shrines in Damascus. This rationale worked until Iran ordered Hezbollah to fight in Aleppo, a shrine-less non-Shia city far from the Lebanese border. When Hezbollah lost many of its fighters in that battle, it was unable to justify the sacrifice to the Lebanese people, including the Shia community.
Along with confirming that the Aleppo deployment was ordered by Iran, a number of Hezbollah fighters and officials have admitted in private conversations and interviews that the group’s military commander at the time, Mustafa Badreddine, initially refused to send his troops there. Most of these interviewees believed that IRGC Qods Force commander Qasem Soleimani forced Badreddine’s hand, and eventually had him killed in 2016. Afterward, Soleimani reportedly began micromanaging Hezbollah’s military operations. As one fighter told the author in 2017, “It was clear to many of us that [Soleimani’s] priority was to protect the Iranians, and that [Hezbollah fighters] and all non-Iranian [Shia] could be sacrificed.” A number of other fighters have complained of being abandoned by their Iranian allies on the battlefield. Such incidents ostensibly led to many losses among Hezbollah’s ranks, and some fighters later refused to fight under Iranian commanders.
Despite this building resentment, Soleimani showed little tolerance for Lebanese defiance. “When complaints increased and the Hezbollah leadership stalled Soleimani’s requests to send more fighters to Aleppo, he cut salaries for three months, or until Hezbollah did what he asked,” said one commander. Yet while most of the interviewees disliked him, they also expressed respect and fear, with the understanding that the relationship is more similar to a boss and his employees than a partnership. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
______________________________________________________
Hezbollah’s Largest Attack Tunnel and It’s Financial Supporters
Eric H. Mandel
Israel Hayom, July 13, 2019
This is what I saw during a visit to Hezbollah’s most sophisticated “flagship” tunnel, arranged by the IDF Spokesperson’s Office with my guide Lt. Col. (res.) Sarit Zehavi, CEO of ALMA, a think tank that specializes in helping understand Israel’s challenges on its northern border with Lebanon and Syria.
There are at least six publicly acknowledged tunnels that have crossed into Israeli territory from Lebanon – all strategically poised for thousands of Hezbollah terrorists to simultaneously emerge near Israeli border towns on the Lebanese border, kidnapping, crippling, killing an untold number of Israeli civilians, while terrorizing the whole nation.
This was no amateur operation. The tunnel took years to build, and over the last decade, Iran and Hezbollah created an elite force (Radwan) whose sole purpose is to kill Jews on Israeli soil. The threat is real, especially after you see it with your own eyes.
And Iran, Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp will try again and again. They have tremendous patience, married to a fanatical Twelver Shiism ideology where Israel as a Jewish state must be destroyed in its entirety.
Who knows how many more tunnels are nearly complete but remain deep underground, just meters from the Israeli border on the Lebanese side of the Blue Line so Israel cannot find them, and which the United Nations peacekeeping force (the UN Interim Force in Lebanon) has displayed no interest in identifying?
Remember, UNIFIL’s primary mission is supposed to be to uphold UN Security Council Resolution 1701 to identify missiles coming into Lebanon for Hezbollah’s use. Of the nearly 150,000 missiles Hezbollah has accumulated since the end of the Second Lebanon War in 2006, UNIFIL has stopped or identified precisely zero missile transfers to Hezbollah. Not a single one. In regard to the Hezbollah tunnels, the United Nations was grudgingly forced to acknowledge that Hezbollah tunnels crossed the Blue line into Israeli territory.
After a visit like this, my thoughts would normally focus first on how Israel can more effectively detect new tunnels on the Lebanese side of the border or how to prepare Israeli border towns to thwart an attack, but my thoughts went instead to the east, to Germany.
Today, there are nearly 1,000 Hezbollah fundraisers legally operating in Germany to raise money for a terrorist organization. Germany and most of the European Union, with the exception of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, differentiate between the military and political wings of Hezbollah, designating its military wing as terrorists but not its political wing. Hezbollah itself has said there is no difference or distinction between its military and political wings.
Over the last few years, I have been trying to get this on the radar screen of Congress, whose members I believe would be as outraged as when they found out that American taxpayer dollars supported Palestinian terrorists. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
______________________________________________________
Same Old, Same Old From Tired Old Hassan Nasrallah
Dr. Theodore Karasik
Arab News, July 15, 2019
Hassan Nasrallah is nothing if not predictable. In an interview broadcast on Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television on Friday, the group’s leader trotted out many of the same old themes and anecdotes that he has for years about the US and the threat from Israel. His arguments are old, tired and repetitive.
Nasrallah now says it is time for Hezbollah, after 13 years, to re-evaluate its lack of action against Israeli warplanes in Lebanese airspace “since the government hasn’t done anything.” These threats are more for the internal audience than the external. Hezbollah is running out of money and retreating from Syria, not only because of the White House’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran but also because of the tremendous financial squeeze on the Iranian networks that support Hezbollah.
The Hezbollah leader knows his financial base will be further squeezed by US financial sanctions against two of its Lebanese MPs, Amin Sherri and Muhammad Hasan Raad, and security official Wafiq Safa. The sanctions helped to provoke Nasrallah’s comments because of the internal ramifications in the Lebanese political space, especially surrounding the Druze but also the rest of the Lebanese fiefdom.
Hezbollah’s fighters are being pulled out of Syria, where they played an instrumental role in ensuring Bashar Assad’s survival. Large numbers of its forces have been withdrawn from regions in Damascus and the countryside, as well as southern Syria, which explains why its fighters and Iranian militias have been limiting their operations in “de-escalation” zones in Syria. Hezbollah’s contract soldiers have already been decommissioned and sent back to Lebanon. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
______________________________________________________
On Topic Links:
Hezbollah Operative Collected Information On Toronto’s Pearson Airport: Stewart Bell, Global News, June 20, 2019 — A Hezbollah operative collected “detailed information” about Toronto’s Pearson airport, according to a report circulated by Canada’s air safety agency and obtained by Global News.
Terrorist Group Hezbollah Linked To 30 Mosques/Centers In Germany: Benjamin Weinthal, Jerusalem Post, July 14, 2019 — The intelligence agency for the city of Hamburg has reported that 30 mosques and cultural centers in Germany have ties to the US-classified terrorist organization Hezbollah.
Trump Sanctions Hezbollah Agents in Lebanese Government: Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon, July 9, 2019 — The Trump administration on Tuesday issued a bevy of new sanctions on a terror network of Lebanese Hezbollah agents who have been performing “Iran’s bidding” across the region, according to the Treasury Department.
The Imam Al-Mahdi Scouts Association: Hezbollah’s Youth Movement Which Indoctrinates Youth With Iranian Radical Shiite Islam And Serves As A Source Of Youngsters Who Join Hezbollah: The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, July 11, 2019 — Hezbollah maintains an extensive network of social foundations in the Shiite community in Lebanon. These foundations deal with healthcare, education, finance, welfare, and media.
