Category Archives: Hezbollah

Europe, Hezbollah, Israel, Lebanon

Will the Balance of Terror Between Israel and Hezbollah Hold?……..

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

“Missiles fired by the Lebanese Hezbollah group struck an Israeli military convoy on Wednesday, killing two soldiers in an apparent retaliation for a deadly airstrike attributed to Israel that killed six Hezbollah fighters in Syria earlier this month. The violence was the deadliest Hezbollah attack against Israeli forces since a 2006 war between the two sides. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would respond “forcefully” to the attack, and the military launched aerial and ground assault on Hezbollah positions………….”

Israel has been taking a lot of liberties in recent months over Lebanon and Syria. Its air force has been flying at will over Lebanon, violating its airspace, bombing at will into Syria, and its artillery active along the Golan lines. The Golan is a particular worry for them these days, given the proximity of one theatre of the Syrian war. They have tried to increasingly play the regional “policeman”, by stealth, of the Eastern Mediterranean. With apparent American acquiescence, so long as the targets were Hamas or Hezbollah or Syria.

The Israeli attack last week that killed several Hezbollah members was bound to lead to a response from Hezbollah, given the implications for future Israeli incursions. Given the missile-based balance of terror that has existed along the border with Lebanon. Given the understanding in Lebanon of the role of the upcoming Israeli elections in Mr. Netanyahu flexing his military muscles at this time. Perhaps also given the symbolism of the fact that one of the victims was a son of Imad Mughniyeh, a leading Hezbollah strategist who was killed by the Mossad-planted bombs in Damascus in 2008.
(FYI: foreign bombings in Arab and Muslim cities are not considered terrorism in the West, although the UN has not voted on it yes).
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

[email protected]

Hezbollah, Lebanon, Media, Uncategorized, Whistleblowers

Hezbollah’s Mysterious Eager Talkative Whistleblower Commanders………

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

“Around a kitchen table in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a midlevel Hezbollah commander moved empty coffee cups and a plastic water bottle around a cell phone, demonstrating how his men repelled an assault by what he said were Islamic State fighters along Lebanon’s border with Syria……..Sporting a neatly trimmed beard, weathered face, and thick khaki cargo pants, this commander, now in his 40s, first fought for Hezbollah during the group’s operations against Israel, when small teams of fighters carried out clandestine cross-border raids. The current war he’s fighting, against rebels trying to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, is much different………. But just as Hezbollah has changed the Syrian war, the conflict has also changed Hezbollah. The organization has become much larger, and its fighters have received the training that only involvement in a long conflict can provide. But at the same time, in some ways, the party is becoming unwieldy and more vulnerable to corruption and infiltration………..”

It says: “Around a kitchen table in Beirut’s southern suburbs“: a cute American touch. Around a kitchen table in the suburbs where Hezbollah is alleged to be entrenched. There have  been several of these anonymous Hezbollah blabbermouths in recent months, all eager to let it all pour out for some Western reporter who often can’t understand Arabic and can’t tell a Lebanese accent from a proverbial hole in the ground.

This Abu Ali: a cute local ethnic touch picking that name, no doubt a ‘nickname’ suggested by some amenable ‘locals’. Somehow it reminds me of Tom Friedman’s favorite Arab cab driver. Abdo in Cairo, Abed in Beirut, Abul Abed in humorless Amman (and maybe Abboudi in Baghdad and Abu Dong in Beijing).

I wonder if he was truly a forties-something Hezbollah ‘commander’ or just a pretender. I can’t imagine the Party allowing its commanders to talk openly to Western media about sensitive issues. Not even seasoned commanders. They probably suspect that some Western correspondents are Mossad agents. This ‘commander’ could be a March 14 minion, he could be Mossad, he could be a cross-dressing actress for that matter. He could be some clever Lebanese scammer doing it for the money. I am not sure, but there have been so many of these improbable blabbing ‘commanders’ of Hezbollah in Western newspapers that I take each and every one with a grain of salt. To be polite. Unless Hezbollah sent to them to implant certain ideas.

And these whistleblowers seem to only talk to Western media correspondents, mainly those hostile to Hezbollah.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

[email protected]

France, Hezbollah, Jihadists

Hassan Nasrallah: Je Suis Charlie Hebdo?………

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

“The leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah group says Islamic extremists have insulted Islam and the Prophet Muhammad more than those who published satirical cartoons mocking the religion. Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah did not directly mention the Paris attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo that left 12 people dead, but he said Islamic extremists who behead and slaughter people – a reference to the IS group’s rampages in Iraq and Syria – have done more harm to Islam than anyone else in history…………..”

Translation? Je suis Charlie Nasrallah Hebdo…………..
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

[email protected]

Arab Politics, GCC, Hezbollah, Lebanon

Lebanon’s Shi’as and Hezbollah: Back to the Feudal Past?……….

Shuwaikh-school1 RattleSnakeRidge Sharqeya-Baneen-15

KuwaitCox2

“However, this political dynamic may be starting to change. In recent years other Shiite organizations that resent the dominance of Hezbollah and Amal have emerged to question the direction of their leadership. This defection began almost immediately after the 2006 war. While hard-liners hailed Hezbollah’s resilience in the face of the Israeli onslaught as a “divine victory,” others questioned the human and material cost of the group’s intransigent stance. Skepticism continued to grow in the following years – after a 2008 invasion of Sunni areas in Beirut intended to consolidate Hezbollah’s political power, after a 2009 corruption scandal that brought into question the altruism of the group’s leaders, and most especially, after 2011 when it became apparent that Hezbollah was intervening in the Syrian civil war on behalf of the repressive Assad regime. One new Shiite voice is a group called the Lebanese Option Party, founded in 2007. The head of the organization is Ahmad al-Asaad, whose father, Kamel al-Asaad…………” 

This piece is rehashing old wishful thinking, extremely wishful thinking about Lebanon. It is trying to recycle an old failed approach. It is old stuff of the kind that Thomas Friedman, for example, would hang his hopes on. The old semi-feudal Al As’ad family? The outlier Ali Al Amin who has hardly any following and is a permanent fixture on the vast Wahhabi sectarian media of the Saudi princes (Alarabiya, Asharq Alawsat, etc)?

The Al As’ad family were the semi-feudal political overlords of much of South Lebanon, during the days when the Shi’a were marginalized and kept impoverished and uneducated in Lebanon. They are as representative of Lebanese Shi’as as, say, the Romanovs were representative of the Russian people. The pro-Saudi March 14 camp keeps going back to them as a possible way to weaken Hezbollah. So far to no avail.
The petroleum princes need to think outside the box: they can’t go to the past and present it as the future. The people will never buy it. Saudi media have in the past promoted other pliable Shi’a stooges, including one or two crackpot clerics, to no avail. You can only buy so many votes, and you can never buy true love although you can lose it.

They need to try a new method, these princes: how about offering Lebanon membership in the Gulf GCC if they ditch Hezbollah? Hell at that price, even Hassan Nasrallah might become excited enough to jump on the Wahhabi bandwagon, right next to Hariri.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

[email protected]

Caliphate, Hezbollah, Iraq, Syria, U.S. Foreign Policy, Uncategorized

Wall Street Journal Continues its Own Middle East Wars……

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15                   DennyCreek2

Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   KuwaitCox2


“Well, this is a little scary. U.S. intelligence intercepted messages from Iran to militants in Iraq ordering attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad if America strikes Syria. U.S officials say they’re preparing for Iran’s fast boats in the Persian Gulf, and military resources, including Marines, have been moved to the area. The message came from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard leader Qasem Soleimani and instructed Shiite groups to respond with force if the U.S. strikes Syria………..”

I didn’t know a U.S. attack ‘on Syria’ was in the cards these days. Unless the Wall Street Journal writer knows something no one else does.

Could he mean extending the current bombing attack against the Wahhabi Caliphate of ISIS into Syria? But then why would Iran retaliate in the Persian Gulf and why would Hezbollah retaliate in Beirut for any attack on the ISIS den of terrorists? Especially if the target of the Syrian campaign is NOT to alter the military balance in the Syrian civil war and tilt it toward the strategic goals of the Wahhabi oil princes. Provided Syria approves of any operations over its territory.

An attack on the U.S. embassy in Beirut by Hezbollah? That would be a stupid thing for them to do these days, and they know it. Only some media types and propagandists would think of it as probable. No doubt Hezbollah planners are more intelligent than many Wall Street Journal opinion-ators who write this kind of nonsense. They read as if written by some Likud or AIPAC functionaries.

More likely any attack on the U.S. embassy anywhere and not just in Beirut, if it ever happens, would come from Wahhabi terrorists nurtured for years by allied oil princes and by money from elements of Lebanon’s right-wing blocs.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Hezbollah, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia

Saudi Mission Impossible in Lebanon: Hariri Returns to Confront his Former Wahhabi Allies and Hezbollah………

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15
Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
“Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri did not return to Lebanon empty-handed the way he left it three years and four months ago. After having spent his time roaming between the hotels of Europe and castles of Saudi Arabia, he crowned his return to Lebanon with a Saudi grant to the Lebanese army and security forces. Backed by the decision of King Abdullah bin Abdel Aziz, Hariri is here to spend $1 billion in support of the Lebanese Army in its fight against terrorism. He is also set to “lead the Sunni moderate movement,” as he said at a March 14 meeting yesterday, and as Future Movement officials constantly reiterate. Many questions surround the circumstances of Hariri’s return, while the answers may start in Mosul but not end in Ersal. “Hariri is back and this is final. He may travel abroad to visit someone, but he is back in Lebanon,” a source close to Hariri told Al-Akhbar, while Future Movement officials insist that he returned to lead “Sunni moderation” and [oversee] the spending of the Saudi grant……………”

A tough task entrusted by the Al Saud princes to their man in Beirut. Reset the “Sunni” movement by re-configuring relations with the Wahhabi takfiri terrorist groups that the Hariri alliance had encouraged and aided only a couple of years ago in both Lebanon and Syria. The one billion dollars in Saudi aid is read by some as a reduction of an earlier Saudi commitment which promised $3 billion of arms to be bought specifically from France. (But perhaps that French weapons deal was offered by the Saudis when they were trying to get France to help their side in the Syrian war). Others have added this new billion to that earlier three billion and talked about $4 billion total Saudi military aid. Apparently so far none of it has materialized, as far as I know.

The other task entrusted to Hariri, a task that is the main Saudi obsession, is even tougher, nay hopeless. Recent years have not been kind to the pro-Saudi March 14 bloc, and Mr. Hariri is now tasked with resuming the “fight” against Hezbollah in its own territory. The Saudis have been trying for years to stem the power of Hezbollah in Lebanon through the use of the only weapons at their disposal: oil money and Western sanctions. But facts on the ground, Lebanese political alliances, and population demographic trends have been moving against them. Apparently petro-money is not enough to get a majority of Lebanese to discover the joys of an alliance with Wahhabism.

Even the last elections of 2009, when the infusion of a lot of money managed to get a temporary majority in parliament for the Saudi-allied March 14 Movement (Hariri, Falange, etc), did not turn out as expected. The voters still awarded March 8 (Hezbollah and its Christian allies) a majority of the popular vote (about 54%). Given that political reality, it did not take long for Mr. Hariri to be forced out of power.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

[email protected]

Hamas, Hezbollah, Israel, Palestine, U.S. Foreign Policy

Birth Pangs of a New Middle East? American Delusions about Gaza as a Turkey Shoot…….

Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

This new Israeli war against the people of Gaza is reminiscent of an earlier Israeli war and of the delusions of the US political classes regarding its outcome.

In July 2006, two Israeli soldiers were captured near the Lebanese border. The Israeli military waged a fierce war on selective parts of Lebanon. It became a major incursion back into a land that the IDF had been forced by Hezbollah to leave six years earlier. The Litani River was crossed and parts of Beirut were bombed, including with Cluster Bombs. Many Arab regimes, from Egypt through to the Saudi princes, not-so-secretly supported the Israeli case against the Lebanese Arabs. Not only that, there have been indications that some Arab regimes shared intelligence with the Mossad and the Israeli military. In fact some Lebanese factions and militias of the pro-Saudi March 14 bloc also sided with the Israelis: public figures among them even gave some advice on how to defeat Hezbollah.

As the attack on Lebanon continued for days and weeks, there were calls for a ceasefire. George W Bush’s Secretary of State Condi Rice responded to those calls with her famous statement that the sounds of bombs and exploding Lebanese buildings were “the birth pangs of the new Middle East”. Rice did not want to “return Lebanon and Israel to the status quo ante“. Well, it did not: that war created what I called ‘a balance of terror’ with both Israel and Hezbollah militarily stronger. We all know what happened: that war was stopped, the IDF withdrew after another failed mission unaccomplished. Hezbollah became politically and militarily even stronger than before. Most Lebanese, if not all of them, looked on that war as their second victory over invading Israelis.

Now this new Gaza assault has similar roots, although it is questionable who was responsible for the three killings near Hebron, an area controlled by the Israelis and the Palestinian Authority. Otherwise it resembles the attack on Lebanon, but with its own set of goals. A similar attack on Lebanon nowadays would be prohibitively costly for the Israeli population centers and with doubtful military and political results, but apparently the assessment is that Gaza is “do-able” and at a much lower cost. Early reports of the casualty ratio seem to support this for now: too many Palestinian deaths and casualties and destroyed buildings but hardly any on the Israeli side. Regardless of some propaganda statements from Hamas and others.

So far it is shaping as what Americans would call “a turkey shoot”. There are again some reports that the Obama administration hesitates to push forcefully for a cease-fire before certain political and/or military goals are achieved. That can only be done with a ground invasion, a new quagmire. Even if the Al Sisi regime in Cairo and the Saudi princes cooperate more closely, and perhaps more openly, with the invaders of Gaza, the results would still be in doubt.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

[email protected]

Hezbollah, Iran, Oman, Pakistan, Persian Gulf

Iranian Pakistani Omani Hezbollah Naval Exercises, General Salami is no Baloney………

      

 Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter


“Salami made the remarks after the Iranian and Omani naval forces staged their 4th joint exercises in the Sea of Oman and the Persian Gulf on Monday. He described the drills as successful, and said, “Based on a treaty between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Oman’s navies, the joint marine relief and rescue exercises are held every year in one of the two countries and the next drills will be conducted next year in Iran’s territorial waters in the Persian Gulf.”……….. He said that Iran and Oman’s adjacency to the strategic Strait of Hormuz……………….”

“The Pakistani and Iranian navies have engaged in a four-day joint naval exercise east of the Straits of Hormuz this week in an effort to improve security cooperation between the two neighbors. The participating Pakistani warships, which arrived in Bandar Abbas on March 5, include the Agosta-70 class submarine Hashmat and the indigenously constructed missile boat Quwwat. They were returning from participating in the Doha International Maritime Defence Exhibition, which was held in Qatar………….”

So said Brigadier General (not admiral) Salami, and that is no baloney.

Iranian forces have been holding joint maneuvers with neighboring countries. No, not with Saudi Arabia or Bahrain. They have been holding joint exercises with Pakistan, and others with Oman, both not far from the Strait of Hormuz. It is notable that both countries overlook either the Indian Ocean or the Arabian Sea. Oman has a small outlet on the Persian Gulf, that is the Musandam Peninsula right on the Strait of Hormuz. Most of its ports are on the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. It is interesting that the Omanis, who prefer to look outward to the sea rather than to their Wahhabi neighbors, have had good relations with all Iranian regimes. They even had an Iranian expeditionary force in the Shah’s days. This seems to continue. 
Apparently the legendary (very) secret Persian Gulf Branch of Hezbollah (established in Riyadh and Manama and the Washington Post columns) does not pose a serious threat to Oman, yet.

Nothing new to get excited about here. The Gulf and the Arabian Sea are bristling with warships from every corner of the planet. All doing various exercises. The whole neighborhood looks like a schoolyard, with kids and navies playing war games around each other. And that is not counting the various foreign mercenary forces imported by lovable and beloved regimes to keep their peoples happily repressed.
Arab Revolutions, Hezbollah, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria

New Sectarian Kids in Town: From Iraq Through Syria and Lebanon………

      

 Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

“The newest inhabitants of the world’s biggest cemetery were killed not here in Iraq but in Syria, where they fought under the green flag of the Middle East’s most potent new Shia Islamic political force, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq (League of the Righteous). The militia has been busy readying for the afterlife, buying up more than 2,500 square metres of burial plots and erecting shrines for its fallen. And in Baghdad, nearly 100 miles north, the group has been more occupied with the here and now, imposing its influence on Iraq’s fractured political scene and steadily asserting its will throughout the city’s Shia heartland suburbs. Since the American military left Iraq in December 2011, and within two months of the first national election since then, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq has quietly emerged as one of the most powerful players in the country’s political and public life. Through a mix of strategic diplomacy, aggressive military operations and intimidation – signature methods of its main patron, the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani – the group is now increasingly calling the shots in two countries………………..”

This sounds ominous, this fundamentalist group’s entry complicates thing (religious militias always complicate things they touch, adding one more point of contention). Yet something like it has been predicted for almost three years. Once the Syrian uprising, which had legitimate demands in 2011, became a mainly sectarian enterprise as a Saudi-Qatari proxy war. 

All this might be one factor behind the ratcheting up of Salafi terrorist attacks in Iraq and their recent expansion into Lebanon. It is partly an attempt by their patrons and financiers to try and reset things in both countries and see if something works in either country. A Shi’a-dominated government in Baghdad has always been treated in some Arab capitals, especially among the potentates of the Persian Gulf and their Salafi allies, as a ‘loss of Iraq’. As if that country has changed its skin and become something else. It takes a lot of petro-money to run a sustained terrorist enterprise of kind that has been murdering Iraqis. That might explain why a frustrated prime minister Nouri Al-Maliki openly accused both Saudi Arabia and Qatar of fomenting and supporting terrorism. 



The other angle is to try and get Hezbollah to pull its forces of Syria. Presumably the idea is that Lebanese deaths from terrorism will create popular pressures on Hezbollah to pull out. The ideal goal is to shift the allegiance of most Lebanese Shi’as away and toward ‘other’ politicians. But that is now as likely as pigs being declared halal and kosher and starting to fly. Those ‘other’ politicians are either discredited remnants (feloul) of past Shi’a feudal lords of the South or some known flunkies (a few politicians and clerics) in the pay of the Al Saud princes.

Of course all this can shift again if only Hassan Nasrallah takes down the picture of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that is probably hanging in his office and replaces it with a picture of the Saudi king.

Cheers
mhg

[email protected]

Hezbollah, Israel, Lebanon

Ariel Sharon and the Liberation of Lebanon……..

      

 Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

“Israeli leaders seemed like moths irresistibly attracted to the fires of Lebanon” Me

Ariel Sharon was probably more hated by Arabs than any other Israeli, until Benyamin Netanyahu showed up and took that crown. Sharon did his fighting mostly on the ground: in the battlefield and in occupied Arab territory from Gaza to the West Bank to Lebanon to the African bank of the Suez Canal in October 1973. Netanyahu has ‘personal’ baggage that Sharon did not have. He is also no military commander: he prefers to jaw-jaw the United States into war on his behalf. He does much of his fighting in front of a microphone, in the halls of the U.S. Knesset Congress, and especially within the halls of the powerful AIPAC.


In 1982 Israeli forces led by Ariel Sharon invaded Lebanon, swept across the border, reaching the outskirts of Beirut right in the middle of the Lebanese Civil War. Maybe they were given the impression that they were liberating Lebanon and that they would be met with flowers. They were in fact met with the equivalent of flowers, but only by the Gemayyel’s Phalange fascist militia and some other warlords now allied with the Hariri March 14 bloc. One of their goals was to break and expel the PLO from southern Lebanon, and that they did. That invasion, at least the second Israeli invasion of Lebanon at the time, lasted many years. The PLO was expelled, but the Israelis probably regret that by now, seeing what replaced them. The expulsion of Palestinian security left the refugee camps open and vulnerable. Israeli forces had surrounded the camps (Sabra and Shatila) but allowed their local allies among Lebanese fascist militias to enter them and exact their revenge. Thousands of unprotected Palestinian civilians were massacred, after being subjected to other atrocities.
After that the Reagan administration and France managed to blunder into the Lebanese civil war, establishing vulnerable military bases in the middle of the warring factions. A classic blunder and the tragic consequences for French and U.S. forces are well recorded. The shaken Western forces pulled out quickly. The Israelis had also pulled back to the border region and decided to remain inside Lebanon, within reach of their local ‘allies’ who ironically were inspired by European Fascists and Nazis and hence inherently anti-Semitic.

The PLO departed for Tunisia, but in its place emerged a new indigenous organization called the Party of God, Hezbollah. The war and economics had pushed many repressed Lebanese Shi’as away from the border region, north to Beirut and its suburbs. That movement and the aftermath of the invasion and occupation of the South in 1982 weakened the political influence of the traditional Shi’a political “bosses” who were like other quasi-feudal Lebanese political warlords. Hezbollah, and Amal (Hope) movement before it, quickly attracted Shi’a loyalty as the Israelis seemed set to remain in the country. The guerrilla war against the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon and against its Lebanese surrogates of the so-called South Lebanon Army lasted about 18 years, until Hezbollah guerrillas forced them out in the year 2000. Over the years of war Lebanon lost several politicians including at least two presidents of the republic to car bombs. The victims also included many honest citizens.
 
When it came to Lebanon, Sharon was no different from other Israeli leaders who followed him. I posted once that Israeli leaders seemed like moths irresistibly attracted to the fires of Lebanon. They keep getting burned by it but they come back for more. They are still making incursions, flying sorties, and bombings in Lebanese territory, and against UN resolutions which seem to only apply to Arabs and Muslims.

Sharon failed in his quest to liberate Lebanon from its future, to preserve it for the right-wing hereditary warlords. That impossible task has now been handed over to Saudi intelligence and Saudi money and the politicized and widely discredited STL Lebanon Tribunal. Going against the tide of the future, the writing on the wall in Lebanon, it will also fail.
Cheers
mhg

[email protected]