Syria & Iran are the actual threat

By: Elias Bejjani*

A high pitched war of rhetoric has been escalating during the last few days between Israel and its three Axis of Evil foes, Syria, Iran and Hezbollah. The Israeli anger, frustration and threats overtly broke last week after a report published in the Kuwaiti newspaper, al-Rai, revealed that Syria had recently transferred to Hezbollah's military bases in Lebanon an unidentified number of long range Scud missiles that can hit the depths of the Jewish State. The report also stated that the Syrian military has been massively training members of the Hezbollah militia on how to fire these advanced Scud ballistic missiles.

The Lebanese Naharnet news bulletin reported on Sunday April 18/10 that the U.S. Ambassador in Beirut, Michele Sison has informed Lebanon's Speaker Nabih Berri and Premier Saad Hariri about Israel's intention to bomb a truck transporting arms to Hezbollah. Sison informed the two officials that Washington asked Israel to stop the operation at the last minute to avoid the eruption of war. The bulletin said Sison showed aerial photos and documents of the truck carrying the weapons, and asked Berri and Hariri to work on putting an end to the danger that is emanating from the transfer of weapons to Hezbollah.

Western and Arabic diplomats told reliable sources in Beirut on Sunday that the Israeli government has recently sent numerous urgent harsh and very serious warnings to Syria via Turkey, Qatar, France, Egypt and the USA, plainly delineating that its armed forces will strongly and massively attack numerous vital targets in Syria and Lebanon if the missiles that were handed over to Hezbollah are fired on any Israeli target.

According to a report published in the British Sunday Times on Saturday April 17/10, a prominent Israeli minister said if Hezbollah dares to attack our country with these ballistic missiles, the responsibility will fall on Syria's shoulders and Israel will mercilessly attack strategic targets. "President Assad is playing with fire", said the minister and he must know that we will return Syria back to the Stone Age because we define Hezbollah as a “division of the Syrian army". The paper reported that this sentiment was communicated to Damascus via a third party. According to the same report, the minister, speaking off the record, warned that Israel will do so by "crippling Syria's power stations, ports, fuel storage facilities and every bit of strategic infrastructure if Hezbollah dares to launch ballistic missiles against us."

In the same context, a set of serious urgent warnings were sent on the highest diplomatic level to Syria from the USA, France, Russia and many European and Arabic countries. These warnings made it very clear to the Syrian leadership that Israel is very adamant on seeing that the Scud missiles that were transferred to Hezbollah are returned back to Syria as soon as possible, or otherwise the consequences to the Syrian Baathist regime are going to be extremely devastating. The Syrian government described the Scud reports as fake, denied any involvement and accused Israel of forging the whole story as a pretext for its planned war against Lebanon and Syria.

On this backdrop, the Syrian ambassador in Washington was summoned for a warning. Washington, which since president Obama took office is appeasing and cajoling the Syrian terrorist regime, has voiced contradictory viewpoints on the Scud issue. The State Department reported that they are "very concerned" by reports of the transfer of advanced weaponry to Hezbollah. However, over the weekend, senior administration officials expressed doubts as to whether the Scuds really made their way across the border Syria-Lebanon border. This hesitation and vagueness in stances shows plainly that the USA overture towards Syria has been a big failure and Syria is taking advantage of the new Obama middle policies to extend its interference in not only Lebanon, but also Iraq.

Meanwhile, it is comforting and encouraging for many patriotic Lebanese that the Israelis are for the first time somewhat addressing the Hezbollah problem as they should have done since 1982. Israel has now defined Hezbollah as a “division of the Syrian army." As such, it has decided according to the Sunday Times report to hold Syria directly responsible for Hezbollah's activities following intelligence assessments that the Beirut government has lost control over the strengthening of this Shiite terrorist organization. Until now, Israel has said that Lebanon will be responsible for any attack made by Hezbollah on Israel. “We’ll not hesitate to attack Syria if our national security is in jeopardy,” said an Israeli minister.

The new Israeli assessment is true to a certain extent, but this is not the whole truth because Hezbollah is an Iranian-sponsored terrorist jihadist militia that is fully affiliated to the notorious Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

Syria has been acting since 1982 as a mediator between Iran and Hezbollah. It assumes the role of transferring Iranian weapons from Damascus international airport to Lebanon and Iran in return pays Syria billions of dollars with low priced fuel and extensive economic aid. Hezbollah is an Iranian army no more and no less while the Lebanese government has no say in any matter

As was stated in a previous editorial of mine, Hezbollah's ministate controls and dominates directly and through proxies all the affairs of the Lebanese central government via cancerous infiltration, intimidation, oppression, corruption, drug trafficking, religious decrees (fatwas), murder, crime, bribing and multifold tactics of terrorism. Not even one decision could be made by the Lebanese government or any of its institutions without Hezbollah's approval. The Lebanese state is massively dominated by the Hezbollah mullah's leadership. This militant terrorist organization boldly dictates its Iranian decrees on all the Lebanese officials and institutions, manipulates their activities and greatly influences the whole country's decision making process in all fields and on all levels.

We strongly believe that the effective and ever lasting solution for the Hezbollah cancerous status lies in Iran and Syria and not in Lebanon due to the fact that Lebanon is still an occupied country and the occupier is Hezbollah.

At the same time the Middle East will enjoy no lasting peace unless both the Syrian and Iranian terrorist and rogue regimes are either toppled as was the case with Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime, or are seriously disciplined and deterred by force, the only language that they comprehend.

In summary, only attacking Hezbollah and leaving Syria and Iran to remain freely messing with world peace and stability will not solve any problem because both of them will within a short time produce and replicate other Hezbollahs, letting the vicious cycle go on and on.

The well known Lebanese proverb says: "to kill a snake you have to cut its head not its tail".

*Elias Bejjani
Canadian-Lebanese Human Rights activist, journalist and political commentator
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