Posts Tagged Hezbollah

BBC Didn’t Translate Iranian Official’s Admission Of Giving Weapons To Hezbollah

From BBC Watch:

The IranWire article details some of the interesting points made by Araghchi in that meeting, including the following:

“Araghchi confirmed that Iran is arming Lebanese Hezbollah: “We said that we cannot stop giving arms to Hezbollah, and we’re not ready to sacrifice it to our nuclear program. So we will continue doing it.””

Khodnevis attributes the information in its article to a report published by the BBC Persian service (“Araghchi what was said at the meeting with managers of radio and television?“) and another article concerning the removal of the reports by Persian-language outlets was also produced by BBC Persian.

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Cartels and Hezbollah

From The Clarion Project:

In 2009, Michael Braun, former Chief of Operations for the Drug Enforcement Agency, said that Hezbollah uses “the same criminal weapons smugglers, document traffickers and transportation experts as the drug cartels.”

In April 2010, an individual named Jamal Yousef was apprehended in New York City. During interrogation, he admitted to stealing weapons from Iraq for Hezbollah. Yousef alone knew of a Hezbollah stockpile in Mexico that included 100 M-16 assault rifles, 100 AR-15 rifles, 2500 hand grenades, C4 explosives and anti-tank weapons.

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Defining al Qaeda

Defining al Qaeda is republished with permission of Stratfor.”

By Scott Stewart

The Obama administration’s efforts to counter the threat posed by al Qaeda and the wider jihadist movement have been a contentious topic in the U.S. presidential race. Political rhetoric abounds on both sides; administration officials claim that al Qaeda has been seriously crippled, while some critics of the administration allege that the group is stronger than ever. As with most political rhetoric, both claims bear elements of truth, but the truth depends largely on how al Qaeda and jihadism are defined. Unfortunately, politicians and the media tend to define al Qaeda loosely and incorrectly.

The jihadist threat will persist regardless of who is elected president, so understanding the actors involved is critical. But a true understanding of those actors requires taxonomical acuity. It seems worthwhile, then, to revisit Stratfor’s definitions of al Qaeda and the wider jihadist movement. Read the rest of this entry »

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Two men arrested in Berlin terror plot

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL
BERLIN – “An elite German commando team arrested two men of Middle Eastern origin in Berlin in connection with buying material for a bomb attack, a police spokesman in Berlin said on Thursday.

They were identified as a 24- year-old German-Lebanese man and a 28-year-old from the Gaza Strip and are suspected of buying chemicals to make an explosive device, police said.

The Berlin daily Tagesspiegel quoted an investigator from the counterterrorism operation saying, “there was hardly enough forces of the mobile special commandos for other assignments because all forces were needed for the terror cell.”

Earlier in the week, Germany’s minister of interior, Hans-Peter Friedrich, from the Christian Social Union party, said roughly 1,000 Islamic terrorists live in Germany.

The Federal Republic has long been a hotbed of radical Islam. The terror group Hezbollah remains legal in Germany. According to Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, there are at least 900 active Hezbollah members there.”

http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=237293

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The Arab Risings, Israel and Hamas

The Arab Risings, Israel and Hamas is republished with permission of STRATFOR.

By George Friedman

There was one striking thing missing from the events in the Middle East in past months: Israel. While certainly mentioned and condemned, none of the demonstrations centered on the issue of Israel. Israel was a side issue for the demonstrators, with the focus being on replacing unpopular rulers.

This is odd. Since even before the creation of the state of Israel, anti-Zionism has been a driving force among the Arab public, perhaps more than it has been with Arab governments. While a few have been willing to develop open diplomatic relations with Israel, many more have maintained informal relations: Numerous Arab governments have been willing to maintain covert relations with Israel, with extensive cooperation on intelligence and related matters. They have been unwilling to incur the displeasure of the Arab masses through open cooperation, however.

That makes it all the more strange that the Arab opposition movements — from Libya to Bahrain — have not made overt and covert cooperation with Israel a central issue, if for no other reason than to mobilize the Arab masses. Let me emphasize that Israel was frequently an issue, but not the central one. If we go far back to the rise of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and his revolution for Pan-Arabism and socialism, his issues against King Farouk were tightly bound with anti-Zionism. Similarly, radical Islamists have always made Israel a central issue, yet it wasn’t there in this round of unrest. This was particularly surprising with regimes like Egypt’s, which had formal relations with Israel. Read the rest of this entry »

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Hezbollah, Radical but Rational

“This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR

By Scott Stewart

When we discuss threats along the U.S./Mexico border with sources and customers, or when we write an analysis on topics such as violence and improvised explosive devices along the border, a certain topic inevitably pops up: Hezbollah.

We frequently hear concerns from U.S. and Mexican government sources about the Iranian and Hezbollah network in Latin America. They fear that Iran would use Hezbollah to strike targets in the Western Hemisphere and even inside the United States if the United States or Israel were to conduct a military strike against Tehran’s nuclear program. Such concerns are expressed not only by our sources and are relayed not only to us. Nearly every time tensions increase between the United States and Iran, the media report that the Hezbollah threat to the United States is growing. Iran also has a vested interest in playing up the danger posed by Hezbollah and its other militant proxies as it tries to dissuade the United States and Israel from attacking its nuclear facilities.

A close look at Hezbollah reveals a potent capacity to conduct terrorist attacks. The group is certainly more capable and could be far more dangerous than al Qaeda. An examination also reveals that Hezbollah has a robust presence in Latin America and that it uses its network there to smuggle people into the United States, where it has long maintained a presence. A balanced look at Hezbollah, however, shows that, while the threat it poses is real — and serious — that threat is not new and it is not likely to be exercised. There are a number of factors that have limited Hezbollah’s use of its international network for terrorist purposes in recent years. A decision to return to such activity would not be made lightly, or without carefully calculating the cost. Read the rest of this entry »

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Hezbollah using Mexican nationals to establish a network in South America

“Mexico foiled an attempt by Hezbollah to establish a network in South America, a Kuwaiti newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Hezbollah operatives employed Mexican nationals with family ties to Lebanon to set up the network, designed to target Israel and the West, the Al-Seyassah daily said.

Mexican police mounted a surveillance operation on the group’s leader, Jameel Nasr, who traveled frequently to Lebanon to receive information and instructions from Hezbollah commanders there.

Nasr was living in Tijuana, Mexico at the time of his arrest, the report said.

The report follows warnings from the United States that Hezbollah and its backer Iran are stepping up operations in the region.”

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/mexico-thwarts-hezbollah-bid-to-set-up-south-american-network-1.300360

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South Korea, Israel Under the Gun

A history lesson and some perspective from Col. North

After the Cheonan, an ROK navy patrol boat, blew up in international waters, killing 46 sailors March 26, Seoul’s military — as our mutual defense treaty requires — turned to the U.S. for advice on how to respond. The O-Team counseled caution — urging the South Koreans to invite an “international committee” to conduct a “fair, impartial and transparent investigation” to determine what happened.

Sister Ship

Sinseong, a sister ship of Cheonan

They did — and the panel found overwhelming evidence that the Cheonan had been sunk by a torpedo fired from a North Korean submarine. The Obama administration’s response to this overt act of war: to refer the matter to the United Nations. In Pyongyang, the brutal regime that has starved its people to build nuclear weapons now promises “total war.”

It’s even worse for Israel — abandoned by the Obama administration and beleaguered by the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon’s detonating on Tel Aviv, renewed rocket attacks on civilians from Iranian-supplied Hamas terrorists in Gaza, and a rearmed, Iranian-supplied Hezbollah terror movement in southern Lebanon. Last week’s flawed effort by Israel Defense Forces to inspect a so-called “humanitarian aid flotilla” for weapons and military equipment has resulted in international opprobrium because nine “activists” aboard the vessels were killed. The O-Team’s response: to demand that the United Nations conduct a “fair, impartial and transparent investigation.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has to be thankful no one insisted on a U.N. investigation after more than 70 were killed in Waco, Texas, in April 1993.

Full Article

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