A monitoring group also reported that a strike took place. Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told the German news agency DPA that Israeli warplanes fired at least six rockets on depots in the area of Qutaifa, north-east of Damascus.
It was not immediately clear if the targeted sites belong to the Syrian army or its allied Lebanese Hezbollah movement, he added.
The reports have not been officially confirmed.
The Israeli army said that the military does not respond to foreign reports.
Hezbullah chieftain Hassan Nasrallah has issued a number of threats against Israel recently, but he's been warned by Arab states not to try anything. Here's betting that this doesn't draw him out of his bunker either.
Trump effect: Arabs warn Hezbullah not to attack Israel (with a song you'll remember fondly)
What a difference a month makes.
An 'Arab official' has warned Hezbullah warlord Hassan Nasrallah not to attack Israel in light of President Donald Trump's support for the Jewish state.
According to a report in Al Hayat, published in London, an Arab
official warned Hezbollah that Israel would forcefully strike back
against any military attack the organization carries out and severely
damage Lebanon.
According to the report, the official said that Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu's ability to recruit "regional assistance" against
Hezbollah is high due to the era of US President Donald Trump. The
official further urged Hezbollah to behave cautiously and prudently.
Let's go to the videotape.
I wonder which Arab official warned Nasrallah not to attack....
Hamas drone engineer assassinated in Tunisia was working on undersea drone to attack Israeli gas platforms
Ten days ago, a drone engineer who worked for both Hamas and Hezbullah was assassinated in Tunisia. The Tunisian government accused 'foreign entities' of being involved in the assassination, and both Hamas and Hezbullah pointed a finger at Israel.
It now turns out that the engineer, Mohammed al-Zawahri, was developing an undersea drone that could be used to attack Israeli natural gas platforms in the Mediterranean. From Professor Jacobson.
Chief Hamas engineer Mohammad al-Zawahri, who was killed in Tunisia earlier this month, was reportedly working on drones and “remote-controlled submarines” for the Islamic terror group. A TV station in Tunisia recently aired footage allegedly presenting these projects.
Talk show Labes aired photos from al-Zawahri’s lab with host Rashed
al-Hiyari claiming one of them shows remote-controlled “submarines”
developed by the Tunisia engineer.
“Israel knew he was a real threat and that is why it assassinated
him,” al-Hiyari said of al-Zawahri. “There was a failed attempt to
assassinate him several months ago as well.”
Alzoari was an aeronautical engineer who specialized in
the manufacture of drones. For the last few years, he was employed by
Hamas and Hezbollah. According to sources in Tunis, he also designed an
unmanned naval vessel, apparently submersible and capable of attacking
targets at sea.
According to the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronoth (the Hebrew language version of Ynet), al-Zawahari was involved specifically in targeting the natural gas platforms.
Awesome: I've been blocked by Steve Salaita UPDATED
I am sure that many of you remember Steven Salaita, the professor whose
offer of a tenured position at the University of Illinois was withdrawn
after the trustees discovered his Jew-hatred. The University was eventually censured by the American Association of University Professors, and Salaita landed at the American University in Beirut.
Earlier today, Salaita tweeted this (which I can no longer see, but if someone wants to send me a screen cap, I'll add it to this post without disclosing who you are),
and I responded with this:
Another anti-Semitic moron speaks up. So glad there's free speech in Lebanon. https://t.co/3hmE2NpQEN
You won't believe who's helping in the search for Ron Arad
It's been nearly thirty years since Israeli navigator Ron Arad was shot down over Lebanon, taken hostage, apparently murdered and 'disappeared.' Now, Iran and Hezbullah have expressed an interest in solving the mystery of Arad's whereabouts.
According to a report by Yediot Ahronot, over the past year,
Israel has been in contact with Hezbollah, via a Western intermediary,
in an effort to finally solve the mystery of Arad’s fate.
The Shi’ite terror group reportedly expressed optimism regarding the
prospects of uncovering the details of Arad’s captivity, noting progress
in recent months. They added, however, that locating Arad’s remains has
been hampered by changes over the years to the landscape.
“They [the sources within Hezbollah] said that the land in the area
where Arad was buried has moved and been changed since it happened [his
burial].”
“They’re continuing their efforts and are confident that they will succeed in the end to locate his grave.”
Aside from Hezbollah, Israeli investigators have also received –
again, via a Western intermediary – cooperation from Iranian officials.
Dr. Ronen Bergman explained Iran’s interest in solving the Arad
mystery, writing that the Islamic regime has sought clues regarding its
own captives – four Iranian diplomats who disappeared in Lebanon in
1982. The Iranian regime had accused Israel of being behind the
abduction of the four, and claimed they were still alive in Israeli
captivity.
In 2004, Israel revealed to Iran – through German negotiators, who
passed the material on to Hezbollah – information regarding the
kidnapping, torture, and execution of the four diplomats by members of a
Phalangist Christian militia. Despite the revelation, says, Bergman,
Iranian officials have sought additional details of the abductions and
the location of the four.
In 2005 and 2006, Hezbollah officials ramped up their efforts to
gather details on the Arad’s abduction, contacting Iran’s Revolutionary
Guard and Lebanon’s intel agencies.
Hezbollah also conducted digs around possible burial sites, revealing
human remains which were then forwarded to Israel for DNA testing. In
each case, however, the results were negative.
But the Iranians may well know where Arad's remains are.
Amir Teherani, An Iranian journalist living abroad with ties to some
factions within the Iranian government, claimed the chairman of the
Iranian parliament has offered to finally settle accounts regarding Ron
Arad and the missing Iranian officials, proposing a swap of the remains.
Teherani added that in May, Israeli and Iranian representatives held
extensive negotiations in Cyprus. Senior Israeli and Iranian officials,
he claimed, took part in the talks.
...
In the late 1980s Arad was handed over to Hezbollah, before being
transferred to Iranian forces. By the mid-1990s Arad, reportedly
suffering from an illness, was refused medical treatment, and died in
captivity. Israeli investigators believed Arad death occurred sometime
between 1993 – after the last sign of life was produced – and 1997.
It would only be decent for Arad's family to have closure.
The Hill implies (as did many others over the weekend) that Hezbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah is backing Donald Trump.
The leader of Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group agreed with Donald Trump when he said President Obama founded the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
"This
is an American presidential candidate who is saying this. What he says
is based on facts and documents," said Hassan Nasrallah, according to The Associated Press.
Trump on Wednesday called Obama the founder of ISIS and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton the co-founder.
He doubled down on the claim Thursday in an interview with Hugh Hewitt.
“No,
I meant that he’s the founder of ISIS,” Trump said. “He was the most
valuable player. I gave him the most valuable player award."
But Friday, Trump tweeted that he was being facetious.
"Ratings
challenged @CNN reports so seriously that I call president Obama (and
Clinton) 'the founder' of ISIS, & MVP. THEY DON'T GET SARCASM?"
Jonathan Schanzer has the best retort I've seen to the entire Trump/Nasrallah/ISIS story.
Hezbollah also happens to love Obama's Iran policy. So, I guess Nasrallah is bipartisan? https://t.co/68BI6PvJwo
'Never before seen' video from Hezbullah of the outbreak of the Second Lebanon War
On Wednesday, July 12, 2006, seven IDF soldiers were killed on the Lebanese border - three in an attack by Hezbullah on their 'Hummer' and four when their tank drove over a mine. That attack was the outbreak of the Second Lebanon War. (One soldier from the 'Hummer' survived - in the video below he's in the light blue checked shirt with the trimmed beard. His name is Tomer Weinberg). Hezbullah grabbed two of the bodies - those of Ehud Goldwasser (who was driving the 'Hummer' and seated in the front left seat) and Eldad Regev (who was sitting on the right). They may have been dead when they were grabbed. Their mutilated bodies were returned to Israel in 2008 in exchange for child murderer Samir al-Kuntar (later targeted by Israel and killed) and a few lesser lights.
On Saturday night, Hezbullah's Al Mayadeen television showed the first part of a three-part documentary on the 2006 war. The program contained video never before seen from the planning of the attack and the attack itself. Hezbullah has disclosed that the attack was planned by Imad Mughniyah, who thankfully is no longer among the living.
I'm posting the video (could not figure out how to post part of it). The 'never before seen' footage of the attack itself, which runs about 10 minutes, runs from 42:52 to the end. For those who want to see the entire program, there's a link after the video.
The video is in Arabic with some Hebrew from Israeli television (interviews). Sorry, no English.
Hamas laying groundwork to create new ('Palestinian') civilian casualties
A 65-year old man with a permit to cross from Gaza into Israel was arrested by the IDF in June for carrying money in his shoes for Hamas, it was announced on Tuesday. The money was to be used for digging terror tunnels from Gaza into Israel.
A joint Shin Bet (Israel
Security Agency), Israel Police Southern District and IDF operation
resulted in the arrest on June 16 of 65-year-old Faiz Atar from Bet
Lahia in Gaza, who had a permit to enter Israel to conduct trade.
The suspect was taken into custody at the Tarkumia crossing between Israel and the West Bank.
The
Shin Bet said the suspect hid cash in his shoes for Hamas, and
smuggled tens of thousands of euros to terrorist operatives in the West
Bank.
As the investigation continued, the domestic intelligence
agency gleaned valuable information on Atar’s family in Gaza and their
activities on behalf of Hamas, including tunnel digging.
“It emerged that his sons made use of his home to meet with
Hamas operatives. The investigation revealed information on tunnel
openings, which are partly located underneath civilian structures –
including innocent civilian residential buildings and mosques – and
rocket launch locations, which are located near civilian structures in a
manner that endangers the civilian population in the Strip,” the Shin
Bet said in a statement.
Meanwhile, a second investigation
launched by the Shin Bet, Israel Police, and IDF forces also began with
a terrorism-financing suspect and ended with additional intelligence
on Gazan tunnels.
Security forces nabbed a Gazan resident at the Erez Crossing in June
with 10,000 euros stuffed in his shoes, intended for Hamas operatives
in the West Bank. When the suspect, identified as Jabaliya resident
Itallah Sarahan, 37, was questioned, security forces learned that he
received a permit to enter Israel for trade purposes two weeks prior to
his arrest.
...
The
suspect works as a truck driver in Gaza, clearing sand from Hamas and
Islamic Jihad tunnel digging sites. “Sarahan passed on much information
about the tunnels he was exposed to, including which terrorist
organization was responsible for digging which tunnels, their exact
locations, and the status of the digging work,” the Shin Bet said.
The
investigation underlines Hamas’s cynical use of Israeli efforts to
ease economic conditions for the Gazan civilian population. Thousands
of Gazans enter Israel every month for humanitarian, medical, and trade
purposes, and Hamas often attempts to exploit these entries to
transfer terrorist finances, the Shin Bet said.
It's not just Hamas that uses civilian infrastructure as a weapon in battle in order to create civilian casualties and international sympathy. You might recall that five years ago, Israeli intelligence published a map of southern Lebanon which showed where Hezbullah was doing the same thing. Israel is then left with the choice of allowing its own civilians to come under fire or being depicted as causing civilian casualties.
But just give them a 'state' and they'll stop doing things like this. Right....
Israel attacked two military targets in Syria in response to what the army described as "unusual" cross-border spillover from the conflict ravaging the country in recent years.
The army said the original fire hit near the Golan Heights security fence, but did not threaten Israelis living near the Syrian-Israeli border. It said that the Israel Defense Forces do not intervene in the war in Syria but would respond to any incursion.
In April, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted for the first time that Israel had conducted strikes against its northern neighbor. "We act when we need to act, including here across the border, with dozens of strikes meant to prevent Hezbollah [from obtaining] game-changing weaponry," Netanyahu said during a visit to an IDF military exercise in the Golan Heights.
This sounds like it was a warning to the combatants not to let things spill over, and not a strike against Hezbullah receiving advanced weaponry as has been the case in the past. If there's more, I will let you know.
UPDATE 2:10 PM
Syria has now confirmed.
#Damascus confirmed: #Israel launched two shells against a hill in the Golan, close to #SAA position. No casualties.
I'm sure you'll all be shocked to hear that Seddique Mateen, the father of the terrorist who murdered 49 people in a gay nightclub in Orlando last week, has connections to several radical Islamic groups, including some who set attacking Israel as their primary goal.
The father of Orlando mass shooter Omar Mateen has longstanding connections to prominent Islamist groups in the U.S., a document discovered by the Investigative Project on Terrorism shows. Seddique Matin is listed as president of a then-new American Muslim Alliance (AMA) chapter in Fort Pierce in a July 1997 announcement archived by the IPT.
The AMA sponsored several radical conferences in the U.S. and its
leader, Agha Saeed, has spoken in defense of convicted terrorists,
including Aafia Siddiqui (a.k.a "Lady al-Qaida"), Palestinian Islamic Jihad board member Sami Al-Arian, and Pakistani intelligence lobbyist Ghulam Nabi Fai.
The Fort Pierce chapter is among 10 new AMA chapters opened, the announcement in an AMA bulletin says.
...
AMA no longer exists as a registered nonprofit and it last filed tax
returns in 2010. But the organization continues to maintain an active Facebook account. In its posts, the AMA refuses to consider any Islamist motivation for the attack and lays the blame for Omar Mateen's massacre which killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub solely on the country's lax gun laws. [Sounds like the Obama administration. CiJ].
The organization has a history of working with radical Islamist
groups and has issued statements in support of several terrorists later
convicted in the U.S. The FBI cut off outreach communication
with CAIR, for example, after uncovering evidence placing the
organization and its leaders in a U.S.-based Hamas-support network.
In October 2000, AMA co-sponsored a rally in Washington's Lafayette Park where AMC's then-executive director Abdurahman Alamoudi announced his support for Hamas and Hizballah.
...
In 2003, Saeed testified on Al-Arian's behalf, describing the man who ran "the active arm"
of Palestinian Islamic Jihad as "my friend and during the last ten
years we have worked together to mainstream American politics. We have
worked together to replace the culture of despair with culture of hope
and the culture of bullet with the culture of ballot." AMA's website
also featured a section entitled "Valiant Civil Rights Struggle of Dr. Sami Al Arian."
What could go wrong? Hezbullah has more rockets than all 27 NATO countries... combined
A report in the Weekly Standard indicates that the Hezbullah terror organization has more than 130,000 rockets in southern Lebanon - a number that exceeds the rockets held by all 27 NATO countries... combined.
Hezbollah currently has a stockpile of over 130,000 rockets, more
than the combined arsenal of all NATO countries, with the exception of
the United States. This number includes long-range rockets and M-600
ballistic missiles, which carry a high payload and would be able to
“wipe out a good chunk of Times Square and maim and kill people four
football fields away from the point of impact,” Stern noted. Hezbollah
also has approximately 100,000 short-range rockets trained on schools,
homes, and hospitals in northern Israel, which could potentially kill
hundreds of civilians.
“You don’t collect 130,000 missiles if you don’t intend to use them,”
said Matthew Levitt, an expert on counter-terrorism and intelligence at
the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Hezbollah’s positioning of this weaponry in civilian areas poses a
challenge to Israeli officers, added Geoff Corn, an international
military law expert at the South Texas College of Law in Houston. “After
exhausting all feasible efforts to reduce civilian risk, IDF commanders
must resolve the decisive question: Is the potential for civilian harm
excessive in comparison to the advantages the attack would provide? When
you talk of an M-600 in the hands of an enemy that targets vital
military assets or the civilian population—even if that apartment
building is full—launching the attack will be necessary to mitigate the
threat,” he explained.
That seems like a no-brainer. When it's our civilians or their civilians, it's pretty clear to this Israeli that the IDF must act to defend Israel's civilians, and damn the rest of the world for facilitating their doing this.
Israeli military officials in May 2015 told the New York Times
how Hezbollah has “moved most of its military infrastructure” in and
around Shiite villages, which “amounts to using the civilians as a human
shield.” A senior military official stated that Lebanese civilians are
“living in a military compound.” He told the Times: “We will
hit Hezbollah hard, while making every effort to limit civilian
casualties as much as we can…We do not intend to stand by helplessly in
the face of rocket attacks.” Stern, who was shown maps of the locations
of Hezbollah weapons, said that they are not only being stored in these
southern villages, but in Beirut itself.
Yaakov Amidror, Israel’s former national security advisor, met
with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in the summer of 2013 and showed
him “detailed evidence of Hezbollah’s deadly arsenal and the fact that
it was strategically placed within densely populated civilian centers.”
When Amidror asked Ban what the Israelis should do, he “offered no
response and no suggestions.” Stern concluded his piece, “Nobody, it
seems, in times of peace is willing to offer Israel a constructive
suggestion on how to deal with an Iranian-backed terrorist organization
in possession of a massive arsenal on its northern border. But these
same organizations stand front and center to criticize Israel for acting
legally and proportionately for protecting its own citizens in
wartime.”
Article 28 of the 4th Geneva Convention of 1949 is simple and clear. It
says: " The presence of a protected person may not be used to render
certain points or areas immune from military operations." Hezbullah
violates this provision daily. It is due to Hezbullah's violations of
this provision that Lebanese civilians are being killed.
In an
article published on the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com web
page over the weekend, Orde F. Kittrie, a professor of international law
at Arizona State University and who served in the Office of the Legal
Adviser at the U.S. State Department from 1993 to 2003, summarized the three-part test in determining whether Israeli actions violate the Geneva Convention:
International
law has three major prohibitions .... One forbids deliberate attacks on
civilians. Another prohibits hiding forces in civilian areas, thereby
turning civilians into "human shields." A third prohibition, the
proportionality restriction that Israel is accused of violating,
involves a complicated and controversial balancing test.
Ignoring
the fact that Israel has warned Lebanese citizens to flee the combat
zones dozens of times, given the manner in which Hezbullah has hidden
both itself and its weapons among civilians, it is impossible to assert,
let alone prove, that Israel is deliberately attacking civilians. But
it is clear that Hezbullah has turned what remains of Lebanon's civilian
population into human shields.
...
I have already noted that Orde Kittrie wrote that the proportionality
test "involves a complicated and controversial balancing test." Kittrie
goes on to explain:
Geneva Convention Protocol I contains
one version of the proportionality test, the International Criminal
Court Statute another; neither is universally accepted. As a result, the
proportionality test is governed by "customary international law," an
amalgam of non-universal treaty law, court decisions, and how
influential nations actually behave. It does not hinge on the relative
number of casualties, or the force used, however, but on the intent of
the combatant. Under customary international law, proportionality
prohibits attacks expected to cause incidental death or injury to
civilians if this harm would, on balance, be excessive in relation to
the overall legitimate military accomplishment anticipated.
...
If Israel was mistaken and Hezbollah was not firing from or hiding amongst these civilians, the legality of its action is assessed by the proportionality test. [But we know from countless testimonies that Israel is not mistaken and that Hezbullah is firing from among civilians.
CiJ] Because the test is vague, there have been few, if any, cases
since World War II in which a soldier, commander or country has been
convicted of violating it. In the absence of guidance from the courts,
determining whether Israel's military has failed the proportionality
test depends on an assessment of what civilian casualties it expected,
what its overall military goals are, the context in which the country is
operating, and how the international community has in practice balanced
civilian risk against military goals. [There
is no way to attack a munitions depot hidden beneath a house and a
school without blowing up the house and the school. That would make any
attack in which the civilians have been warned to leave the house and
the school proportional per se. CiJ]
Israel did not expect civilian casualties; it warned civilians to leave Qana [and all areas south of the Litani at this point. CiJ]... The
law of war recognizes that mistakes are inevitable, and does not
criminalize soldiers who seek in good faith seek to avoid them.
Read the whole thing (it describes similar tactics adopted by Hezbullah on a lesser scale during the Second Lebanon War ten years ago).
Not saying that Israel did it excuses Hezbullah from seeking revenge for it, i.e. war.
Here are some more interesting tweets from Malbrunot's timeline. This series quotes an unnamed diplomat to which I am adding the Bing translations except where they seem ridiculous:
II- "Les groupes armés syriens anti-Assad n'ont pas la capacité de réaliser une telle opération sophistiqué même si Israël a pu recourir..."
Beirut barracks bomb preparer, Hariri assassination mastermind killed near Damascus
Israel may have been behind an explosion that killed Mustafa Badreddine, the Hezbullah commander who prepared the bombs for the US Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, and who is said to the mastermind of the assassination of Lebanese President Rafik al-Hariri in 2005, among other crimes. Badreddine was killed in a blast near the Damascus Airport a few days ago.
An initial report by Lebanon's al-Mayadeen TV said that Badreddine,
55, died in an Israeli air strike. But a later statement by Hezbollah on
al-Manar's website did not mention Israel.
Israeli media reported that the government refused to comment on whether it was involved in Badreddine's death.
Israel has been accused by Hezbollah of killing a number of its fighters in Syria since the conflict began.
The
group was established in the wake of the Israeli occupation of Lebanon
in the early 1980s, and has called for the "obliteration" of Israel.
A number of Twitter accounts supporting Syrian rebel groups and the
al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front say Badreddine was killed in a battle
in Khan Touman, southern Aleppo, rather than in Damascus.
Khan
Touman was captured by a coalition of groups including al-Nusra Front
last week and has been subject to heavy shelling in recent days.
No official sources have commented on the reports.
Born
in 1961, Badreddine is believed to have been a senior figure in
Hezbollah's military wing. He was a cousin and brother-in-law of Imad
Mughniyeh, who was the military wing's chief until his assassination by
car bomb in Damascus in 2008.
According to one report,
a Hezbollah member interrogated by the Canadian Security Intelligence
Service (CSIS), described Badreddine as "more dangerous" than Mughniyeh,
who was "his teacher in terrorism".
They are alleged to have
worked together on the October 1983 bombing of the US Marine Corps
barracks in Beirut that killed 241 personnel.
Badreddine is
reported to have sat on Hezbollah's Shura Council and served as an
adviser to the group's overall leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Badreddine was tried in absentia by the ongoing Special Tribunal for Lebanon, in The Hague, over the killing of Mr Hariri.
Any of the armed groups seeking to overthrow Mr Assad might have
sought to kill the man co-ordinating Hezbollah military activities.
However, suspicion is likely to fall on Israel, which fought a war
against Hezbollah in 2006.
Israel has been accused of killing
several of the group's leaders over the years, although it has never
officially confirmed its involvement.
Hezbollah military chief
Imad Mughniyeh was killed in a car bombing in Damascus in 2008 that US
intelligence officials said last year was a joint operation by the CIA
and Israel's Mossad spy agency.
In January 2015, a suspected Israeli air strike in the Syrian Golan Heights killed six Hezbollah fighters, including Mughniyeh's son Jihad, and an Iranian Revolutionary Guards general.
And in December, Hezbollah said one of its senior figures, Samir Qantar, was killed when missiles fired by Israeli jets struck a block of flats in Damascus.
Israel
has also reportedly conducted air strikes aimed at preventing advanced
weapons shipments from Iran from reaching Hezbollah via Syria.
The 'no comment' is Israel's standard operating policy, but if Israel is involved in this, you can bet the Obama administration will make sure everyone knows about it.
The Israel Project's Omri Ceren provides more background by email.
Organizationally Badreddine was "dual hatted," per Matt Levitt, a Washington Institute director and the scholar who literally wrote the book on Badreddine [c]. He was both the head of Hezbollah's external global terror operations and the head of all Hezbollah activities in Syria [d].
Badreddine killed so many different people in so many different places that it's not actually clear if the Israelis were the ones who got him [e]. Under interrogation by Canadian security officials, a Hezbollah member once reportedly described Badreddine as "more dangerous" than his predecessor and cousin Imad Mughniyah [f]. He was unpopular even inside Hezbollah: Levitt tweeted he was "rash, hot tempered, impetuous, even unstable," and "was very close [to] Nasrallah, but widely disliked within Hezbollah," and was "a philandering playboy, not particularly religious" [g][h][i].
A couple of timelines: 1st, Badreddine's terror activities going back decades, 2nd, how the U.S. Treasury designated him as a terrorist starting in 2012, though last month
Badreddine terror activities timeline
1980s - In October 1983 he prepared the bombs for the Beirut barracks bombings, which killed 241 U.S. and 58 French servicemen. The targets were separate American and French buildings [j]. In December 1983 he was part of the Iran-backed cell that launched seven attacks in one day in Kuwait, killing 6 and wounding almost 90. The targets were the American embassy, a residential building for American company Raytheon, the French embassy, the Kuwaiti airport, the Kuwait National Petroleum Company oil rig, and a Kuwaiti power station [k].
1990s - He helped establish and then he coordinated Hezbollah Unit 1800, which facilitated terror attacks against Israel from the West Bank and Gaza [l].
2000s - He helped establish and the he coordinated Hezbollah Unit 3800, which launched attacks in Iraq against American, British, and Sunni forces [m]. In 2005 he masterminded Hariri's assassination in Lebanon, which killed Hariri and 21 others.
2010s - He's been coordinating all Hezbollah activities in Syria.
U.S. sanctions and designations timeline
2012 - Treasury designated Badreddine pursuant to E.O. 13224, labeling him a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" [n]. The Treasury notice cited him for "providing support to Hizballah’s terrorist activities in the Middle East and around the world," assessed that he was currently "Hizballah's top militant commander," and noted that "the prosecutor of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon charged Mustafa Badr Al-Din with the attack... that killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and 21 others."
2015 - Treasury piled on more sanctions, this time pursuant to E.O. 13582 [o]. The Treasury note assessed he was "responsible for Hizballah's military operations in Syria since 2011," having sat with Nasrallah during meetings in Damascus throughout 2011 before expanding his role.
April 2016 - Treasury tagged him again, this time under the Hizballah International Financing Prevention Act of 2015, making him subject to secondary sanctions [p].
Badreddine's assassination could lead to war between Israel and Hezbullah.
Breaking: IAF jets hit weapons convoy on Syria-Lebanon border
Israeli Air Force jets have attacked a weapons convoy traveling along the Syrian-Lebanese border. The intended recipient of the weapons was Hezbullah.
The attack allegedly occurred on the Syrian-Lebanese border earlier
in the afternoon and struck a number of vital positions important to the
terror organization.
Citing Arab media reports, Channel 2 said
that the Israeli Air Force struck the weapons convoy near a Syrian
"rebel safe-haven" where Hezbollah militants were allegedly stationed.
If the reports are confirmed, it would not be Israel's first
military excursion into enemy territory to stop the transfer of weapons
to its arch nemesis Hezbollah.
Last month,
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged for the first time that
Israel has taken action dozens of times beyond the northern border to
prevent Hezbollah from attaining “game-changing” weaponry.”
Saudi Arabia cuts off assistance to Lebanese Armed Forces
In a move that was likely spurred by Lebanese support for Iranian activity in Syria, Saudi Arabia has cut off some $4 billion in support for the Lebanese Armed Forces.
The
surprise announcement, carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency,
comes as deeply divided Lebanon struggles to handle the fallout from
neighboring Syria's raging civil war. The Lebanese government declined
to immediately comment on the Saudi decision.
One deal involves Saudi Arabia paying $3 billion to buy French arms
for the Lebanese military. The other involves a $1 billion support deal
for the Lebanese police.
Saudi Arabia said it halted the deals because of recent Lebanese
positions "which are not in line with the brotherly relations between
the two countries." It did not elaborate.
However, it comes after Lebanese Foreign Minister Gibran Bassil
declined to support resolutions against Iran during two meetings of Arab
and Muslim foreign ministers.
Bassil is the president of the right-wing
Christian Free Patriotic Movement, which is one of the strongest allies
of the Iran-backed militant Hezbollah group in Lebanon.
Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia long has been suspicious of the
predominantly Shiite Iran, which supports Hezbollah and Syria's
embattled President Bashar Assad. Relations took a turn for the worse at
the start of the year, when Saudi Arabia executed a prominent Shiite
cleric and protesters stormed Saudi diplomatic posts in Iran. That in
turn prompted Riyadh to cut diplomatic relations with Tehran.
The Lebanese army is generally seen as a unifying force in the
country, and draws its ranks from all of Lebanon's sects. However, it's
widely viewed as being much weaker than Hezbollah.
That almost makes this sound like a foolish move - the last thing the Saudis want to do is strengthen Hezbullah. On the other hand, the Lebanese Armed Forces are full of Shiite Hezbullah members.
Hezbullah, which already has operations in Paraguay, Brazil, Venezuela
and Mexico (the article doesn't say Mexico, but I've reported that in
the past) is setting up operations in Cuba to serve as a base for an
attack on Israeli interests in Latin America to avenge the death of
master terrorist Imad Mughniyah. The report in YNet is based upon an article in Italy's Corriere della Sera.
According
to the report, three Hezbollah members have already arrived in Cuba
with the purpose of establishing a terrorist cell there. The cell is to
include 23 operatives, hand-picked by Talal Hamia, a senior member
tasked with heading the covert operation.
The operation, titled "The Caribbean Case," was reportedly allocated
a budget of $1.5 million. The Cuba base is to be initially used for
logistics purposes, including intelligence collection, networking and
document forgery.
Four days after I wrote that post, Hillary Clinton confidante Sid Blumenthal (who was not a US government employee) sent Hillary an email informing her that the Mossad has confirmed the existence of a Hezbullah base in Cuba.
The dispatch read:
During the week of
September 5, 2011 extremely sensitive sources reported in confidence
that the Israeli Intelligence and Security Service (Mossad) has informed
the leadership of the Israeli Government that Hezbollah is establishing
an operational base in Cuba, designed to support terrorist attacks
throughout Latin America.
The confidential intelligence report from Blumenthal to Clinton continued:
These sources believe
that Hezbollah supporters have been instructed to also begin casing
facilities associated with the United States and the United Kingdom,
including diplomatic missions, major banks, and businesses in the
region. These individuals believe that the Hezbollah military commanders
in Lebanon and Syria view these U.S. and U.K. entities as contingency
targets to be attacked in the event of U.S. and British military
intervention in either Syria or Iran, at some point in the future.
The real question here is what the Obama administration did about Hezbullah establishing bases in Latin America. The answer: Absolutely nothing.
Angela Merkel says it's not the time for a 'two-state solution'
Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel gets it: This is not the time for a 'two-state solution.'
Merkel, who in the past has insisted that the “two-state solution” is
the best way to end the conflict, appeared to signal at Tuesday’s
Government-to-Government meeting that she would turn down the pressure
on Israel to push for a diplomatic process with the Palestinian
Authority (PA).
"Now is not the time for a significant step
forward [in the two-state solution]," she said during a joint press
conference with Netanyahu in Berlin, according to i24news.
Nevertheless,
Merkel stressed that while substantial progress can't be achieved at
this time, "it is possible to make improvements in specific fields," and
promised Germany's help in doing so, particularly in the economic area.
Merkel’s
remarks echo recent statements by officials in the United States, who
admitted that President Barack Obama recognizes that reaching a
two-state solution before he leaves office is unlikely.
Similar
expressions have been sounded in Israel as well, where opposition
chairman Yitzhak Herzog has also admitted that the “two-state solution”
is not feasible at this time and has offered his own, alternative plan
for peace.
With Syria falling apart a few miles away and Lebanon under the control of the Iranian proxy Hezbullah, is the world finally starting to get it?
Remember President Hussein Obama promising Israel additional military aid to ensure that we can cope with a nuclear Iran? In Haaretz on Sunday, Barak Ravid reported that Prime Minister Netanyahu told his cabinet on Sunday that if the Obama administration doesn't properly help Israel, he'll wait for the next administration.
"It's not yet clear that we will come to an agreement," Netanyahu told the cabinet members in the course of a diplomatic-security briefing by acting national security adviser Jacob Nagel, who also heads the Israeli team negotiating memorandum with the Americans. "[We] need to see if [we] can achieve a result that will address Israel's security needs or perhaps we will not manage to come to an agreement with this administration and will need to come to an agreement with the next administration."
Last Thursday, an American delegation led by Yael Lempert, the Special Assistant to the president and Senior Director for the Levant, Israel and Egypt at the National Security Council in the White House, who arrived in Israel to hold a third round of negotiations on the matter. Over the past three days, the American team held discussions with a team of counterparts from the national security staff in the Prime Minister's Office and from the Defense Ministry, the Israel Defense Forces and the Foreign Ministry. The main topic of discussion in the talks was the size of the aid that the United States would provide Israel and the conditions on its use.
Netanyahu's remarks at the cabinet meeting raise the possibility that the round of talks in Jerusalem will not achieve substantial progress. Just two weeks ago, in the course of his visit to the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where the prime minister met with American Vice President Joe Biden, and where the two discussed the matter, the prime minister sounded much more optimistic. In an interview on stage with American journalist Fareed Zakaria, Netanyahu noted that he believed Israel and the United States would manage to wrap up negotiations in a positive manner on a new security memorandum of understanding in the coming months that would outline the size of American assistance to the IDF for the coming decade.
...
The current security memorandum of understanding signed ten years ago between the two countries is due to expire at the end of 2018. As a result of the understanding, the United States has provided $30 billion over a decade in security assistance to Israel. In the course of meetings between Netanyahu and Obama at the White House in November, the two announced the opening of new negotiations on the memorandum for the coming decade.
At the beginning of the negotiations a few months ago, senior figures in the defense establishment expressed the position that Israel is in need of a $5 billion annual increase to the amount of American assistance. Netanyahu himself has told the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Knesset that he is interested in coming to agreement with Obama on the sum of "$4 billion plus."
In the course of his last visit to the United States and in interviews with the American media since then, Netanyahu has stressed that Israel needs a substantial increase in American security assistance in light of the nuclear agreement that Iran reached with the major world powers. Iran will be receiving $100 billion as a result of the lifting of sanctions and can use these funds to acquire quantities of weapons and provide advanced weaponry to Israel's enemies – Hezbollah, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Netanyahu noted.
At the same time, Netanyahu has made it clear in recent months both in public and in private conversations with the Americans that the Sunni Arab countries are acquiring large quantities of advanced weaponry from the United States and France to protect themselves from Iran, but the weapons could in the future be turned against Israel. In such a reality, he has argued, an increase in American assistance is necessary to maintain the IDF's qualitative advantage in the region.
Senior officials in the defense establishment are expressing serious concern over the prospect that it will not be possible to reach an agreement with the Obama administration on the size of security assistance, resulting in a deferral of the subject until a new president takes office in January 2017. Under such circumstances, there would be less than a year remaining to come to a new security agreement before the current one expires. That would present a very complicated situation since any new president would need half a year at least to study the subject.
DEBKA, which I don't like to sole source, but will because of the Haaretz background, reports on some of the specifics of what's missing.
US President Barack Obama has retracted on his pledge of an extra
defense package to compensate Israel for the damage caused its security
by the nuclear deal concluded with Iran last year. This flat refusal,
reported here by debkafile’s
Washington sources, confronted Israeli officials when they met last
week with heads of the National Security Council at the White House.
Asked to define its new requirements, Israel asked the administration
for an additional $1.9 billion, which would have upped the total to $5
billion per annum for the next five years. The officials explained that
Israel’s defense bill had been inflated substantially by the new perils
looming from the current Middle East wars, and the windfall Iran had
gained from the lifting of sanctions for its advanced ballistic missiles
programs and for enhancing its allies' aggressive capacity, especially
that of Hizballah.
Israel is now beset additionally by adverse Russian military
operations in southern Syria and looming ISIS threats on multiple
fronts, at a time that the Arab states are stuffing their armories with
advanced weapons from Russia and China.
The US officials explained that, because of cutbacks in US defense
spending, it would not be possible to add a single dollar to Israel’s
regular $3.1 billion appropriation. After notifying Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon of this refusal,
the Israeli delegation was advised to reduce its application to $900
million. This too was refused.
The standing $3.1 billion annual US assistance program for Israel
expires at the end of 2016. The negotiations taking place currently were
to have covered its extension for ten years. That too is in doubt.
The Obama administration reacted angrily to Prime Minister Netanyahu's statement, and said that Israel will not get a better deal from the next President. Of course, that depends who the next President is.
#ThanksObama IDF Chief warns Iran will finance Hamas and Hezbullah
At the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) conference in Tel Aviv on Monday, IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot warned that sanctions relief for Iran would mean more funding for Hamas and Hezbullah.
Within a year to two years, large funds made available by sanctions
relief will be directed by Iran towards trying to harm Israel, he
added.
Iran's "advanced military industry" will develop further,
and its transfer of funds to Hezbollah, which has so far stood at
around a billion dollar a year, will increase.
"The assessment is
that as the economic situation improves in Iran, more assets will be
diverted [to building up capabilities against Israel]," he added.
Similarly,
Hamas, which currently receives tens of millions of dollars from Iran,
is set to receive more, while Tehran continues to try and traffic
weapons to Gaza.
...
Hezbollah remains the "IDF's number one enemy," he said, challenging
Israel's aerial and intelligence superiority though its conversion of
240 Shi'ite towns and villages in southern Lebanon into rocket assault
bases.
Each such town and village has their own defensive
Hezbollah units, rocket launchers, and command and control center. "They
are the capability Hezbollah has built for the day they receive the
order to attack. They are seeking to make their projectiles more
accurate, and have grown in the past decade from 10,000 to 100,000
rockets and missiles," Eisenkot said.
Nevertheless, the chief of
staff said, "Hezbollah understands the implications of an escalation
in Lebanon," and has kept the peace in Lebanon for over a decade. "Our
intelligence and operational abilities have improved dramatically
compared to 2006, when we were focused on the Palestinian arena," he
said.
"There is a deep understanding [among Hezbollah chiefs] of
Israel's intelligence penetration into the organization. They perceive
the IDF as a very strong, unpredictable military.
"In the coming
three to five years, the threat posed by sub-state actors like
Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaida, and ISIS will grow, as will the threat
posed by rockets, offensive tunnels, and terror and guerrilla cells.
The cyber threat will also grow. However, threats by conventional
armies will shrink, and there are no enemy air forces, navies, or
divisions that currently threaten Israel," he added.
Eisenkot also expects unconventional threats against Israel to decline in the next 3-5 years - something we can only hope and pray will be true - and notes with concern that ISIS has more support in Judea, Samaria and Gaza than anyplace else in the Arab world.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
