(Jerusalem Post) Yoram Schweitzer and Gilad Stern - Now that the Special Tribunal for Lebanon's final conclusions prove publicly that Hizbullah is culpable for former prime minister Hariri's assassination, Hizbullah leader Nasrallah is bound to receive a mark of Cain for undermining Lebanese national interests. Anyone knowledgeable about Hizbullah's relationship with Syria and Iran could affirm that the leadership of both would not only have been well informed about the assassination, but also would have approved it. Such a grand-scale operation, targeting a political leader with international prestige, could not have occurred without prior intense dialogue between Hizbullah and its patrons: an operational approval from the highest-ranking officials in Assad's regime, along with the explicit consent of Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei. Furthermore, there should be no doubt that Nasrallah himself approved the operation, and that his military commander, Imad Mughniyeh (killed a year later in Damascus), planned and personally supervised the execution. Yoram Schweitzer is director of the Low-Intensity Conflict and Terror Project at the Institute for National Security Studies-Tel Aviv University. Gilad Stern is an intern at the INSS.
2011-07-04 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive