Hezbollah cells await Iran’s orders

Melanie Phillips

02 August 2006

Hezbollah sleeper cells in Western Europe are awaiting instructions from Tehran, says Melanie Phillips. Sunni and Shia are uniting in their hatred of the West, and Britain may soon be another front in a war that extends far beyond Lebanon

According to German and Israeli intelligence sources, Hezbollah sleeper cells are present in more than 20 countries in Western Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia, and have been told to be ready to carry out terrorist attacks should Israel prolong its military action in Lebanon. The Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett has told the Commons that ‘there are indeed concerns’ about Iran-backed terrorists attacking the UK.

Yet the British authorities do nothing about the most conspicuous promoter of Khomeini jihadism in the UK, the jovially named Islamic Human Rights Commission run by Massoud Shadjareh. The IHRC is said to be close to Iran. Its understanding of human rights is to extol Hezbollah, endorse an eclectic assortment of jihadis and promote the end of Israel.

It was the IHRC which sponsored the Hezbollah placards in Trafalgar Square. It is the IHRC which runs the annual ‘al-Quds’ day in Britain, instituted by Khomeini as an event to be held around the world on the last Friday of Ramadan. Demonstrators at this annual hate-fest on the streets of London call for the ‘liberation’ of Jerusalem, carry Hezbollah flags, demand the destruction of Israel, and portray its leaders as demons.

In a briefing on the Lebanon crisis, the IHRC has said that British Muslims can provide Hezbollah with ‘financial, logistical and informational support’ to attack Israeli installations, and calls for the ‘temporary’ occupation of Israel and ‘regime change’ by Hezbollah on ‘self-defence’ grounds.

As for Lebanon, it says that any support for Hezbollah there is lawful under international law. Force against Israel must be sufficient to stop ‘Israeli aggression’ and can include the destruction of installations ‘on the territory held by Israel’, as well as ‘financial, logistical and informational support of Hezbollah’. The IHRC is thus inciting Iranian-sponsored terrorism against Israel on the spurious grounds that supporting the army which started hostilities by launching a slew of unprovoked rocket attacks against Israel’s northern towns is ‘self-defence’. Isn’t such incitement to violence a crime?