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Monday 7 July 2008

Iran has declared war on the rest of the world

Douglas Davis says that this conflict can be traced back to the transport via Damascus of a lethal consignment of weapons from Tehran to Hezbollah

That announcement, which had been anticipated in Tehran, is the likeliest trigger for last Wednesday’s attack. And the message that Tehran delivered in return, courtesy of its Lebanese proxy, was loud and clear: Iran would — and could — inflict ‘harm and pain’ on US interests; and not just in the Middle East. Hezbollah’s playground extends far beyond the region. It has a formidable global reach.

That was underscored in a report to the US Congress in January this year by the new American intelligence supremo, John D. Negroponte. He noted that Iran was perfectly capable of sparking a wide conflict if it felt threatened. Hezbollah, he added, is ‘Iran’s main terrorist ally, which has a worldwide support network and is capable of attacks against US interests if it feels its Iranian patron is threatened.’

Washington hardly needs reminding of Hezbollah’s lethality. Those members of Congress will not have forgotten that one of the first acts of the newly formed Hezbollah in 1983 was to launch a truck-bomb attack against the Beirut barracks of the US marines, who had been sent to the Lebanese capital on peace-keeping duties at the height of Lebanon’s civil war. The attack cost the lives of 241 US servicemen. But, as Mr Negroponte indicated, Hezbollah can also operate on an international stage.

In March 1994, for example, Thai security officials arrested a Hezbollah terrorist as he was driving a truck laden with explosives near the Israeli embassy in Bangkok. If the truck had detonated, it would have destroyed the entire embassy and blown away several hundred people. Three months later, in faraway Argentina, Hezbollah got lucky. Ibrahim Hussein Berro, a Lebanese citizen and member of Hezbollah, drove an explosives-packed van into the seven-storey building in Buenos Aires that served as the Jewish community centre. Eighty-five people were killed and more than 200 wounded.

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