UPDATE: 20 January 2011: Today's DEBKAfile report, Hezbollah's eleventh-hour pullback from siege of UN sites and troops, might be dismissed by some as being fanciful, but I'm here to inform that there's a whole lot of facts behind it.
On December 6, 2010 the Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star reported that Hezbollah's political ally and world-class Jew hater, Wi'am Wahhab, made the following statement: "If the outside [world] is indifferent toward strife in Lebanon, we can confirm that in the event of strife, UNIFIL troops in Lebanon will not be left in peace." But this really isn't new news, Wahhab's been making the same threat since last July.
Obviously, Hezbollah's current military operational orders, as directed by the Iranian Ayatollah, were planned well in advance. The enhanced Western military presence referred to below indicates that our intelligence and military command authorities took these threats seriously. We'll soon see if Hezbollah is feeling froggy enough to go ahead and jump. It might be the last thing they ever do.
UPDATE 18 January 2011: As of early this morning Hezbollah and AMAL (AMAL is a former rival and secular Lebanese Shi'a militia) soldiers were seen taking up positions on the streets of Beirut. While this might seem to be much-ado-over-nothing in the crazy world of Lebanon, the streets in which these Shi'a soldiers were taking up fighting positions are in Sunni Muslim neighborhoods. The Sunni's are obviously very concerned with this turn of events.
The cause of the Hezbollah/Amal deployment is due to the U.N. STL Prosecutor, Daniel A. Bellemare, CONFIDENTIALLY filing his indictments in the 2005 assassination of PM Rafiq al-Hariri and the murder of 22 others with the Tribunal Registrar yesterday, 17 JAN 11. The Tribunal Registrar will next submit the indictment to the U.N. STL Pre-Trial (international) Judge. Thus, the U.N. STL has entered into the judicial phase of its existence. The (international) Pre-Trial Judge is expected to confirm the indicments and release them publicly. Most observers expect both living and deceased members of Hezbollah's leadership to be named in the indictments, with at least one French report (AFP) publicly indicating that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamene'i to also be included among those indicted.
The cause of the Hezbollah/Amal deployment is due to the U.N. STL Prosecutor, Daniel A. Bellemare, CONFIDENTIALLY filing his indictments in the 2005 assassination of PM Rafiq al-Hariri and the murder of 22 others with the Tribunal Registrar yesterday, 17 JAN 11. The Tribunal Registrar will next submit the indictment to the U.N. STL Pre-Trial (international) Judge. Thus, the U.N. STL has entered into the judicial phase of its existence. The (international) Pre-Trial Judge is expected to confirm the indicments and release them publicly. Most observers expect both living and deceased members of Hezbollah's leadership to be named in the indictments, with at least one French report (AFP) publicly indicating that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamene'i to also be included among those indicted.
Additionally, according to new information from Al-Arabia, the former first President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Abolhasssan Bani Sadr, (now living in exile in France) has confirmed the U.N. STL indictments will name Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamene'i as well as both living and deceased members of Hezbollah as being the persons responsible for the assassination and murders. Bani Sadr reportedly stated that Khamene'i personally ordered the assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri saying, "only someone in my position can understand the necessity of such an action." Bani Sadr went on to state that he expects Ayatollah Khamene'i will now "liquidate" Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, mostly likely due to his extemely poor handling of the U.N. STL situation.
UPDATE 12 January 2011: Today Hezbollah's threatened "Zero Hour" arrived at 4:30 PM Beirut time, 07:30 AM Eastern Standard Time.
The "Zero Hour" arrived with the resignations of all eleven Hezbollah government ministers from their posts. The effect of these resignations was the immediate collapse of Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri's government. The resignations occurred as an effective preemption of Prime Minister al-Hariri's meeting with Obama in Washington later today.
I believe Hezbollah and their militia allies will now move rapidly to fill the lack of a functioning government vacuum their long-planned action was designed to cause. The resignations of Hezbollah's government minister has the effect of being a coup d'etat.
This crisis may also become an impetus for the U.N. STL to immediately issue their long anticipated indictments of Hezbollah for Rafiq al-Hariri's assassination, and possibly for some form of Western military intervention to thwart Iranian military expansion into the Eastern Mediterranean.
The USS Enterprise (CVN-65) Carrier Strike Group (CSG), including Destroyer Squadron-2, the AEGIS cruiser USS Leyte Gulf (CG-55) and destroyers USS Barry (DDG-52), USS Bulkeley (DDG-84), and USS Mason (DDG-87) are enroute to the Mediterranean Sea in an augmentation of the US Navy's 6th Fleet.
27 November 2010: The Islamic Republic of Iran's long-term conquest of the Republic of Lebanon is a fait accompli. Once again the agenda of the Islamic Republic has not only trumped that of the inept and feckless Western Powers but it is in fact a de facto usurpation of the imminent, and so-called "inviolable" United Nations Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) indictments in the case of the 2005 assassination of Prime Minister Rafiq HARIRI.
This chessboard-like achievement was made evident as Western leaders slept early this morning with the arrival in Tehran of the current Lebanese Prime Minister Saad HARIRI. The Lebanese Prime Minister's trip to Iran ahead of the official releasing the the STL's indictments on the assassination of Saad's father belies Hezbollah's threatened "Zero Day" coup d'etat.
A report by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) published on Sunday 21 November, and aired globally on Monday 22 November, revealed that the U.N. STL's indictments provided irrefutable proof in the form of a loyal Lebanese officer's intelligence operation which identified senior members of Hezbollah as Rafiq Hariri's assassins.
According to documentation in the U.S. Library of Congress, Hezbollah has from its inception in 1982 has been a forward deployed element of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) when a small contingent of Pasdaran, a/k/a the "Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution," a/k/a the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, arrived and set up shop at Baalbek in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley in 1982.
Therefore, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad-eddine Rafiq al-Hariri is this morning, and tomorrow the esteemed quest and the newest sock-puppet of the Iranian Ayatollah's regime, a regime who ultimately ordered the assassination of his father.
The word treason is probably in the forefront the minds of those few liberty loving Lebanese citizens who brought about the short-lived "Cedar Revolution" and now watch as their nation has been taken from them with nary a word or deed from the so-called democratic West. Never have I entertained the thought that the treachery of Neville Chamberlain would be eclipsed. Today I stand quietly corrected.
