Via FLC

Hezbollah Waits and Prepares

HEZBOLLAH supporters in Beirut watch a televised
address by Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah in August 2010.

With new tensions over Iran's nuclear program, the militant group stands ready to retaliate against Israel

By NICHOLAS BLANFORD

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

On a recent Saturday afternoon, a radar operated by French United Nations peacekeepers picked up a pilotless Israeli reconnaissance drone crossing into south Lebanon. It was given no more attention than any of the dozens of other surveillance missions flown by the Israelis in Lebanese airspace each month.

But when the drone passed above Wadi Hojeir, a yawning valley with steep, brush-covered slopes, it abruptly vanished from the radar screen. The startled peacekeepers contacted the Lebanese army, and a search of the rugged valley was conducted in the early-evening gloom. Nothing was found.

No one can recall the last time that an Israeli drone malfunctioned over Lebanon and crashed, and there were no reports of antiaircraft fire. The Israelis have said nothing. Neither has Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group and arch foe of Israel. The peacekeeping force is now abuzz with speculation that Hezbollah may have found a way of electronically disabling drones.

It is food for thought as tensions escalate once more between the West and Iran, Hezbollah's ideological patron, over the Islamic Republic's nuclear ambitions. A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency released last week claimed that Iran has been engaged in "activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device." It was the IAEA's toughest report yet on Iran, and it was preceded by a flurry of articles in the Israeli press saying that the Israeli government was seriously considering a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.

Iran has delivered its own warnings. Brig. Gen. Masoud Jazayeri, the deputy chief of the country's armed forces, was quoted saying that "the smallest action by Israel [against Iran] and we will see its destruction." He added that plans for retaliation were already in place.

Many analysts believe that those plans could include directing Hezbollah to unleash its military might against Israel, pummeling it with thousands of long-range rockets, placing the Jewish state's heartland on the frontline for the first time since 1948.

Hezbollah and Israel last came to blows in July 2006, when the Lebanese militants fought the Israeli army to a surprise standstill in the valleys and hills of south Lebanon. Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's charismatic leader, proclaimed a "divine victory" against Israel, but since then he has been careful not to provoke another round of fighting.

But the quiet has not stopped the two sides from making feverish preparations for another encounter, one that neither Hezbollah nor Israel wants but that both believe is probably inevitable.

The rate of recruitment into Hezbollah's ranks has soared. New recruits are bused to secret training camps in the Bekaa Valley, where they endure lengthy marches over the craggy limestone mountains carrying backpacks weighed down with rocks........

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