Saturday, July 21, 2012

Iran Strikes Back

Israeli investigators have concluded that the recent terror attack against Israelis in Bulgaria was carried out by the Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah terrorist organization. Hezbollah is a Shia radical group that is obsessed with destroying Israel and turning Lebanon into a Shia religious dictatorship. Hezbollah is facing hard times because of the rebellion next door in Syria. There, an Iran backed secular dictatorship has been under attack by most Syrians for 16 months and the government is losing. A new government would be hostile to Iran and Hezbollah. Syria has been a supply line (from Iran) for Hezbollah as well as a refuge from Israeli attack. That will all be gone, and Hezbollah's many enemies (mostly in Lebanon but most specifically Israel) will take advantage and try to destroy a weakened Hezbollah.
Hezbollah, with better access to the world (than heavily sanctioned Iran) has long been carrying out terror attacks (mostly against Israel) for Iran. As a result of that, Hezbollah has
(over the last two decades) become identified and treated as an international terrorist organization. Israel usually strikes back at the attackers when its citizens are killed by terrorists, so one can expect some action in southern Lebanon. In a case like this Israel will go after senior Hezbollah leaders as well as the people who plan, prepare, and direct the anti-Israel terrorist operations. Israel rarely takes credit for these operations but the hits cannot be missed. Soon, some Hezbollah operatives are going to die.
In the last few years Iran has been desperate to strike back at Israel. That's because Israel has carried out numerous attacks against the Iranian nuclear weapons program. This includes the assassination of at least four Iranian scientists working on that program plus Cyber War attacks on Iranian facilities. There have been other operations outside Iran to foil Iranian smuggling (of military and nuclear weapons components) operations.  Iran wants revenge and has not been getting much.
In Egypt the newly (and fairly) elected government is still locked in a power struggle with the armed forces. The Egyptian military, one of the more corrupt institutions in the country became heroes of the revolution by refusing orders from the dictator (the Mubarak family) to use force to suppress the massive (and largely non-violent) rebellion last year. The grateful revolutionaries agreed to let the army to run the government (via a "military council") until elections could be held and a civilian government established. The military made up the rules as it went along. For example, the generals decided who was eligible to run for office. The military disqualified many prominent Islamic conservatives from running. This resulted in a growing number of anti-military demonstrations. Hundreds were killed or wounded. Parliamentary elections last month gave Islamic conservatives over 60 percent of the seats. Presidential elections resulted in an Islamic conservative politician being elected. The military responded by joining forces with the courts (full of corrupt judges appointed by Mubarak) in an effort to curb the power of a fairly elected government and protect the money and power of the many families that benefitted from decades of corrupt Mubarak rule.
The senior military officers and judges face great danger if they surrender control of the country because many newly elected members of parliament want to go after the numerous corrupt officers, judges, and other officials and replace them with more politically correct men. There would also be prosecutions and confiscations of ill-gotten gains. 


Asain Defence

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