Keeping Hezbollah Alive--Again!
Win one for the Devil
You would think that Donald Trump, of all people, the president who took on the drug cartels as no one before, eviscerating speedboats from the air and going so far as to defenestrate narcotics capo Nicolás Maduro, the former president of Venezuela, now incarcerated in Brooklyn, would want to put paid to the group that for more than four decades has been a financial linchpin of the global drug trade, laundering billions through North and South America and Europe into their coffers in Lebanon, not to mention being the serial murderers of large numbers US troops (241 in 1983 alone) and as many Israelis, civilians as much as military, as they can get—Hezbollah!
But so far, no.
Israel, which was on the verge of finishing off this monstrous organization, has been restrained in the midst of the current confusing and opaque negotiations with Iran.
This is not the first time Hezbollah has been soft-pedaled. The Obama administration allegedly restrained the DEA investigation of Hezbollah, known as Project Cassandra, that occurred during the last round of negotiations with the Islamic Republic and allowed the terrorist organization to live on. Politico wrote about it in “The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook”.
To those who may have forgotten:
“Project Cassandra was an overall effort led by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to undercut Hezbollah funding from illicit drug sources in South America.[1] The effort had two other investigations running simultaneously: Project Cedar and Project Titan.[4] Launched in 2008, Project Cassandra was investigating the terrorist organization’s funding.[3][5] The DEA, Eurojust, and Europol found that Hezbollah was increasingly involved with drug trafficking and organized crime as a method of funding its activities.”
The foregoing is from the normally left-biased Wikipedia. The following is from the U. S. Treasury Department:
“Members of Hezbollah established business relationships with South American drug cartels responsible for supplying large quantities of cocaine to the European and United States drug markets. An intricate network of money couriers collect and transport millions of euros in drug proceeds from Europe to the Middle East. The currency is then paid in Colombia to drug traffickers using the Hawala disbursement system. A large portion of the drug proceeds is laundered through Lebanon [facilitated by the now-defunct Lebanese Canadian Bank and other Lebanese nationals], where it is then used for the benefit of Hezbollah to purchase weapons.”
It’s hard to imagine how the new Middle East being conjured by Pollyana-ish VP Vance could actually survive with Hezbollah still in existence.
Maybe he wishes they would go away by themselves, but the IDF just found an extensive underground tunnel system, literally a subterranean Hezbollah UAV “airbase” and factory hidden beneath the hilltop village of Majdal Zoun, but 6 kilometers from the border. Constructed, it almost goes without saying, with Iranian funding, its purpose was to manufacture drones to be immediately fired into Israeli territory in several directions, including out to sea toward its navy. Also found in the tunnel were dozens of Iranian missiles that could easily reach all the way to Eilat.
It seems Iran’s intention in the negotiations, even overriding its internal wrangling, is to keep Hezbollah alive almost as much as it is to save its own regime. In many ways, they are joined at the hip. Without Hezbollah as its military arm, Iran is neutered.
It’s difficult to tell how Trump regards this or to whom he is directing his remarks. Lately, Benjamin Netanyahu has been a target, but is he really, or is this a charade for another purpose? Trump recently condemned the Israeli PM for bombing a building in order to assassinate a Hezbollah leader, claiming not everyone in the building was a member of Hezbollah. Arguably, however, they were. The target was in the Dahiyeh suburb of Beirut, where practically everyone is Hezbollah, particularly so in a building used by one of their leaders, who, considering how they operate, is not likely to allow potential traitors living near them.
If it’s a charade, however, it is to keep Iran at the negotiating table, but for what cost? Is he keeping Hezbollah alive in a not-so-different way from Barack Obama? We shall know, I suppose, relatively soon. As of now, neither Israel nor Lebanon has a seat at the table, while the fate of their countries hangs in the balance.
Back in 1983, when Hezbollah used a suicide bomber to kill 281 of our servicemen in the Beirut Barracks, they were supposedly there to keep the peace in Lebanon, which was still more or less a Christian country. President Reagan, in what might not have been his finest hour, pulled out, and things went downhill from there.
There’s a message in that for Donald Trump. Let’s hope, in the coming weeks, he sees it. (And that he pays less attention to the likes of Recep Erdogan.)
MEANWHILE…
I am pleased to write that EMET has reached 100 (actually 101) Amazon reviews with a 4.5 rating. Thank you to all who contributed to that.
Disappointing that the price of gasoline at American pumps is the determining factor as to whether the barbarians obtain nuclear weapons. If there was a loyal opposition party in this country it wouldn’t be this way. Just what the world needs, another NK but with an Islamic death cult at the trigger.
I am hopeful (although as a hemi-Irishman, like Yeats neighbor one tends to be sustained by an abiding sense of political tragedy) that Trump is doing all this sudden change from his normally healthy default to crank up the economy for the midterms, after which he will go back to bombing the bad guys - especially Hezbollah. In the meantime one hopes Mossad and CIA are arming sane Iranians. Vance I’m not so sure. He was on Megyn Kelly’s show recently. He may be going for the antisemite vote.