10 October 2008

Iran has sent an intelligence agency officer, Mohammad Rida Zahidi, to replace Hizbullah's top military commander Imad Mughniyeh who was assassinated in Damascus in February, Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported on Thursday. The paper added that Zahidi, who is nicknamed "Hassan Mahdawy," will coordinate between Hizbullah and the Syrian intelligence agencies, help build new locations in South Lebanon for military training and ensure the flow of weapons to Hizbullah.

Lebanese sources told the paper that Zahidi was responsible for the committee in charge of protecting Tehran's major figures and was the second secretary in the Iranian Embassy in Lebanon between 1998 and 2000.

In a separate development, Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's much-promised retaliation for the assassination of Mughniyeh is reportedly coming. The daily Al-Akhbar, which is close to Hizbullah, said on Wednesday that Nasrallah renewed his vow to retaliate for the killing during a recent "semi-internal" meeting.

There will be "no backing off from the decision to avenge the assassination of Hajj Mughniyeh," Nasrallah was quoted as saying, "and no backing off from carrying out the 'big surprise' against the enemy."

Nasrallah has promised Israel a "big surprise" if it attacks. On Monday, Al-Akhbar published a report that questioned whether Israel had factored the "surprise" into its decision-making process. Al-Akhbar made the comments in a piece published under the headline: "Israel is threatening to destroy Lebanon. What will happen to it during wartime?"

The newspaper, which usually uses reliable sources from within Hizbullah, warned that Israel needs to seriously consider the ramifications of a future attack on Lebanon.

"What do they imagine Hizbullah 's reaction will be? They actually say it has 40,000 missiles ... Are they preparing for things that they have not considered and that others have not considered?" asked Al-Akhbar.

"Who said that Hizbullah does not think about all of the options which the enemy will use, including those which have been mentioned recently."

Senior Israeli military officers have said that if another war were to break out, Lebanon's army and civilian infrastructure would again be classified as legitimate targets. The remarks prompted condemnation from Hizbullah and Lebanese officials.

In an interview published in an Israeli newspaper Friday, the general in charge of Israel's northern border region said the country's military planned to use the "Dahiyeh doctrine," a war-plan that would see the template of heavy bombardment that targeted Beirut's southern suburbs during the summer 2006 war expanded to cover vast swathes of Lebanese territory.

General Gadi Eisenkot said Israel was planning to "use disproportionate force" against villages from which Israel is fired on. "This isn't a suggestion," he said. "This is a plan that has already been authorized."

His comments have been backed in recent days by other senior Israeli military figures. In an article due to be published this week, Major General Giora Eiland, a senior reserve commander, has recommended making the Lebanese state rather than Hizbullah the target of an Israeli military campaign.

Eiland condones attacking the Lebanese Army and the country's civilian infrastructure and says the Lebanese government should be warned as soon as possible that the whole country will be in the line of fire during the next conflict. "People won't be going to the beach in Beirut while Haifa residents are in shelters," he writes. - The Daily Star