If anyone out there thinks Hezbullah is something other than an Iranian proxy, please consider this. Italy's Corriere della Sera reported in Thursday's editions that Iran has appointed a successor to slain Hezbullah commander Imad Mughniyeh. And the Italians are in a position to know. According to the report in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, Hizbullah's new chief military commander is Muhammad Riza Zahdi, aka Hassan Mahdawi, who in the late 1980s served in the Iranian Embassy in Beirut.We can't let that happen now, can we?
According to the report, Zahdi will be in charge of coordinating weapons smuggling to Hizbullah from Syria as well as the construction of military positions in southern Lebanon. The paper said that the appointment was part of an Iranian plan to restructure Hizbullah in the wake of the Second Lebanon War.
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"There is a real Iranian command now over Hizbullah," a top IDF officer said at the time. "This doesn't mean that Nasrallah is a puppet, but it does mean that whenever he pops his head out of his bunker he sees an Iranian official standing over him."
Reports of Iranian discontent with Nasrallah began to surface following the 2006 war, which Teheran reportedly was not interested in seeing erupt at that time.
Several reports in the Arab press claimed that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had ousted Nasrallah from his post as Hizbullah secretary-general and replaced him with the Naim Qassem, Hizbullah's second in command. Iran has denied the reports.
Iran's consolidation of its control over Hizbullah is seen as an attempt to gain the ability to fully direct its military forces in the event of a conflict in the Middle East. If Iran is attacked by the US or Israel, it may now be able to order Hizbullah to retaliate on its behalf. In the past, the IDF's Military Intelligence has speculated on what Nasrallah would do in such a scenario and had even raised the possibility that Hizbullah wouldn't necessarily attack Israel.
Cross-posted to Israel Matzav.
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